[SunRescue] Proper use of VME scsi controllers?

BSD Bob bobkey at weedcon1.cropsci.ncsu.edu
Wed Feb 9 15:30:42 CST 2000


> > If you plug the "sc" into a 3/160 and attach a MFM
> > harddisk with an ACB-4000 (this was sold by Sun!!!)
> > you get no more than 400 kB/sec!!!!
> 
> Yes, it was a piece of crap.  However it worked pretty good for the time
> and was a lot cheaper than all of the alternatives then available.  In
> technology these days what was economic a few years ago can now be a
> major deficit, even for a hobbyist.

Well, not quite... I am running that exact machine (actually a 3/160
with scsi interposers for tape and esdi drives, and a sun2 controller,
but with a 3/110 cpu board and 3 Carrerra ram boards).  It is actually
a fairly fast machine for 16mhz clocks.  It feels slower than the 3/260,
but not by any disproportionate amount because of slow disks.  It is
not noticeably slower than a 3/160 on scsi disks.  The tape streams about
the same speed as on the 3/260 on almost everything.  As the silly thing
turns out, it is the most reliable and least troublesome of all my
suntoyz.... except for those funky rubber tape drive wheels that give
me constant fits.  It is fast enough that me is the slowest input
device, still, and I am a touch typist.  That is fast enough for
most things.   It only takes about 10 minutes for kernel compiles.
GCC is something else.....(:+{{...  I am expecting that the interposer
boards actually buffer the load off the scsi line, so that my usual
scsi fits never occur, like on the x/260 machines.

Anyway... lots of good wisdom picked from the list today....

Thanks, all!

Bob







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