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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!solaris.cc.vt.edu!news.seanet.com!news.seanet.com!michaelv From: michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: a monthly FreeBSD magazine (and other *BSD's too) Date: 10 Jan 1996 06:40:27 GMT Organization: HeadCandy Associates... Sweets for the lobes. Lines: 51 Message-ID: <MICHAELV.96Jan9224027@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> References: <4ajc07$sb7@unix2.glink.net.hk> <4cdijr$hjg@toplink1.toplink.net> <4cfq48$9lg@news1.halcyon.com> <1996Jan4.140833.18166@wavehh.hanse.de> <4clc42$p4q@news1.halcyon.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mindbender.seanet.com In-reply-to: tzs@coho.halcyon.com's message of 6 Jan 1996 08:33:06 GMT Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:32660 alt.os.linux:7037 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:11859 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1779 In article <4clc42$p4q@news1.halcyon.com> tzs@coho.halcyon.com (Tim Smith) writes: Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de> wrote: >>Unless you need more than one CD-ROM drive, or need to be a CD-ROM server >>in addition to being a file server, how do you justify the extra cost for >>a SCSI CD-ROM? >Easy: How can you know you will not need more than one CD drive in the >future. If I need a second CD drive in the future, I'll do the same thing you will: I'll go by one. There's no hardware requirement that all CD-ROM drives use the same interface: one could have a couple IDE CD-ROMs, a [...] I justified it quite easily. I had three main criteria: 1) I had to be able to easily move it between my NetBSD machine and my Windows95/NT machine. 2) It had to perform well without dragging down my system. 3) It couldn't severly limit my expandability of other devices. (1) means I really needed an external unit -- a toss up, but still more easily available in SCSI at this point (not to mention that SCSI allows removing the drive "hot" from my NetBSD machine [don't have to shutdown -- I just unmount the cd and pull the external SCSI cable, while the machine is happily running]). (2) pretty much means SCSI, hands down (my SCSI card does asynchronous bus-master transfers, whereas an IDE drive would require the CPU to do all I/O in a busy loop). And, (3) does as well, since I already have four hard drives in my NetBSD machine, and EIDE is limited to four devices total. Plus I will have two or three drives in my NT machine soon. My external 4X SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive works just great, and performs well. It was a little more expensive, but not substantially so, and the quality is better than those $100 IDE drives. -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com --< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >-- NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4, DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532 NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -