[geeks] Dell T105 server arrives

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 02:16:32PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 02:18:31PM -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
> > > I think I need to get off CF cards (or find a better
> > > sort) before I try to do much to improve things here.
> > 
> > What are you using for a card interface?  At least as far as card readers
> > as concerned, the chipset can make a big difference:
> > 
> > http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/multimedia/display/27-cardreaders.html
> 
> Some brand X crap.  
> 
> I asked for a few sandisk readers, and all I got were brand X crap.  And
> complaints from management about how slow the process is.


Actually, I spoke a bit to hastily.  The above is true.

However, I also get poor performance when connected via an IDE->CF
interface.  

I am using Kingston brand cards.  So far I have seen at least three
brands of chips in the production cards.  I am using the plain regular
speed cards.  I have a few samples of high speed cards, but depending on
variables that I can't remeber all of, the "fast" cards went the same
speed, slower, or failed to boot because of IO errors.

My opinion is that what is going on is some sort of clash between CF not
quite being just like a plain IDE device, and Linux not using the cards
as well as it could.  

In particular, I can never turn on DMA with these things.

According to the documentation from kingston (which is actually fairly
thick) even the slow cards should go a lot faster, and the fast cards
should probably equal or out do harddrives for our application.

So, I also have a sample of an IDE flash device that specifically claims
to be more compatible than CF cards.  In particular, it claims to
support UDMA.  I haven't had time to try this device yet, but I have
high hopes for it.  It plugs straight into the IDE slot, so I don't have
to run an IDE cable anywhere or mount an adapter/card holder anywhere.
I hope to finally have time to play with it in the next two weeks.