>Adaptec has been very closed in the past with their newer-generation
>controllers (2xxx).  People lately have claimed that they have
>loosened up their policies on the 2xxx cards.  Others have claimed
>that the info they'll give without NDA still isn't enough.

Adaptec has always offered their bound technical reference manuals
free of charge.  There is usually a 6 month delay in getting them
once a product is released though.  The information in the tech refs
is enough to write a driver (otherwise how would there be a driver
now?).  There are some areas of the manual that conflict or are wrong,
so access to their engineering staff would be nice.

>The older-generation BusLogic controllers (non-FlashPoint) are quite
>stable, and well-built.  The NetBSD driver for them is very stable and
>mature.  They aren't optimized as much as the Adaptec 2xxx cards and
>the newer FlashPoint cards, however.

Don't let the FlashPoint's name fool you.  It is not faster than the
Multi-Master cards.  It is basically a Multi-Master without an on-
board 186 so it relies more heavily on the main CPU.  The FlashPoint
was never intended for use in *NIX or server applications.  Buslogic
has not released any programming information about the FlashPoint as
they feel revealing information about their SCSI sequencer would hurt
their competetive advantage.  There are people in Buslogic that are
trying to fight this misconception.

>They have a higher command
>overhead, which could mean higher latency on very high-speed disks.
>In the real world, with disks most normal people can afford, though, I
>don't know if this will be noticeable.  I certainly have been happy
>with the performance on my BusLogic controllers (one EISA and one
>PCI).

If the driver had tagged queueing, I'd agree, since command overhead is
amortized over the execution of previous commands.  The Buslogic's can have
very good performance if you fully utilize them.

>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
>        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
>    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
>        Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
>    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
>
>   Roll your own Internet access -- Seattle People's Internet cooperative.
>                  If you're in the Seattle area, ask me how.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
Justin T. Gibbs
===========================================
  FreeBSD: Turning PCs into workstations
===========================================