Re: PC164LX and IDE
On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 11:30:38AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I own a 600MHz 21164a PC164LX machine with some SCSI and one IDE disk in
> it. As I'm sure everyone is aware, the on-board IDE on this system runs
> almost as fast as the old 20MB full-height hard drive sitting in the
> closet :-)
>
> I'd like to add some more storage to the system without spending a
> fortune, so the obvious choice is IDE. Maxtor sells some nice UDMA 133
> drives that come with a Promise 20269 controller (supported by the
> pdc202xx driver on Linux).
>
> Here's my question: if I slapped one of those controllers into my Alpha,
> would I get good IDE performance, or does something inherent in the
> 164LX just make IDE suck no matter what I try?
Yes, you'll get good performance from a PCI IDE controller. I get
over 30mbyte/sec from my CMD udma-100 controller. A promise controller
also worked but had signal quality issues that lowered my udma speed;
I tend to avoid promise controllers but don't have any good data that
they're actually any worse than others (they're all cheap commodities).
My 1394 and usb2 interfaces also work at top speed.
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