🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <471fks$6ja@flash.mrj.com>, mgaffney@mrj.com (Mike Gaffney) writes:
> I am about to get a 1 gig SCSI disk, and since I have no SCSI devices
> at the moment, I need a controller too.  I am thinking BUSLOGIC 445C,
> since that seems to keep Linux happy.  I have one VLB slot left, and 
> at least three ISA slots free.  I have heard that the controller can't
> send more bits down the bus than can be sent on the ISA anyway, so a 
> VLB may be a waste.  What is the consensus?  I don't have any plans
> for the free VLB if not for the controller, but since I only have one
> free and several ISA, why waste it.  I am interested in your opinions
> (facts would be even better!).

  The ISA bus moves data 16 bits at a time. VLB moves 32 at a time. The
clock rate on the VLB bus is also faster. Lastly, the ISA bus only ad-
dresses 16MB, while VLB can address the whole address space. If you have
more than 16MB, your driver will do memory-to-memory copies to move data
to/from buffers above 16MB.

  Whether this means anything in your case is harder to say for certain -
if you only have a non-fast SCSI drive, it can only generate (best case)
5Mbytes/sec, which the ISA bus can handle just fine.

	Terry Kennedy		  Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	  St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
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