Jusat bought this SCSI RAID card, any good?

[Crashman]

<A HREF="http://www.ami.com/support/doc/Enterprise1400_spec.pdf" target="_new">http://www.ami.com/support/doc/Enterprise1400_spec.pdf</A>
And for those with slow speed connections the <A HREF="http://www.ami.com/products/specsheet.cfm?DLFILE=enterprise1400.txt&CatID=1&ProdID=15" target="_new">Text Only Version</A>
I'm thinking of hooking it up to 6 of these 4GB UW drives per channel, on two channels, for a total of 12 drives, in RAID 0. The drives have 2MB cache and only cost around $20. Do you think I'll be operating at the max potential of my PCI bus if I do this?
Oh, the card cost me $102.50. Is that a good price?

Back to you Tom...

 

[Lars_Coleman]

Looks like a pretty sweet card, but it would be bad of me to say anything more then that just because I'm just learning more and more about SCSI every day.

The thing I wasn't to sure about is the three internal 68pin connectors and the three external. Are you going to be able to use them all at the same time or is it going to be only two at a time? For example the Adaptec 2940 card has a Wide (68pin) and a narrow (50pin) internal and one wide (68pin) connector external. You can only use either the wide and narrow at one time or the two wide connectors at the same time. Not all three at the same time. Seeing as all those connections are 68pin wide, can you use them all even though it wouldn't be considered a bus at that time? Reason I say that is because a bus is point a to b. Not point a to b to c to d to e to f to g. You see what I'm saying? I don't understand if it will be possible or not!?! Anyone have any light to shed on that?

Never mind. I should read a little better and I could answer my own question. If you are only connecting 12 devices it says it can support 15 per channel. Sounds good to me, that means you only have to use one of the controllers as long as you can fit 12 devices on a 12 meter cable!?!

Can anyone tell me if I was looking at that correctly or not about using all the controllers at once?

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Lars_Coleman on 10/17/01 07:30 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

It's three channel. I'll be using two interally and one externally. I've been looking up some different drive combinations, and might go with 4 9.1GB units. Because this is Ultra2 Wide, not U3W, I have to use two channels to get the same speed as one U3W channel. But that's not a problem since this is a 3 channel card.
The Adaptec 2940UW is only a 2 channel card. Suposedly this means you can only use one interanal and the external or two internal cables. But I've prooved otherwise, as I have my CDRW, ZIP, and two HDD running on the 50-pin, one HDD running on the 68-pin, and a Scanner running externally. My scanner is the other end of the chain, rather than the card itself. I think I had to disable auto-termination to do that.

Back to you Tom...

 

[Guest]

Hi Crash',
what CDRW are you using and what would you suggest?

btw thats an excellent price for all those features, how do you reckon it stacks up against a Adaptec 29160?



<font color=orange>Beam</font color=orange><font color=red> me</font color=red><font color=green> up</font color=green><font color=blue> Scotty</font color=blue> <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by scotty3303 on 10/19/01 09:26 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

I have a Sony 8x4x32x CDRW. Got it about 6 months ago for around $150 when that was cheap (down from $200 a few weeks ealier). Now I can get them for around $100. I haven't heard too many complaints on Yamaha drives and they are fairly inexpeinsive as well. Plextor drives are nice, but expensive, the best deals on those can be had from surplus Hewlett Packard units.

Back to you Tom...

 

[Guest]

Have you tried that card yet?

Well looks like a Yamaha as Plextor onlineshop wont ship overseas, and the other good brands dont seem to be available readily except for the crappy brand units.


<font color=orange>Beam</font color=orange><font color=red> me</font color=red><font color=green> up</font color=green><font color=blue> Scotty</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

It still hasn't arived. When it does I'll plug it into a bench system to amke sure it's OK, but I won't have all the drives to do raid for a while.

Back to you Tom...

 

[Guest]

Interesting about your scanner fix!
Was wondering basically if a scanner would slow a chain of any type and should it be manually terminated?


<font color=orange>Beam</font color=orange><font color=red> me</font color=red><font color=green> up</font color=green><font color=blue> Scotty</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

Yes, it will slow a chain. You have to set it at the lowest priority on the chain. Termination is not always necessary but can be helpful (these things ship with the cable and a card but no terminator and seem to work fine in that configuration).

Back to you Tom...