Subject: Re: Future hardware concerns
To: Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>
From: Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com <michaelv@HeadCandy.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/20/1996 00:21:12
>>   With the chance of showing my lack of knowledge of pc hardware, if I
>> got the motherboard that supports ECC I would have to get parity memory
>> and could not get EDO ram, correct?  Sounds like the old problem of more
>> speed at the cost of reliability.

>That's right.   You don't want EDO ram if you care about reliability -
>it buys you about a 5% speed boost but eliminates the possibility of
>error checking.   Really bad design, IMHO - there's nothing about EDO
>per se that prohibits ECC - they just chose not to make it possible.

EDO is a separate concept from ECC and/or parity.  There is nothing
that prevents you from having an ECC or parity SIMM with EDO RAM
chips.  It's just that those generally don't exist, because up to this
point EDO was used only for Triton motherboards, and the Triton
chipset doesn't support parity memory (EDO or non-EDO).

>>   What sort of problems should I expect to have with the Adaptec?  My
>> Adaptec 1542 has treated me so well that I hate to leave Adaptec.
>> Just to make certain, there is no way to use the 1542 in this Pentium
>> machine with more than 16M?

>My Adaptec controller, which is a 2940, has a tendency to lock my
>system up during periods of intense I/O.   For example, the nightly
>file system checks.   I would expect the 2940W to behave the same way
>- I believe the chipset is identical.

Not only that, but your 1542 will give you a ___severe___ performance
hit versus a PCI controller.  Let me make sure that is clear enough:
_____severe_____ performance loss.  That's just my own experience
comparing otherwise similar hardware.

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  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
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