Re: SCSI Adapter Support


Subject: Re: SCSI Adapter Support
From: Charlie Watts (cewatts@frontier.net)
Date: Fri Nov 23 2001 - 18:51:39 MST


On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Bob Beaton wrote:

> I've got YDL 2.1 running on some older PowerMacs (7100s and 8500s),
> which I would like to cluster for some big number-crunching tasks. I'm
> trying to decide how to upgrade the SCSI disk systems in these
> machines, since I anticipate needing to do a lot of disk I/O.
>
> Does YDL support accelerated SCSI cards? I'm particularly interested
> in the faster SCSI cards for my Nubus machines, such as the FWB
> JackHammer or ATTO Silicon Express IV. But I'd also like to know if
> the newer PCI SCSI cards are supported, such as the Adaptec
> PowerDomain 39160, 29160, 29160N, and 2930 cards.

I don't know about the FWB or ATTO cards ... but the Adaptec cards should
be supported. If you "strings" the default kernel you see references to
the Adaptec 29160, 29160N, and 2930 cards. 29160N's are cheap and good.

I'm not sure what point a 2930 would be, at least not in an 8500. Didn't
the 8500's have fast/wide anyway? Perhaps not.

The nice part about the Adaptec cards is that you can get them with Mac
Bioses and be able to boot off of them. If you are going to boot from an
internal disk, you can use almost any PCI SCSI card - I like the
LSI/NCR/Symbios-based cards myself. Cheap and boring.

I doubt that the 29160's are worth it, either ... I don't think the PCI in
those machines will keep up with an U160 disk at full tilt anyway. And are
you -sure- that disk I/O is going to be your bottleneck? You say you're
doing number-crunching ... any moderate amount of processing will make the
CPU the bottleneck.

Interested in your experiences and decisions ...

-- 
Charlie Watts
cewatts@frontier.net
Frontier Internet, Inc.
http://www.frontier.net/



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