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Date:      Sun, 17 Sep 1995 09:49:17 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>
To:        Didier Derny <didier@aida.org>
Cc:        jdl@chromatic.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: atapi.c and wcd.c missing.... 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.950917093414.5362F-100000@fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.950916224526.509A-100000@aida>

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On Sat, 16 Sep 1995, Didier Derny wrote:

> I can't see any reason why the SCSI controller and devices are so expensive.

Marketing.  If you look around, the devices are pretty competitive, thanks
to Apple for creating a mass market, but the PC SCSI controllers are
outrageous.  I think it is because the billions of PC users have it in
their head that SCSI == server hardware == expensive and that is the end. 
They never think a little further and ask "Does it really have to be that
expensive?".  They never looked in an Amiga magazine and discovered that a
decent controller can be had for around US$70.  I *know* it isn't the fact
that relative to IDE, SCSI controllers don't have a big enough market to
be low-cost.  I wouldn't be surprised if Adaptec sells more SCSI
controllers in a month than most 3rd party SCSI manufactures for the Amiga
sold in their lifetime.

And for the devices, SCSI devices are a much better investment because
they are platform independent.  For example, one of my (recently deceased)
hard drives started life in an HP 720, lived in an Amiga for a couple
years and then in a PC for a couple years.  My tape drive has a similar
story, although I don't know where it started life.  Had I used some
platform specific specific device devices, I would have had to ditch a
tape drive and 3 hard drives when I switched platforms a couple years ago
(amiga->pc).  That would have far more expensive than an outrageously
priced PC SCSI controller, never mind a reasonably priced one.

Buy SCSI.  You won't regret it.  Low end Macintosh and Amigas use SCSI, 
why not low end PC clowns?  Just say NO to IDE!  

-john

== jfieber@indiana.edu ===========================================
== http://fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu/~jfieber ============




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