From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) Subject: Re: Bustek-742 EISA controller (compatible with Adaptec 1742 ?) Date: 13 Jun 1992 02:33:48 GMT
>As far as I know Bustek SCSI-Controllers are Adaptec-compatible, but I'm not
>sure for the EISA-version. The Adaptec-1740 is supported by ISC. But the
>performance is really poor for an EISA-controller. You might look at the
>DTP-Controllers, they include drivers for all major PC unixes. These
>controllers are more expensive but are blindingly fast. They can be upgraded
>with cache-modules up to 12 MB as far as I know. I can collect more information
>if you're interested.
>
As has been said many times before, caching controllers are much better
suited to DOS than to a multi-tasking OS like unix. On a general purpose
system they will seldom appear to be `blindingly fast'.
They also create some nasty reliability problems. Lose power with
a megabyte or so of cached, but not-yet-written data and you'll surely
never buy such hardware ever again.
Caching of any magnitude under unix needs to be done with the full knowledge
of the kernel.
-- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com