On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Ron Johnson wrote:
 
> The thing is that, unlike SCSI, only one device can be using an
> IDE bus at any one time.

a common misconception ...

electrically ... 
        only one ide disk can drive the signals on the ide cable at any
        time

        similarly, even scsi disks, only one disk can be driving
        the cable at any time

        ==
        == if 2 scsi disks tries controlling the signals on the cables at
        == the same time, you'd have a major short circuit
        ==

        -----------

        ide disks controllers can pretend to support host swap
        but the device drivers does NOT support it

        scsi disks can do hot swap and is supported by scsi drivers

        ----------

        ide specs allow for 18" max cable length at a specific impedence
        and resistance and operating environment

        scsi specs allow for 6'(?) max cable length at a specific
        impedence and resistance and opertating environment

        ----------

        with ide .... you have 2 disk per cable

        with scsi ... you can have 15 or 32 disks per cable ..
        where all 15 disks have to share one cable and WAIT
                - hopefully, the disk controller has enough buffer to
                allow the cpu to merrily continue without waiting

                - good thing nobody makes a 32 connector scsi cable

                or a 255 connector firewire cable :-)

disk driver ...

        in the old days ... ide disks had 2MB disk buffer
        but todays ide disks are also 8MB buffers

        in the old days ... scsi disks had 8MB disk buffer
        and hasn't changed in 8(?) yrs

        - in the old days, ide did not have tagged queing
        but in todays ide controllers, it too has tagged queuing
        depending on the motherboard chipset

        - scsi controllers always had tagged queing .. so the system can
        pretend the data was "really" written to the disks and merrily
        move along

        - in the old days ... ide disks rotated at 5400, 7200,10K
        and still have some catch up

        - in the old days ... scsi disks roated at 7200, 10K, 15K
        and runs "hot"

        - how fast can you write was a big deal in the old days
                  8MB/sec vs  16MB/sec
                 16MB/sec vs  40MB/sec
                 33MB/sec vs  80MB/sec
                 66MB/sec vs 120MB/sec
                100MB/sec vs 160MB/sec
                133MB/sec vs 320MB/sec
                ..sata..  vs iscsi
                ..iata..  vs what's-next

transfer speeds ...

        ata-133 is supposed to be 133MB/sec
        but your real transfer speeds is highly dependent upon
        which motherboard and which chipset 

        - ata give up chasing scsi and changes name to sata

        ultra-scsi-160 is supposed to be 160MB/sec
        ultra-scsi-320 is supposed to be 320MB/sec

        = since ide and scsi doesnt run at the same spec'd speeds,
        = one can only test for how close to the marketing numbers
        = it can achieve on the same mb/cpu/mem

more fun ...

c ya
alvin


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