Wanna go to a computer show?

[jabr at blu.org (John Abreau)]

Drew Taylor <drew at drewtaylor.com> writes:

> Can you give me a few details on this bridge, and it's performance impact 
> (if any)? I'd love to buy a big IDE HD and be able to swap it into my 
> SCSI-only server for /home or /mp3. :-) And where did you find it? Any info 
> is appreciated.

As I said before, I haven't received the one I ordered yet, so I have no 
experience with it to pass on. My experience in the past with scsi vs ide
has consistently shown me that scsi performance is far better than ide, 
even when the ide drive is theoretically "faster" than the scsi drive
I'm comparing it to. It's most noticeable in server environments, but
the essence is that when pushing a system to its limits, performance 
degrades gracefully with scsi, whereas with ide it's more like hitting
a wall.

The bottleneck with ide has to do with how it ties up the cpu while it's 
active. In principle the bridge should encapsulate this behavior cleanly, 
and present decent scsi performance to the outer system. I'll find out
for sure once I get my hands on the unit.

I ordered the Acard ARS-2000FU, which converts to the old-style 
50-pin ribbon cable; you can find the specs at

    http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/ars-2000fu.html

They've got a variety of similar units, including some with the 68-pin
connector. I don't see any of the 80-pin variety on their web site.

I ordered mine from Microland Electronics:

    http://www.microlandusa.com/microland/

You'll find then about halfway down the page.


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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
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