[rescue] Total corporate madness (

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 12:57:22PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   As I understand it, serial ATA implements most of the SCSI command 
> set over a high-speed serial link.

I think they've gradually been trying to SCSI-ize IDE for years.

>   ...which makes me wonder...why not just use FC-AL?  It implements the 
> SCSI command set over a high-speed serial link.  Sound familiar? ;)  
> And FC-AL is standardized, chipsets area already out there, it's 
> scalable to VERY high speeds, etc.

Yeah, wonder is the word.  You have to wonder why they keep pushing a
brain-dead interface when mass production would have made a much better
interface cheap, years ago.

> I think their point was to have "ATA" in the name and be able to say
> "it's not SCSI" because the PeeCee weenies are being trained that SCSI
> is somehow bad because it's more expensive than ATA
> gigabyte-for-gigabyte.

No, not really.  It's still very ATA. For one thing, I believe you can
only have one drive per wire.

Might be a good thing really, since from what I have noticed, an IDE
drive dying usually takes the bus with it.  So, if you want reliable IDE
raid, you need to stick to a single drive per controller.

The exception I suppose is special raid controllers which (hopefully)
don't allow any one drive to lock up the bus.

>   Read about FC-AL, aka FibreChannel.  That's essentially what it is.  
> It works, it's SCREAMING fast, it's standardized, it's supported, and 
> it's readily available.

True.

But... its kind of a catch-22.  It's expensive because not many are
sold, and not many are sold because it is expensive.

There is immense momentum behind IDE, much of it marketing and
mindshare.


-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza____________________s h a n n o n at wido !SPAM maker.com