Re: Some upgrading questions...

[aaron@sunrise.apana.org.au (Aaron Howell)]

In article <29351WRFCBDWIECKSSG@ods.sol.net>,  <dreamer@ods.sol.net> wrote:
>
>
>IS>1) What is generally preferred, the Turbo IDE DMA card or the RamFast
>IS>SCSI card?  What are the drawbacks to each?
>
>Well, both have their advantages and drawbacks.  In the past the IDE was
>a cheaper HD to buy (and I think it still is, altho marginally) which
>made it popular.  Drawbacks to SCSI?  More $$.  IDE?  I've heard that
>they aren't as high-quality, and of course you can't daisy chain them.
>On IBMs, at least, you can only have one HD on your system unless it's a
>SCSI...I assume the same remains true for the Apple.  I think that, in
>the long run SCSI is the way to go.
Hmmm, I have been out of the apple world for too long. I didn't even know 
there was an ide card for the apple.
I think, however, that you are confusing ide with mfm/rll.
I currently have a 486dx2 here with a  vl-ide multi-io controller and 2 
hds hanging off it, 1 being 540mb and the other being 120mb
I have provision for 2 more drives on the same card.
I obviously don't know if the apple card can do the same, but I assume it 
would be able to.
The only time I would recommend someone use scsi is if they require a hd 
bigger than 540mb, since the drives which work with ide >540mb are er, 
rather tricky to configure at the best of times.
Scsi is something I have been avoiding wherever possible, until I am 
beginning to find that 540mb isn't enough now.
But, especially for beginners, ide is certainly easier, since it's 
plug-in-and-go as compared to the almighty amount of stuffing around 
which seems to go on with apple scsi drives.
With ide you don't need to worry about terminators, or thirty-seven-thousand
different submodels of the same card.
Aaron.