AHA1542 and ST296N

[Piercarlo Grandi]

In article <164 at tygra.UUCP> jpp at tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) writes:

   In article <8121 at cognos.UUCP> dbullis at cognos.UUCP (Dave Bullis) writes:
   }I heard a lot of good things about the Adaptec 1542A SCSI controller.
   }And the Seagate ST296N 85Mb drive is getting very common and fairly cheap.
   I have a machine with exactly that configuration: an AHA1542 and 2 Seagate
   ST296N's. I have had ABSOLUTLY NO PROBLEM with the drives or the controller

To get it working is no fuss; but I would be quite wary of the
performance. I would carefully look at the spec sheet of the ST296N to
see its transfer rate. I seem to remember that most Seagate SCSI drives
do only 4 MHZ, which is even slower than MFM, not to speak of RLL or
ESDI. Also, I seem to remember that these drives are not so hot as to
their handling of the SCSI protocol, so you get a substantial slow down.
I have seen Quantum, Imprimis, Micropolis recommend for their clever
SCSI implementations.

It is damn easy to have a poor SCSI implementation; the difference in
performance between an AHA1542 and an ST01 can exist also in the drive.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk