Date   : Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:28:36 +0100
From   : John Kortink <kortink@...>
Subject: Re: SASI/SCSI <>IDE, distracting thoughts.

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:40:17 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:

>Jonathan Graham Harston wrote:
>>> Message-ID: <44144C1C.3080500@...>
>>  
>> Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...> wrote:
>>> Personally I'd much rather someone with the necessary knowledge invest time
>> in
>>> getting "modern" (as in 512 byte sectored, parity) SCSI drives (and
>>> documenting the process) working with old Acorn hardware than futzing around
>>> with 'orrible IDE stuff!
>>  
>> How is IDE 'orrible?
>
>Reliabilty and performance under load - I wasn't meaning programming.

A mere BBC presents hardly any load at all. And I'd
rather doubt the reliability of a 20 year old SCSI
drive versus that of a modern IDE one. SCSI was only
ever more reliable in punishing server environments,
but even that was more a function of proper failsafe
behaviour rather than hardware reliability. In fact,
there's probably no difference there at all except
for the interface electronics.

>[...]
>
>> SCSI interface: six ICs minimum and lots of bus spaghetti.
>
>Hmm, I suppose I don't see a lot of difference in that given that it's just 
>TTL - if it was 2 chips versus 20 it'd be a different matter!

You could do both IDE and SCSI (in a beeb sense) in one
nowadays, for a few Euro in parts. Indeed there's hardly
any sense in a comparison there.


John Kortink

-- 

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