Subject: Re: 2940 controllers integrated on the motherboard
To: Laine Stump <laine@morningstar.com>
From: None <mika@cs.caltech.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 04/14/1996 23:30:42
Andrew Reilly writes:
>Hi,
[...]
>
>>I saw some discussion a couple weeks ago about problems someone was
>>having with a 2940-ish SCSI controller that was integrated on a Pentium
>>motherboard (I believe the problem was that it used a PCI-PCI bridge,
>>but don't remember for sure). Was this problem ever resolved? Has anyone
>>had successful experiences with these boards? If so, could you provide
>>details about models and suppliers? Also, what about integrated
>>fast-wide SCSI.

Yes, it turned out that the problem was entirely because of the 
nonstandard PCI-PCI bridge. cgd has since helped to hack the kernel so
that it does recognize the AIC7870's and the system works fine now.
It boots up reporting 16-bit transfers and the system is being used
as a lab fileserver. 

I've had some problems with NFS (probably unrelated to the controller)
on this network (operated at 100 Mbps), and the performance of the
SCSI disks isn't exactly impressive. I hope this is due to the old
driver, and that it will get fixed soon. I am seeing *worse* performance
on the dual Seagate 2GB WC hot-swappable Barracudas than on the EIDE
Seagate Medalists in the clients (which are admittedly damn good 
drives, as far as IDE drives go, but still....) (This is from a very
cursory examination with iozone.)

All in all, it's definitely usable.

Mika

>
>The IWILL mob (Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers) also do versions called
>P54TSW and P54TSW2 that have the relevant AIC- SCSI-Wide and Ultra controllers
>on them.  Can't comment on how well they work, though.
>
>Good luck,
>
>Andrew.
>
>