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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.
--
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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...
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