----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Kukat <michael@camaronet.de>
To: Allison J Parent <allisonp@world.std.com>
Cc: <port-vax@netbsd.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 1999 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: Oooooh... IDE to Q-bus/Unibus adapters.

> If you look at the modern UltraDMA-drives, IDE definitely IS much faster,
> and even cheaper,

Sorry. But that's absolutely NOT true. Anyway not if you talk about using
them not only for a benchmark, but in a computer, running an operating
system. Any many of them ...

> so here is the only missing thing the flexibility of SCSI. And Ultra-SCSI
has
> lots of them, including a very good performance.

What about 16 devices, with connect/disconnect in a fileserver ...';-))

> But is an IDE drive on the QBus really the right thing for these boxes ?
Ok,
> it's cheap, but it's not the right style :-)

Doesn't have anything to do with style ;-))

Most vaxen are bigger than the specification of 18" wire for IDE ;-))

> If you want to do it real good,
> just adapt a 386 mainboard including onboard-IDE to the QBus, then you
might be
> able to write the MSCP stuff on this "controller"

The MSCP protocol is not the problem, it's really the cable-length. So you
have to make something like a Drive-Card, which is a controller with the
harddisk on board. (want to buy one ;-))

> ... TQK50 also uses an 186 CPU.

because they had o box full of it ? ;-))

> so long... Michael

cheers,
emanuel