[Hudlug] SCSI drives vs EIDE for Crimbo

[Mark Anderson]

Anne Wilson wrote:

> SCSI is probably still best, though I'm not sure whether the extra cost is 
> justifiable any longer.  I think the gap has narrowed quite a bit.  For ide 
> drives, there has been quite a bit of debate over several brands.  IBM and 
> Seagate seem to be largely mistrusted.  I have heard some hard words about 
> Fujitsu, though my experience has been good.  Maxtor seem to be pretty safe.  
> It would bear some digging around though, to see if there are any facts 
> behind the opinions I've heard.

IBM have had a lot of problems with the Deathstar series recently. A 
friend of mine who stores a lot of video bought a pile of these and lost 
a lot of data. We've had a lot of Fujitsu's fail recently at work which 
appears to be a manufacturing problem with their controller chip. Based 
on recent track record and my own experience, I'd go for a Maxtor.

> One word of warning - don't mean to teach granny etc..., but this is from my 
> experience.  The faster drives only work if the motherboard supports them 
> correctly AND the newer ATA cables are used.  Many drives are supplied 
> without cables, and I have experienced vendors attempting to sell me cables 
> that were not the correct ones.

Ah cables, cables, cables. Next time I have a problem that bugs me for, 
ooh about 2 years, could someone please lean over and shout "CHECK THE 
CABLES" in my face.

My Voodoo3 2000 works properly now I've fitted decent IDE cables. As the 
kernel booted, it disabled DMA due to the crappy cables which turned off 
bus-mastering and all the other goodies that 3D acceleration relies on. 
I'd fiddled with OpenGL and DRI until my ears bled and it wasn't until 
the other week that I considered buying some decent IDE cables.

Booted up and glxgears is now kicking out 1300+ fps. Unfortunately, 
during my frantic tinkering I have broken lots of paths in Q3 which 
complains about missing default.cfg rather than letting me shoot things.

So, cables.

Cheers

Mark
-- 
"In my book, bells go 'Clang' now leave me alone!"
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