Response Summary <was: Adaptec for ESDI controllers>

[Ray Shwake]

In article <26 at raysnec.UUCP> I asked:
>
>	Anyone have experience with Adaptec's ESDI series? Just received
>an info pack covering their entire PC line, including the ACB-232x series.
>How does this compare - cost, performance, compatibility - with, say,
>the Western Digital WD1007V or other such controllers? I'm especially
>interested in supporting some flavor of 386/486 UN*X.


From: Doug Pintar <uunet!ism.isc.com!dougp>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Boulder CO

Interactive Unix (formerly 386/ix) supports the Adaptec 232x cards.  In fact,
the HPDD 'athd' module was originally written for them, and then modified for
the quirks of the WD boards as well as others.  I like them a little better
than the WD equivalents for a couple of reasons.  1) they seem to be a little
faster at getting commands started up, and 2) you can use them at BOTH
secondary I/O addresses AND interrupts.  The WD cards used to (don't know if
they still do) allow you to select the secondary address, but no dice on the
interrupt.  I have actually run systems with 2 Adaptec controllers and
multiple drives.


From: Jim Bevier - J B Systems <uunet!ico.isc.com!iscden!jbev>

I am not familiar with bench, but I recently got "bonnie" from the net
and gave it a try.  Performance is about like the sun on my 386/25.  It
reads/writes a 100mb (yes 100mb) file in several modes.  It even forks
3 copies of its random disk test to really hammer on the disk.  The
system throughput (collectively) was about 1340 kb/sec.  I think some
of the other tests were cpu/buffer dependent and more memory on my system
would help (I have 4mb, soon to be 8mb).  The biggest winner with the
controller is the dos/unix jumper.  The sequential read-ahead feature
allows fast task loading on the SCO unix file system.  


From: uunet!hlwpq.att.com!marz (Martin Zam)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

	I run an Adaptec 2322B with my Miniscribe 9380E under ISC Unix.
I had some problems getting it working initially.  There are some potential
installation problems related to Low level formatting directly off the
controller card.  Also, I have been repeatedly warned by Adaptec to turn
off the read-ahead cache if I am running UNIX.  They never gave me a real
explanation, but claim UNIX gets flakey if the read-ahead cache is turned on.

	Don't get the impression that I have had reliability problems with
this combo.  I must say that once working, the combo has been rock solid for
over a year now.