Subject: Re: kern/2841: NCR 53c810 driver is slow. Here's a faster one
To: None <netbsd-bugs@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Jim Howard <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 10/17/1996 18:15:10
At 07:23 PM 10/16/96 -0500, Dave Huang <khym@bga.com> wrote:

> I don't have wide either, but I did see a lot of places where (something &
> 7) was changed to (something & 0xf).

Well, you've got me stumped, but that's not so strange.  I'm going to look
into it, though, because I want to know.

Of course, the NetBSD driver for NCR has always been a port of the FreeBSD
driver, and a step or two behind at that.  And drives have been getting
faster at a fair pace, so it seems reasonable that a newer driver version
might be fixed to work right with faster drives an older driver version
hadn't seen.

But the only real difference between your two drives is RPM (a jump from
5400 to 7200).  There's no basic architectural difference that meets my eye.
The Atlas is apparently Fast SCSI-2, not Ultra, and you have the 53C810
chip.  So the significance of a single bit eludes me.

This kind of compatibility nonsense is the main reason SCSI has never caught
on with most users.


--Jim Howard
  jiho@mail.c-zone.net