In article <1992Aug23.172424.10606@m.cs.uiuc.edu> najem@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Zeyad Najem) writes:
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>
>I'm about to buy the following three items. Linux will be the main OS
>installed on my system (I still need DOS from time to time). I would
>appreciate any comments regarding the selected hardware and/or prices.
>The major use of the system will be LISP/Prolog/TeX/Postscript.
>
>
> o  520MB Fujitsu 3.5" 12ms HD             99.00
> o  Always SCSI controller                 $ 179.00

BAD choice.  Currently, the Always controllers are NOT supported, 
and according to the always owners who have looked at writing 
an appropriate low level driver, Always is not real good about 
providing information, so it is unlikely that one will ever 
be written.

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> o  Archive Viber 250MB Tape drive         $ 499.00
>
>
>The current specs of the system is:
> 
> o  486/33 ISA
> o  16MB RAM
> o  170MB IDE Hard drives. 
>
>
>My specific questions are:
>
> 1) Is the Always controller a good choice ?

No, it doesn't work now, and it will probably never work under Linux.

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>

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> 2) Is there any inheritied limitations in the controller/tape drive
>    that prohibits linux from supporting it in the future ? If enough
>    material is avaialable, I can try writing a driver myself. 

No, SCSI tapes are essentially all the same, just like SCSI disks. 

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> 3) Do SCSI and IDE coexist ?

Yes.

You should also know that right now there is a performance problem in 
the stock SCSI drivers, where we're reading/writing one block per revolution
on unbuffered drives, and aren't explicitly turning on the buffer in the 
code page on buffered drives.  The net effect is a transfer rate of 
one block per revolution, which means about 60K/sec on most drives. 

People have gotten up to ~300K/sec on buffered drives where the buffer 
is working.

This problem will be solved when the SCSI rewrite is finished.     

The code is about a week of work away from testing at most, the same state it's 
been in since spring - I do less "real" work during the school year, but 
also have classes getting in the way - so ya pays your money and ya takes your 
chances.  

-- 
Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows, 
IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but 
marketing's sins don't come close to those of legal departments.
Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit.