[1696] in linux-scsi channel archive
RE: SCSI card : Asus SC200 or Tekram DC 390 ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Soeren Juelsgaard)
Thu Apr 10 02:03:50 1997
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 08:01:20 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Soeren Juelsgaard <juels@kom.auc.dk>
To: "Gary I. Kahn" <gkahn@erols.com>
Cc: <stephane@e2c.com (Stephane Legrand)>, linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.970408220741.gkahn@erols.com>
>>>>> "Gary" == Gary I Kahn <gkahn@erols.com> writes:
The new ASUS SC875 controller which utilizes the ncr53c875 chip has an
onboard bios !
Regards, Soeren
Gary> Stephane--
>> The major disadvantage of the Asus is that it doesn't have the SCSI
>> BIOS. Is it really important (i don't need to boot on the scsi disk)
>> ? And i
Gary> read
>> that to use this card the PC motherboard must have support for NCR ?
>> Is that true ? And how to know if the motherboard support it ?
Gary> I think that the BIOS is required by the SCSI driver for linux. I
Gary> base my feeling on a comment in the source code for the driver in
Gary> /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi.
Gary> To determine whether my motherboard's BIOS supports the Symbios
Gary> chips, I used the command
Gary> cat /dev/mem > tempfile
Gary> to dump an image of all of memory. I needed to "su" first. Then,
Gary> I used
Gary> less -i tempfile
Gary> and scanned for "SDMS" and "Symbios", figuring that one of them
Gary> would show up if the Symbios SDMS drivers were included in my
Gary> BIOS. Neither did. I don't know if this method would actually
Gary> reveal the Symbios support, but I hoped a copyright notice would
Gary> be show up. Most of the people reporting that they're using the
Gary> Asus cards seem to also be using the Asus motherboards, which (of
Gary> course) have the BIOS support.
Gary> If your motherboard has a flash BIOS, it may be possible to
Gary> replace your current BIOS with a shareware BIOS called "MR BIOS"
Gary> or something like that. The documentation for that BIOS listed
Gary> the motherboards with which it was compatible, and it gave
Gary> information about how to add the Symbios extension. I'm sorry,
Gary> but I no longer have the WWW address of the sellers of MR BIOS. I
Gary> didn't try this method, since buying the shareware BIOS negates
Gary> the savings of buying the ASUS card. Also, there was risk
Gary> involved since the new BIOS and the card, both bought by mail from
Gary> separate sources, might not work together.
>> For the Tekram, it seems that it is based on an AMD chip which is
>> less performant and less supported (for driver) than the NCR
>> chip. Again, is that true ?
Gary> I bought the Tekram DC390 after trying out a friend's Adaptec
Gary> 2920. The DC390 performed marginally faster than the 2920 (in my
Gary> machine with my harddisk).
>> In fact, i would rather to buy the Tekram because they have done a
>> driver for Linux and FreeBSD and i think it's very nice :-)
Gary> The availability of a linux driver, with source code that I was
Gary> able to look at before the purchase, decided me in favor of the
Gary> Tekram card. I compared the list of supported features in the
Gary> available "dc390.h" file with the other .h files in the linux
Gary> source code. In particular, I looked at the .h files for the NCR
Gary> chips, comparing the #defined DC390_T settings with similar
Gary> settings for other chips. The DC390 seemed competitive to me.
Gary> I'm very happy with my DC-390 card. I'm using it with a Quantum
Gary> Lightning 730MB harddisk and a Toray Phasewriter Dual PD/CDROM
Gary> drive. Performance is what I expected, and the included setup
Gary> BIOS with the card is very nice.
Gary> Please feel free to ask any specific questions that you have about
Gary> the card. I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful about whether an
Gary> NCR-based card will work for you.
Gary> By the way, you might also want to consider the NCR53C825 card,
Gary> which has a BIOS and is only a little higher in price than the
Gary> Tekram DC-390. I was guided by price, and by Tekram's direct
Gary> support of linux, and by the availability of information about the
Gary> DC-390 card. The NCR53C825 card that I had in mind was an OEM
Gary> card, and the specs were subject to frequent change. The retailer
Gary> wasn't very interested in getting specific about the card's
Gary> characteristics.
Gary> Gary Kahn gkahn@erols.com
