Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 10:48:03 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: sos@sos.freebsd.dk (Søren Schmidt) Cc: toor@dyson.iquest.net, tom@uniserve.com, freebsd@atipa.com, dyson@FreeBSD.ORG, ggm@connect.com.au, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IDE vs SCSI was: flags 80ff works (like anybody doubted it) Message-ID: <199708081748.KAA24525@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199708080710.JAA01517@sos.freebsd.dk> from "Søren Schmidt" at Aug 8, 97 09:10:45 am
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Sigh... the "SCSI is too expensive" argument is still bogus. The only valid arguments are (1) it is a higher up front cost (unless you actually get *quality* IDE hardware, then it's the same) and (2) international costs are higher if you buy from local dealers (since you have to pay to get it shipped internationally anyway; you're just paying the dealer instead of the shipper). > You can actually build a 28G fileserver with 4 of the new Maxtor 7G > drives for less than US$ 1800 for the drives. Add a decent mother > board and a netcard and you have a very nice ftp/web/whatever server > for less that US$ 3000. Beat that! I have a Dual Pentium box (ASUS) with 32M of RAM, NCR PCI SCSI 2, a 4M S3 964 PCI card, DEC ethernet PCI card, and DEC SCSI drives. It cost ~$2000, both processors installed, with a 3v/5v power supply and a tower case. The machine is only ever down for me to reboot a new kernel, or, recently, to install a 1G JAZ drive (~$200) and a 9G 7200 RPM 3 1/2 IBM drive (~$650 from www.onsale.com, ~6ms avg. access). Once, I had to replace the power supply fan. Other than that, it has been powered on continuously for nearly two years now. Two *YEARS*. It has never had a hardware failure other than the fan (all power supply fans are designed to fail anyway; it's expected). What is the MTBF on IDE? IDE drives are only now getting to the point where they rival the speed of this 2 year old SCSI combo. What if you want to add a JAZ drive? A CDROM drive? A tape backup? For 2 of three of these, you will be installing another controller. If you have 2 hard drives, you will be installing another controller. If you want a DVD CDROM drive or a JAZ drive, you will be installing a SCSI controller. If you want a fast scanner, you will be installing a SCSI controller. A tiny investment up front (if you are silly enough to buy a motherboard without onboard SCSI... many have AHA2940 family chips on them today) and you have a *serious* amount of expandability that IDE just doesn't buy you. Plus if you go to explicit termination (cable terminator & external connector terminator), you will have *zero* termination problems (I have *zero* termination problems). In addition, it is trivial for me to use the "turbo" switch connected to a .100 cdrom sound cable connector to allow me to switch the JAZ drive between ID's 0 and 2 (JAZ drives read their SCSI Id's once at power-on), and boot multiple OS's. Try *that* with an IDE drive on a secondary controller once your two measley channels on your primary controller are used up by your boot drive and your CDROM drive... Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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