*BSD News Article 6910


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt
From: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch (Norbert Bladt)
Subject: ISA is faster than EISA ? (Was: Re: DOS and 386BSD (and NT and OS2))
Message-ID: <1992Oct22.093459.13824@autelca.ascom.ch>
Organization: Ascom Autelca AG, Guemligen, Switzerland
References: <1992Oct16.175743.19250@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1992Oct21.160231.6516@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 09:34:59 GMT
Lines: 36

eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) writes:

>A Wizard of Earth C (terry@cs.weber.edu) wrote:
>: I can definitively say that the IDE on AT&T 386SX WGS and Compaq Deskpro
>: 486/33M boxes use *soft* translation... that is, the translation is done

[endless discussion about soft- or hard translation on IDE drives deleted]

>This is reason IDE is faster and more reliable than anything else. The signal
>path does not exist, unlikde ESDI
>, and there is only one controller, unlike 2 for SCSI,
> less communication overhead. 
>	SCSI 2 looks fast because it has 32-bit bus between controllers,
>but it still has to communicate via ISA 16-bit bus, even if you have 
>the 32-bit EISA bus, the speed of the EISA bus may not match with the speed of
>the SCSI-2. ISA bus is still much faster than any hard-disk controller. 
You say, that the EISA bus is too slow for SCSI-2, but the ISA bus is still
faster than any hard-disk controller. It indirectly follows:

You say that the (16-bit 8Mhz) ISA bus IS FASTER than EISA bus ?
This must be wrong !
The DMA rate on the ISA bus is about 5 (or 5.7) MB/sec. while on the EISA
bus it is (up to) 33MB/sec. Quite a difference in my opinion.
Did you ever use a system with an EISA bus ?
I have one at home and can tell you it's very fast in accessing the disk !

Confused,

Norbert.

BTW: Thanks for your example of an Xconfig file. I used it to get the
X386mono server running.
-- 
Norbert Bladt, Ascom Autelca AG, Worbstr. 201, CH-3073 Guemligen, Switzerland
Phone: +41 31 999 65 52			FAX: +41 31 999 65 44
Mail: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch   UUCP: ..!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt