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Re: Best SCSI for Linux (fwd)



On Fri, 22 Nov 1996, Ira Abramov wrote:

> This guy seems to hate Adaptec pretty badly. although the only trouble I
> had with them till now is the fact they don't release the specs, which
> makes erverse engineering a MUST, and releasing of drivers slower...
> comments?

Yes. I used to have an Adaptec (a 1542). When I went PCI, I needed to 
decide which to buy, an AHA2940 or a Buslogic 946. I borrowed a 2940 from 
a friendly computer shop and ran on that for two days. I discovered that 
the driver will NOT support tagged queues since the dear company willnot 
provide docs.

What clinched my decision in favour of Buslogic, however, was the 
Flashpoint affair: many semi-brandname manufacturers on the other side of 
the pond (Gateway and Micron come to mind), supplied some machines with 
Flashpoint (BT930LT) series cards for which, at the time, there was no 
Linux driver and _refused_ to sell the older (and, incidently, better for 
multitasking operating systems) BT946C. Leonard Zubkoff spoke to the 
company management and all companies refusing to sell 946's were 
INSTRUCTED to sell them to those requesting such cards and, even more, 
anyone in possession of a Flashpoint was given the option to trade their 
card for a BT948 (new then, Single-ended, Ultra, Narrow) for ~$75.

Leonard Zobkoff, in addition, functions as a Buslogic beta site, getting 
his filthy handses on nice new equipments to tesssstssss, preshusss!

When I bought a PCI SCSI card, therefore, I selected Buslogic, a 958 
(Single-ended, Ultra, Wide) to exact.

Now to comments about the two cards' "packages". In both cases (the 2940
loaner and 958), I obtained "adapter card packages" (i.e. controller and
docs ONLY, no cable, no terminator, no glitz). Adaptec comes without
drivers (which, for anything other than a disk, MUST be purchased if you
wish to use such esoteric operating systems like SCO, Novell, etc).
Buslogic does come with drivers. 

Adaptec comes with a "garmoshka" for documentation (i.e. a single page, 
folded six times). Buslogic comes with a proper booklet.

I am willing to show BOTH to anyone interested.

M

---MAV                              (finger for PGP signature block)
My opinions are my own and only my own. Standard disclaimer applies.
Marc A. Volovic (marc@cs.huji.ac.il)       Linguists do it cunningly


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