Re: cheapest SX System i ever have seen

["Stephen J. Gaudet" <sjg dcginc com>]

Hello

>> > >Hard Disk 2.xx GB  IDEE
>> > >CD-ROM 16-24 speed IDE
>> 
>> > 6.4Gb ST36450A, 9.5ms, 5400rpm, 3.5" FH
>> > 32x Toshiba IDE CD-Rom Drive
>> 
>> >From what i hear, IDE is a horrible thing to inflict upon an Alpha,
>> because they use such a pathetic controller.
>> (I've heard of reports that IDE drives run so slowly that you'd
>> think you're on a 386)
>
>I really don't know, I've never tried an IDE drive on an Alpha box. I do
>know that DCG sells a machine with a smaller (4.1Gb) SCSI hard drive for
>a similar price.

>Brian E.W. Wood 
>The idea of having the CD-ROM on the IDE buss and the HDD on SCSI makes
>sense, your CD is not slowing down your HDD access.

This is correct, IDE on Alpha isn't the best at this time.  The main problem
is with the CMD driver.

However, there have been many articles written about putting a SCSI-2 CD-Rom
on a UltraWide controller with the hard disk.  Every time the CD is
addressed the UltraWide controller has to slow down to 10MBit to handle the
interrupt.

Not a good solution, you can put in a second SCSI controller to do this but
expensive.  The best solution is use the PCI/EIDE controller on the Alpha
motherboards(LX & SX) and keep the UltraWide controller up at full speed
running the UW disk.

Cheers,

Steve
 +1-603-421-1800	http://www.dcginc.com
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