🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ndaniel1-0812950808090001@mac63.hallowell2.swarthmore.edu> ndaniel1@cc.swarthmore.edu (Noah Daniels) writes:
>In article <trimmDJ8BDC.4w8@netcom.com>, trimm@netcom.com (Trimm
>Industries) wrote:
>
>> In article <4a6kan$acj@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> Steven Glenister
><steveg@tyrell.co.uk> writes:
>> >Does anyone know of an SSA scsi card for a mac ? Does anuone have any
>> >experiences with the card ? If I could get a pci SSA card, is it
>> >likley to run on my mac without any major problems ?
>> 
>> Pathlight Technologies (767 Warren Road Ithaca NY 14850-1225 508.486.0005
>> email maybe sales@pathlight.com) makes an outstanding SSA controller
>> for PCI systems, and just released a beta version of their Mac OS 
>> driver.  I don't know how the evaluation is going, but everything
>> else Pathlight does is pretty clean, so I suspect this will be as
>> well.  I'm providing the SSA drive enclosure for a major Mac 
>> account who is evaluating the Pathlight beta driver, and if all
>> goes well I'll post the results here.
>
>Wow... what is the pricing going to look like, do you know? Are any SSA
>drives coming out soon? Wow. Looking to finally get rid of SCSI. (Though
>Fibre Channel is what really looks exciting)
>
SSA drives are floating around $0.25 per megabyte (about the same
as parallel SCSI).  The host adaptor lists for about $1400 but should
be comming down.  Our 5-drive SSA box is about $700 list price I
think.  The cables are about $25 for a 6 foot cable (you need two,
one for each side of the loop).

Fibre Channel is not really shipping production yet.  The FC drives
from Seagate are priced as experimental devices, but figure $0.30/MB
within a few months.  FC host adaptors are around $3500 but should
be below $2000 in 1Q96 and below $1000 in 3Q96.  Our 8 drive FC
rack I think sells for $3000 or so in OEM quantities.

The SSA and FC host adaptors sound expensive until you realize that
they control about 125 drives, and have two completely redundant
interfaces on them.  Not to mention the fact that while a SCSI f/w
adaptor is lucky to get 18 MB/s, SSA can achieve 80 MB/s in a 
large disk array, and FC can achieve 200 MB/s in a large array.
Transaction rates are faster and cache-hit impact is more significant
because you lose the inherent 1ms or so overhead of parallel SCSI.


-- 
Gary M. Watson                              
Electronic Engineer                         Internet: trimm@netcom.com
Sigma-Trimm Technologies, A Division of Robroy Industries
350 Pilot Road   
Las Vegas, NV 89119                         Phone: (800) 423-2024 x2115 
** Enclosures for SCSI, RAID, Fibre Channel, and SSA **