From: wlsmith@valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca (Wayne Smith)
Subject: Re: Recommendations for a Local BUS (Cached) IDE Controller
Organization: The John P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario
Distribution: usa
Nntp-Posting-Host: valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca
Lines: 33

In article <1993Apr16.074836.6819@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> penev@venezia.rockefeller.edu writes:
>| I would like to hear the net.wisdom and net.opinions on IDE Controllers.
>| I would liek to get a IDE controller card for my VLB DX2 66 Motherboard.
>| What are good options for this (preferably under $200). It MUST also work
>| under OS/2 and be compatible with Stacker (and other Disk Compression S/W).

>I have a Maxtor 212MB on an ISA IDE controller, although my machine is
>DX2/66 VLB. I has the save transfer rate of 0.647 MB/s regardless of
>the variations of the ISA bus speed. I tested it with speed between
>5.5MHz and 8.33MHz. Not _any_ difference. The problem is not the
>interface between the controller and the memory.
>
>My advice: Buy 4Megs of RAM, save $70 and enjoy performance.

Computer: 286-25 mhz
Bus: ISA (12.5 mhz)
Drive: Maxtor 7213A (213 mb)

                                    config.sys / autoexec.bat

                     MS DOS 5             no           WIN 3.1
                     smartdrv.sys        cache         smartdrv.exe

CORE (V 2.7)         6950 k/sec          1390 k/sec     1395 k/sec
Norton SI (V 5.0)     730 k/sec           980 k/sec      982 k/sec

I'd still like to here from people with VLB-IDE.
I still want to know what VLB bus speed is used with IDE drives.
I still want to know if some (most ?) IDE drives can handle bus speeds > 8 mhz.

PS: A friend with a 286-20 and a new Maxtor 7245 (245 meg IDE) drive gets
between 800 - 1000 k/sec (can't remember exactly).  I think the bus is running
at 8 mhz in this case.