🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep2.220649.11769@newstand.syr.edu> amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen) writes:
}3. IDE drives and controllers, could already be windows 32 bit disk access
}   compatible. 

They probably are, since they emulate the WD-1003 controller that the Windows
32-bit disk code was written for.  I'm not sure I'd want to be the first
person to try it, though.

}  IDE drives and controllers are about as fast as they are
}  ever going to be, or are capable of being.  However, they do have plenty
}  of throughput, and i/o headroom for faster systems, today.  They will
}   start showing age, as systems keep doubling in speed, and larger and
}  larger software becomes available.  On the other side, the tremendous
}  cost of ESDI drives and controllers will be a serious drawback to the
}  wide acceptance of these systems.

Yeah, ESDI drives are currently more expensive than the same-sized IDE
drives even if you ignore the cost of the controller....  IDE won't max
out for a while yet if the drives themselves keep getting faster--I've seen
cached 32-bit (ESDI and local-bus) IDE controllers.  It'll take a few years
until drives can keep up with a 100+ MB/s local-bus controller :-). 

The more immediate limit to IDE (and ESDI) is likely to be the size of the
drive.  If (as I suspect), the WD-1003 only permits 16 heads, then the
limit on IDE is 504 MB (1024 cylinders * 16 heads * 63 sectors/track); even
if a full 64 heads are available, the limit is less than 2GB--a size which
is already readily available even if not yet cheap ($3000+) in SCSI
versions.

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