[681] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: Am I stuck with a "spare" GB!?!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Drew Eckhardt)
Wed Oct 11 19:22:23 1995
To: alb0@gte.com (Andrew Betz)
cc: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:20:04 CDT."
<199510101913.PAA22141@ns.gte.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 22:43:55 -0600
From: Drew Eckhardt <drew@poohsticks.org>
In message <199510101913.PAA22141@ns.gte.com>, alb0@gte.com writes:
>Greetings,
>
>I am trying to get a Seagate ST-410800N 9GB SCSI harddrive hooked
>up to an old HP Vectra 486-20. I want to NFS format and export the
>Seagate drive. So far, so good. It turns out that the HP Vectra has
>a EISA/ISA bus, so I need to find a SCSI controller that is SCSI-II FAST
>and ISA.
1. If it's EISA/ISA, you can use an EISA board.
2. If you're going to go ISA, there's no reason to go FAST SCSI-II, since
you're not going to move > 5M/sec across the ISA bus.
>The only ones that show up as Linux supported are
>an Adaptec 1542-CP and a Buslogic 747S. The rub is that both of
>these cards are apparently maxed out at 8GB. Am I stuck with
>a wasted GB!?!
The BIOS interface maxes out at 8G. If you talk directly to the disk,
and ignore the H/C/S entries in the partition table as Linux does you can
go up to a few terrabytes (the exact number depending on where we've used
a signed 32 bit quantity versus unsigned). You can either not partition
the drive and have a 9G EXT2 file system, or do special magic with the
partition table.
>Even worse, these cards are both in the $225 range.
>This seems overpriced given the cost of PCI boards (am I paranoid,
>or are they out to get my money!?!).
You're paying for backwards compatability with the old Adaptec
1540 boards, glue for the bus, etc. and aren't going to do
any better for a usable ISA/EISA board.
>Alternatively, can someone suggest a SCSI-II FAST (this is apparently
>needed by the harddrive) ISA controller?
1. A FAST-SCSI II drive will work 100% of the time with a SCSI-II
controller.
2. A FAST-SCSI II drive will work 100% of the time with a SCSI-I
controller that isn't being dain bramaged and opting for something
like the single initiator option, and will probably even work
with a board that had its firmware written by some one a few
cards shy of a full deck.
If you want to stay with ISA and/or aren't trying to run more than
one of these drives, you could do fine with an Adaptec 1542B; used
you should be able to find one for about $80.
