Very Computer

Hi,

I just bought a BusLogic 958 and an IBM DORS 32160W harddrive.
According to specs, IBM DORS 32160W can go up to 40MB/sec. It has
a 68-pin SCSI cable. But according to BusLogic AutoSCSI BIOS and
Linux 2.0.18 BusLogic driver, my IBM DORS 32160W can only go
20MB/sec. AutoSCSI says 20MB/sec and Linux 2.0.18 says
10M transfer/sec.

I was wondewring what other people get with BusLogic 958 and
IBM DORS 32160W.

Thanks.

H.J.

The terminology here is VERY key; in the scsi spec, the term is
'mega-transfers/second'.  a transfer is either 8- or 16-bits (narrow or wide).

Also note that the '40mb/sec' figure is the max burst CHANNEL bandwidth.
You'll not find a single scsi drive that has an INTERNAL xfer rate even close
to that.  The internal xfer rate is always greater (math-wise) than the
external rate, so check the internal rate first (when buying drives) and
you'll have a better idea how much of the EXTERNAL (ie, scsi bus) channel
bandwidth you'll actually be consuming.

: Hi,

: I just bought a BusLogic 958 and an IBM DORS 32160W harddrive.
: According to specs, IBM DORS 32160W can go up to 40MB/sec. It has
: a 68-pin SCSI cable. But according to BusLogic AutoSCSI BIOS and
: Linux 2.0.18 BusLogic driver, my IBM DORS 32160W can only go
: 20MB/sec. AutoSCSI says 20MB/sec and Linux 2.0.18 says
: 10M transfer/sec.

: I was wondewring what other people get with BusLogic 958 and
: IBM DORS 32160W.

: Thanks.

: H.J.

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- Bill

| I just bought a BusLogic 958 and an IBM DORS 32160W harddrive.
| According to specs, IBM DORS 32160W can go up to 40MB/sec. It has
| a 68-pin SCSI cable. But according to BusLogic AutoSCSI BIOS and
| Linux 2.0.18 BusLogic driver, my IBM DORS 32160W can only go
| 20MB/sec. AutoSCSI says 20MB/sec and Linux 2.0.18 says
| 10M transfer/sec.

It looks like you got a Fast-Wide drive instead of an Ultra-Wide
drive.  Are you sure the 32160W is supposed to be Ultra-Wide?  I
would expect a "32160UW" designation in that case.

But don't worry about it unless you intend to hang more than four
of these drives on the same controller.  The bits only pass by
the read/write head at 5 MByte/second, so a 20MByte/sec interface
is already 4x overkill for a single drive.

---
chris

I have the same hardware configuration and I get 40MB/sec transfer
rate reported.

You need to go into AutoSCSI and tell it to try 40MB/sec - by default
it will only try 20MB/sec.

I had some problems with timeouts when using a tape drive and I
installed the BusLogic 2.0.7 beta driver from
http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/
together with the latest firmware and BIOS from the same place
(5.06J/4.96F).
I am running a 2.0.28 kernel and the problems have no reocurred - but
that may just be a fluke.

Nick

: Hi,
:
: I just bought a BusLogic 958 and an IBM DORS 32160W harddrive.
: According to specs, IBM DORS 32160W can go up to 40MB/sec. It has
: a 68-pin SCSI cable. But according to BusLogic AutoSCSI BIOS and
: Linux 2.0.18 BusLogic driver, my IBM DORS 32160W can only go
: 20MB/sec. AutoSCSI says 20MB/sec and Linux 2.0.18 says
: 10M transfer/sec.
:
: I was wondewring what other people get with BusLogic 958 and
: IBM DORS 32160W.

Note, the BusLogic driver for Linux reports speed in mega-transfers/second
NOT megabytes/second.  Such as: "scsi0: Target 0:  Synchronous at 20.0
mega-transfers/second, offset 15".  Since the drive is wide (16 bits), you
are running at 20 mega-transfers/second (or 40 megs/sec).

---
Mike Wade, System/WWW Administrator
Chattanooga Data Connection, Inc.
http://www.cdc.net/~mwade/

Anyway they run pretty fasssst.

--
Manuel J. Galan-Moreno

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                  \/