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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.eng.convex.com!newshost.convex.com!bcm.tmc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!purdue!haven.umd.edu!hecate.umd.edu!jjarray.umd.edu!fcawth From: fcawth@jjarray.umd.edu (Fred Cawthorne) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Do the 'zip accelerator' cards work as scsi adaptors? Date: 2 Aug 1996 20:17:31 GMT Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 31 Message-ID: <4ttnor$44p@hecate.umd.edu> References: <4t7v0p$pmk@news.inc.net> <kientzleDv62FJ.I3C@netcom.com> <4tbbi5$g91@news.inc.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jjarray.umd.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Jeremy Nelson (nelson@cs.uwp.edu) wrote: : However, i have been abysmally disappointed with its performance. You : comment that in your own experience, youre getting 6 megs per minute. : What strikes me as slightly odd is that even under dos, im getting 4.6 : megs per minute throughput. When you compare that to the parallel : version, which gets 4.5 megs per minute on a generic "el cheapo" parallel : port, i begin to wonder why the scsi version is not marginally faster. : To put into numbers what i mean, here are some simple tests i ran: : Test: Copy Ultimate Doom (13.5 megs) from zip drive to conner 1.6 hd. : HD to HD -- 12 seconds (about 60 megs per minute) : Zip Parallel to HD -- 2:53 (about 4.5 megs per minute) : Zip SCSI to HD -- 2:48 (about 4.6 megs per minute) Hmmm. I get 800K/sec with iozone writing a 32 meg file. This is with a P-166 with NCR PCI scsi controllers though. Real-life performance is not too much different. I routinely copy about 30 megs back and forth from a zip disk and It takes less than one minute. : Is that accurate? Its really disappointing to me if thats all that i : can hope for out of it -- ill probably return it if thats the max. : As a consumer gripe, it really peeves me that they offer on the box as : the example of performance "Up to 20 megs per mintue" for parallel, : and "up to 60 meg per minute" for scsi, when its apparant that neither : drive is capable of anywhere close to that. Don't know about the parrallel one, but the scsi zip is pretty fast for what it is. (i.e. a floppy drive with good heads and positioning mechanism). Fred.