[1603] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: Which pci-scsi host adapter should I get?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (art s. kagel IFMX x2697)
Mon Mar 24 17:58:33 1997
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 17:54:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "art s. kagel IFMX x2697" <kagel@dg1.bloomberg.com>
To: Gerard Roudier <groudier@club-internet.fr>
Cc: Robert Johannes <rjohanne@piper.hamline.edu>,
Edward Welbon <welbon@bga.com>, linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970321215859.93A-100000@localhost>
See my comments in context below:
Art S. Kagel, kagel@ts1.bloomberg.com
On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Gerard Roudier wrote:
>
> On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, art s. kagel IFMX x2697 wrote:
>
> > Linux supports most major SCSI controllers SCSI-I -> SCSI-III Fast/Wide.
> > I have had Future Domain (RIP), NCR, and BusLogic and I have found the
> > BusLogic PCI SCSI-III Fast/Wide Bus Master controller to be extremely
> > fast and reliable. (My FD was ISA bus and Very slow as expected. The
> > NCR was PCI and apparently had a bad trace so I returned it and replaced
> > it with the BusLogic.)
>
> If you just mean that oranges are not apples, I agree.
No I just mean that I have had three different, Linux supported, SCSI
cards and that I like the BusLogic best.
>
> > The driver support for the BusLogic is great with the BusLogic people
> > directly supporting the maintainer with new products and specs. Also all
> > BusLogic controllers are driver compatible so that the driver is simple
> > and supports new controllers quickly. BusLogic even lists Linux support
> > in their docs and Web pages.
>
> If you just mean that oranges mixed with apples have taste of oranges and
> apples as well, I agree too.
>
> Can you please be more accurate?
>
> - Which Future domain board?
I do not remember the model # but it was an ISA card with narrow SCSI-II
support. It actually worked fine with both DOS and Linux but when I
upgraded from my ISA 386-40 motherboard to a PCI Cyrix-P166 mother board
I wanted a faster PCI card. The FD was slower than either the NCR or the
BusLogic simply because it was constrained by the ISA bus.
> - Which NCR board?
It was a Tyan 1365 board with an NCR 825 SCSI chip and Bios. The card was
PCI SCSI-II Fast/Wide. The Bus Logic is a BL-958 Fast-Wide Ultra
SCSI-III PCI Bus Master card.
> - Which drivers did you use in which version?
The Future Domain was used with the last Pre 2.0 Linux release from WGS.
I upgraded to Red Hat 4 when I brought up the new mother board and the
NCR controller. This may have had some effect on comparing the FD to
the others, though I suspect that the ISA bus has the greater effect.
For the Bus Logic I have only used Red Hat 4 with the latest released
drivers (the one before Flashpoint support was added, 2.0.7?).
> - Which OS/es did you use?
MS-DOS 6.21 and Red Hat Linux 4.
> - In which other boards have been not fast and reliable enough for you?
The Bus Logic has been rock solid. The only problem I have had is that
one of my disks has > 1024 cylinders and the cylinder remapping that the
Future Domain performed differed from that used by the Bus Logic and the
NCR such that I could not install LILO with either until I had backed up
the DOS partition and performed a low level format (with the Bus Logic) so
that I could reinitialize the partition table. While the Bus Logic & NCR
correctly interpreted the partitions and DOS worked fine, Linux fdisk
complained about the partition table, mkfs hung (for over 24 hours before
I rebooted), and LILO would not install even on the other drive (with
<1024 cylinders) or a floppy until I had corrected the partition table to
use the Bus Logic's cylinder remapping scheme. Since the reformat
everything has been great.
> - What mean 'fast' for you?
I did some informal I/O benchmarks on the after noticing a subjective
improvement going from the NCR to the BusLogic card. Anything I/O
intensive seemed to run 15-40% faster. Again I had no formal timings
from when the NCR had been installed so these are somewhat subjective but
I know how long a long compile took and how much finger tapping I did, so...
> - What means 'bad trace'? (I did not find this expression in my dictionnary)
When the NCR card was installed and the machine was on for more than a
few hours, the machine would hang on any command which accessed the
drives. In other words I could run command.com or bash built in
commands and even sometimes list directories that had been in cache
already but when I tried to load an executable or list a directory not
read before the machine would hang. In this case rebooting caused the
machine to hang again in the middle of printing the NCR BIOS copyright
header. 'Bad trace' means that apparently one of the printed circuit
trace lines, or one of the solder connections was cracked or 'cold' (a
term refering to a solder joint in which one of the parts being joined
was not sufficiently heated to permit a good electrical connection,
producing a joint whose electrical properties depend upon temperature).
In other words the card stopped working when it became too hot (though
the components are properly cooled).
> - What means 'driver compatible' for you?
Leonard Zubkoff, who maintains the drivers for BusLogic support in Linux
reports, if I understand correctly, that all BusLogic controllers
essentially use the same driver code. He only had to add code recently
for the FlashPoint line which does not have an imbedded processor and
depends on the driver for several functions that are on-board on the
other BL controllers. The extra code you see below is for the
FlashPoint line to replace the on-board functions with driver based
functions. The FlashPoint series is much less expensive than the other BL
controllers because of the lack of an on-board CPU and this accounts for
the extra code. The basic BusLogic driver is slightly smaller than the
aic7xxx driver and much smaller than the ncr53c8xx driver.
>
> Now, some informations for you.
>
> Linux support boards in Wide Ultra-2 mode (80 MB/seconds).
>
> And now, just for the fun:
>
> Here is the all Buslogic boards compatible driver:
> (527967 bytes)
>
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 172611 Mar 21 22:21 BusLogic.c
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 49686 Mar 21 22:21 BusLogic.h
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 305670 Mar 21 22:21 FlashPoint.c
>
> Here is a shorter driver that is compatible with the whole AIC7XX chips
> family and the 53C8XX chips family as well.
> (449233 bytes)
>
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 174282 Oct 28 22:21 aic7xxx.c
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2305 Aug 10 1996 aic7xxx.h
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15494 Apr 20 1996 aic7xxx_asm.c
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9261 Oct 13 10:44 aic7xxx_proc.c
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21170 Oct 13 10:44 aic7xxx_reg.h
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 196906 Jan 17 21:18 ncr53c8xx.c
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29815 Jan 17 21:18 ncr53c8xx.h
>
>
> Gerard.
>
