>No, but there aren't any devices out there that are going to suck up all that bandwidth on the consumer side of the market, either.
A disk -> disk copy (for example - large zips and encryption (lots of temp space)m compiles, mp3 moves) are all quite a bit faster
>I dare you to try and get 15 SCSI devices from different manufacturers and different scsi revisisions running reliably on the same bus.
Well, here's what I have connected presently:
IBM 9GB 10krpm - SCSI-3 UW (almost 2 yrs old)
Seagate 4GB 7200rpm - SCSI-3 UW (4 yrs old)
IBM 18GB 7200rpm - SCSI-3 UW (2 yrs old)
Plextor PX-40TW CD - SCSI-2 UW (1 yr old)
Plextor PX-W8220T CDR/RW - SCSI-2 UN (1 yr old)
Nec 6x CD - SCSI-2 N - (real old)
Iomega Jaz 1GB - SCSI-2 N (4 yrs)
Iomega Zip 100MB - SCSI-2 N (3 yrs)
Running on an Adaptec 2940UW (I don't remember the BIOS revision)
(my Wang DAT drive isn't currently hooked up in that system)
Never a SCSI problem... never... not in NT, not in Linux, not in BSD...
>It'd be great if devices would disconnect.
Umm.... they do.
>Do you know how hard it is to find scsi cables and adapters in most cities - and how much you'll pay for them? UGH.
Never had a problem... and it you want a cable that has 15 connectors and an active terminator, you are going to pay a little more for it.
Oh, yeah - I left out external connections and chaining in my earlier list...
I've never had any problems with my SCSI connections (Adaptec, Tekram, Future Logic controllers on a PC, IBM controllers on RS/6K, some sort of strange controller on a Sun...), except when the RAID controller on a RS/6K went belly-up after 5 years, but they installed a new one that same afternoon, and all was well.
My home systems (at least I've tested this on two of the three) perform *significantly* better with the SCSI drive (that is quite a bit older than the new IDE drive). I mirrored the disk, then swapped them. Same apps *feel* quite a bit faster (Netscape loads quite a bit quicker, even on a Celery @ 450)... Benchmarks show a large increase, too... Something about not waiting around. Plus, I can copy 1GB drive -> drive while playing MP3s, surfing the web and burning a CD at 8x without problem. Not possible with my IDE config on the same hardware.
True, that's why I have a couple of 14GB 7200rpm IBM ATA/66 drives. Great for offloading storage, and quick enough to play games on for my Win98 box. The real computers get the real storage, though 8^)
>You don't even belong in this discussion topic if you're just going to rant about SCSI and other dead or dying interfaces. Shouldn't you be upgrading to FireWire instead of staying mired in the 80's?
Right (with Ultra 320 on the way)... show me a reasonably priced firewire internal card (supported by major OSs) and competetive drives...
The external firewire drives have a 1394=>IDE kludge and suck even more...
True - my 10krpm IBM drive is louder than my other drives... but heck, I had that when IDE was still at 33MB/s (cough) and 7200 was just coming out. Even the fast drives are quieter than they used to be, but do you want performance or quiet? I've got several 7200 and one 10k drive in my main box, and only the seeks are loud - the fans on the case are far more noisy than the drives. My quiet ATA/66 drive (14GB, 7200rpm) can't even begin to keep up, even though it is over a year newer than the 10k, and two years newer than the 7200 SCSIs... and it is among the top IDE performers.
Add some carpet, or put the computer in a different room (or get a new SO;-D) --
The scsi drives have come down dramatically in pricing, it's just that the IDE drives have dropped even faster... remember that a couple more ASICs and a smarter design team do add some cost, but you are right - not all of it is justified.
An 80MB/s SCSI channel isn't that expensive (heck, 40MB UW SCSI tends to easily outperform ATA/66), and until people write the full drivers for the hardware, well... SCSI has had disconnect for how many years now?
Actually, the 75GB drive was out in SCSI first (it might have been 72GB, but the same tech otherwise)... months earlier...
Right - I have a (top-line Plextor) CD, DVD, Plextor CD-R/RW, Jaz, Zip, DAT, and several (4) hard drives all sitting on one controller. One card, one driver, fully compatible, easy to use - dare I say Plug-and-Play? Yes... it's SCSI. And it works. Fast. All The Time (TM). The devices don't step on each others feet for bus usage like in IDE, and I can get about 90% of the theoretical throughput instead of 75% with IDE...
Please quit using IDE - clunky and slow. The prices have come down considerably for SCSI in the past couple years. It shouldn't be a problem for most people... the others can buy eMachines and iMacs [/elitist rant]
We need to use a better bus/protocol. SCSI has a lot of advantages over IDE, and a couple of disadvantages, but here's my quick list:
Pros:
1. You don't waste all of that theoretical bandwidth like you do with IDE. A more streamlined protocol.
2. Despite the smaller protocol, it happens to be a lot more flexible - types of devices, NUMBER of devices, error recovery...
3. Did I mention that a UW SCSI bus can have 15 targets (i.e. drives) with one initiator (i.e. controller), while IDE is still stuck at 2 per bus...
4. Disconnect.
5. Smarter devices - they do more for you.
6. There is no pro #6.
7. Generally better warantees on hard drives (ok, not a technical detail, but a selling point).
8. Cable length.
9. CPU utilization (much better than ATA DMA)
10. It's fun to say.
11. Cheaper than fiber channel.
12. You can run it as a lan...
Cons:
1. More expensive controller.
2. More expensive drive electronics.
Still, well worth the money... plus, the better drives are always out for SCSI first, since they *are* the drives that go in even small servers (not your linux box/webserver/desktop/ftp server/Win98 box - a real server).
Nice jeans, sneakers, and a decent shirt (3 button) is the norm around here - I'll put on khakis if I have a meeting with an important manager, but heck - jean shorts are commonplace in the summer...
Actually, both AFS and DFS are in use here at IBM (and at every other site I've vistited... no AFS on the windows boxen, but everyone using the RS/6ks seems to prefer AFS... Personally, I prefer the ACLs of AFS to traditional permission structures, and they are really rather flexible. You can still set rwx on the files, so it doesn't take a whole lot away...
I agree that AFS isn't meant for clustering, but it works well from a security standpoint, especially with Kerberos.
I'll still take AFS over DFS any day - despite the 'improvements' that DFS brings. I haven't seen Coda running in a large enough enviornment to convince me yet, but it looks pretty sound.
While at RPI, there was always a linux client for AFS, though you had to know who in the computing center to ask... The linux client in use here at IBM works well, but there doesn't seem to be a 95/8/NT/2k client worth anything... doesn't bother me though 8^)
1) Open, sniff, pour, watch cascade, take credit for the Perfect Pour(TM), drink.
2) Same as #1, but add Bass for a kickin' B&T.
3) Try brewing your own stout. Tougher than it seems to make it *really* good.
Note that for #1, you should open a keg or a can... the bottle just isn't the same product.
>Furthermore, the term "non-free" just smacks of politically-correct jargon. Why not just call it "commercial?"
Because some of it is free (as in beer), but not free (as in speech). The Debian/KDE thing was probably the best example of something that was nearly both, yet had the scarlet directory...
apt-get seemed far superior to dselect when I tried Debian (happily back on Mandrake for the desktop, Slack and RH for other servers). --
as long as you don't have a 30GB - 1TB database, that's probably ok (unless you have a machine that has a few hundred GB of RAM... then it's a lot easier).
Well, it uses the AS/400's internal RAID storage, which gives a nice performance boost, and you don't need another backup solution - if you have 4 of these in your system, all of your NT stuff gets backed up via the AS backup methods. That's a gain. Another point is that it can save a lot of space (floor footprint) and with several, it does make a centrally manageable solution. Of course it's more expensive, it's a non-commodity, lower-voume custom designed board and hardware (there's a lot of other stuff on there besides the Intel part).
It never has been a general computing solution, but it performs really well for a range of things. To each niche, their own product.
Slashdot Mirror
>No, but there aren't any devices out there that are going to suck up all that bandwidth on the consumer side of the market, either.
A disk -> disk copy (for example - large zips and encryption (lots of temp space)m compiles, mp3 moves) are all quite a bit faster
>I dare you to try and get 15 SCSI devices from different manufacturers and different scsi revisisions running reliably on the same bus.
Well, here's what I have connected presently:
IBM 9GB 10krpm - SCSI-3 UW (almost 2 yrs old)
Seagate 4GB 7200rpm - SCSI-3 UW (4 yrs old)
IBM 18GB 7200rpm - SCSI-3 UW (2 yrs old)
Plextor PX-40TW CD - SCSI-2 UW (1 yr old)
Plextor PX-W8220T CDR/RW - SCSI-2 UN (1 yr old)
Nec 6x CD - SCSI-2 N - (real old)
Iomega Jaz 1GB - SCSI-2 N (4 yrs)
Iomega Zip 100MB - SCSI-2 N (3 yrs)
Running on an Adaptec 2940UW (I don't remember the BIOS revision)
(my Wang DAT drive isn't currently hooked up in that system)
Never a SCSI problem... never... not in NT, not in Linux, not in BSD...
>It'd be great if devices would disconnect.
Umm.... they do.
>Do you know how hard it is to find scsi cables and adapters in most cities - and how much you'll pay for them? UGH.
Never had a problem... and it you want a cable that has 15 connectors and an active terminator, you are going to pay a little more for it.
Oh, yeah - I left out external connections and chaining in my earlier list...
I've never had any problems with my SCSI connections (Adaptec, Tekram, Future Logic controllers on a PC, IBM controllers on RS/6K, some sort of strange controller on a Sun...), except when the RAID controller on a RS/6K went belly-up after 5 years, but they installed a new one that same afternoon, and all was well.
--
My home systems (at least I've tested this on two of the three) perform *significantly* better with the SCSI drive (that is quite a bit older than the new IDE drive). I mirrored the disk, then swapped them. Same apps *feel* quite a bit faster (Netscape loads quite a bit quicker, even on a Celery @ 450)... Benchmarks show a large increase, too... Something about not waiting around. Plus, I can copy 1GB drive -> drive while playing MP3s, surfing the web and burning a CD at 8x without problem. Not possible with my IDE config on the same hardware.
--
True, that's why I have a couple of 14GB 7200rpm IBM ATA/66 drives. Great for offloading storage, and quick enough to play games on for my Win98 box. The real computers get the real storage, though 8^)
--
>Didn't you hear? SCSI is dying.
>You don't even belong in this discussion topic if you're just going to rant about SCSI and other dead or dying interfaces. Shouldn't you be upgrading to FireWire instead of staying mired in the 80's?
Right (with Ultra 320 on the way)... show me a reasonably priced firewire internal card (supported by major OSs) and competetive drives...
The external firewire drives have a 1394=>IDE kludge and suck even more...
FiberChannel... maybe that's what you meant.
--
True - my 10krpm IBM drive is louder than my other drives... but heck, I had that when IDE was still at 33MB/s (cough) and 7200 was just coming out. Even the fast drives are quieter than they used to be, but do you want performance or quiet? I've got several 7200 and one 10k drive in my main box, and only the seeks are loud - the fans on the case are far more noisy than the drives. My quiet ATA/66 drive (14GB, 7200rpm) can't even begin to keep up, even though it is over a year newer than the 10k, and two years newer than the 7200 SCSIs... and it is among the top IDE performers.
;-D)
Add some carpet, or put the computer in a different room (or get a new SO
--
The scsi drives have come down dramatically in pricing, it's just that the IDE drives have dropped even faster... remember that a couple more ASICs and a smarter design team do add some cost, but you are right - not all of it is justified.
--
An 80MB/s SCSI channel isn't that expensive (heck, 40MB UW SCSI tends to easily outperform ATA/66), and until people write the full drivers for the hardware, well... SCSI has had disconnect for how many years now?
Actually, the 75GB drive was out in SCSI first (it might have been 72GB, but the same tech otherwise)... months earlier...
--
Right - I have a (top-line Plextor) CD, DVD, Plextor CD-R/RW, Jaz, Zip, DAT, and several (4) hard drives all sitting on one controller. One card, one driver, fully compatible, easy to use - dare I say Plug-and-Play? Yes... it's SCSI. And it works. Fast. All The Time (TM). The devices don't step on each others feet for bus usage like in IDE, and I can get about 90% of the theoretical throughput instead of 75% with IDE...
Please quit using IDE - clunky and slow. The prices have come down considerably for SCSI in the past couple years. It shouldn't be a problem for most people... the others can buy eMachines and iMacs [/elitist rant]
--
We need to use a better bus/protocol. SCSI has a lot of advantages over IDE, and a couple of disadvantages, but here's my quick list:
Pros:
1. You don't waste all of that theoretical bandwidth like you do with IDE. A more streamlined protocol.
2. Despite the smaller protocol, it happens to be a lot more flexible - types of devices, NUMBER of devices, error recovery...
3. Did I mention that a UW SCSI bus can have 15 targets (i.e. drives) with one initiator (i.e. controller), while IDE is still stuck at 2 per bus...
4. Disconnect.
5. Smarter devices - they do more for you.
6. There is no pro #6.
7. Generally better warantees on hard drives (ok, not a technical detail, but a selling point).
8. Cable length.
9. CPU utilization (much better than ATA DMA)
10. It's fun to say.
11. Cheaper than fiber channel.
12. You can run it as a lan...
Cons:
1. More expensive controller.
2. More expensive drive electronics.
Still, well worth the money... plus, the better drives are always out for SCSI first, since they *are* the drives that go in even small servers (not your linux box/webserver/desktop/ftp server/Win98 box - a real server).
--
>Can't fill a niche in the Linux software line? Then go help at www.beunited.org, where every developer counts.
.sig...
That's his
--
Nice jeans, sneakers, and a decent shirt (3 button) is the norm around here - I'll put on khakis if I have a meeting with an important manager, but heck - jean shorts are commonplace in the summer...
--
AMD's bus for the Athlon family is the Alpha bus - one that has been proven, and doesn't have those nasty Intel licensing problems.
--
(FYI: that was a joke)
--
Strain? Your eyes hurt? or maybe your back?
--
Actually, both AFS and DFS are in use here at IBM (and at every other site I've vistited... no AFS on the windows boxen, but everyone using the RS/6ks seems to prefer AFS... Personally, I prefer the ACLs of AFS to traditional permission structures, and they are really rather flexible. You can still set rwx on the files, so it doesn't take a whole lot away...
I agree that AFS isn't meant for clustering, but it works well from a security standpoint, especially with Kerberos.
--
I'll still take AFS over DFS any day - despite the 'improvements' that DFS brings. I haven't seen Coda running in a large enough enviornment to convince me yet, but it looks pretty sound.
--
While at RPI, there was always a linux client for AFS, though you had to know who in the computing center to ask... The linux client in use here at IBM works well, but there doesn't seem to be a 95/8/NT/2k client worth anything... doesn't bother me though 8^)
--
an oxymoron.
--
Good ways to hack Guinness:
1) Open, sniff, pour, watch cascade, take credit for the Perfect Pour(TM), drink.
2) Same as #1, but add Bass for a kickin' B&T.
3) Try brewing your own stout. Tougher than it seems to make it *really* good.
Note that for #1, you should open a keg or a can... the bottle just isn't the same product.
--
Unfortunately, K5 is still down, and I haven't heard any real estimates on when it might be back...
--
Heck, just get a whole /. LDAP directory and this would sort itself out.
--
>Furthermore, the term "non-free" just smacks of politically-correct jargon. Why not just call it "commercial?"
Because some of it is free (as in beer), but not free (as in speech). The Debian/KDE thing was probably the best example of something that was nearly both, yet had the scarlet directory...
apt-get seemed far superior to dselect when I tried Debian (happily back on Mandrake for the desktop, Slack and RH for other servers).
--
Damn, and me without a ticket...
Nothing beat the Liquid Tension Experiment, tho...
--
as long as you don't have a 30GB - 1TB database, that's probably ok (unless you have a machine that has a few hundred GB of RAM... then it's a lot easier).
--
Well, it uses the AS/400's internal RAID storage, which gives a nice performance boost, and you don't need another backup solution - if you have 4 of these in your system, all of your NT stuff gets backed up via the AS backup methods. That's a gain. Another point is that it can save a lot of space (floor footprint) and with several, it does make a centrally manageable solution. Of course it's more expensive, it's a non-commodity, lower-voume custom designed board and hardware (there's a lot of other stuff on there besides the Intel part).
It never has been a general computing solution, but it performs really well for a range of things. To each niche, their own product.
[again, I don't speak for IBM, just for me]
--