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Xref: sserve comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc:18499 comp.os.linux.hardware:2217 comp.os.386bsd.misc:5399 comp.os.os2.misc:126179 Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.os2.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!news.ysu.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!psinntp!viper!david From: david@visix.com (David Charlap) Subject: Re: IDE bad? was Re: List of recommended hardware components Sender: news@visix.com Message-ID: <D3yn5J.2E0@visix.com> Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 22:44:07 GMT References: <3g890k$cbl@ionews.io.org> <D3L3KM.FIJ@bonkers.taronga.com> <D3MwsE.KF0@sci.kun.nl> <D3ooGs.CD4@bonkers.taronga.com> Organization: Visix Software, Resston VA Lines: 55 Peter da Silva <peter@bonkers.taronga.com> wrote: > >The way it works it *can't* "pass the stage of mere MFM >emulation". It can have stuff kludged on the side but it can't drop >the core Western Digital controller emulation or you won't be able to >boot DOS... Bullshit. If that was the problem, then you shouldn't be able to boot your SCSI adapter either. Have you ever heard of an extension BIOS? You put a ROM chip on the card (or in the drive for IDE) and it will boot the system. Just like the Western Digital cards booted your MFM drive in the days of the PC/XT (when BIOS chips didn't support hard drives at all.) And today's BIOS chips support quite a lot more than the old WD scheme. In case you haven't noticed, the BIOS chip in your 486 box is not running the same code that was running in PC's ten years ago. >And after all that you still admit it's not up to SCSI standards. All >Conner did was remove the incentive for BIOS makers to get behind the >Adaptec SCSI interfaces... I see. So forcing the market to use Western Digital's scheme is bad, but forcing it to use Adaptec's scheme is good. You don't care about the market at all. It just ticks you off that someone else's standard got forced on the public instead of yours. >How much shopping around did you need to do to get that to work? I just >got a SCSI drive, SCSI tape, SCSI CDROM, and later an ancient SCSI drive >for sticking /tmp and swap on (multiple spindles give you nice performance >enhancements) and it just works. Let me give you my Seagate 296-N SCSI drive and see if it "just works". I can give you a few more SCSI devices (like a floptical drive, maybe?) and they won't "just work" either. For any device, you need a driver. If you're lucky enough to have an OS that ships with all the drivers you need, great. But it doesn't mean the devices "just work" by themselves. >Conner has a history of really gross and disgusting kludges. I >wouldn't buy a drive from them because you don't know what nonsense >they've done to it. So buy from Seagate, Micropolis, Maxtor, Western Digital (your antichrist, it seems), IBM, Quantum, or any other drive manufacturer. No need to hate an entire interface spec over your gripes with one vendor. ---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------- David Charlap | The contents of this message are not the opinions of david@visix.com | Visix Software, or of anyone besides myself. Visix Software, Inc. +-------------------------------------------------------- Member of Team-OS/2 | ---------------------+