Buslogic SCSI controllers
Paul L Barnfather
I believe they are Adaptec clones - are they as good ?
I need a SCSI controller to run a hard disk/tape drive/optical drive under
OS/2 - has anyone tried these devices with a Buslogic. The card I have in mind
is a BT-542B, which is supposed to be compatible with an Adaptec 1542B.
The reason I'm asking is the Buslogic is quite a bit cheaper than an Adaptec,
but I'm not sure whether the cheaper card will cause problems.
Any help much appreciated.
Paul
0000-Admin(0000)
It is an excellent board, compatible in every way with the Adaptec, and
slightly faster.
--
Ed Whittemore uunet!maxed!ed e...@maxed.amg.com
American Micro Group, Inc. 201-944-3293
Mike Lainhart
I installed a BusLogic EISA SCSI Host Adapter a few weeks ago. I have
a 330Mb drive and a CD-ROM connected to it and I am very happy with the
speed. If the Adaptec board that I had originally tried to use worked
for me I could give you some speed comparison. My decision to go with
the BusLogic people (actually the decision was to definitely NOT go
with the Adaptec people) was strictly based on the horrid experience I
had with the user support (rather the LACK of user support).
I have posted here before about this so you might imagine that I feel
strongly that shabby user support should be widely broadcast. I only
wish that others who had experienced the frustration (and expense in
waiting on hold long distance to be ultimately promised a call back-
that never came...) had warned me. I could have been among the many
people that were lucky enough to get a good board and I would be singing
praises to Adaptec. Maybe I'm better off. I found out before I started
depending on my SCSI Host Adapter that the Adaptec board does not have
a reliable user support group to back it up. The responsiveness of the
BusLogic people has been fabulous.
Paul L Barnfather
Thanks for the feedback on Buslogic SCSI controllers !
They sound pretty good to me. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding
a supplier of Buslogic cards in the UK - does anyone know of a UK supplier
(or even a US one, if the price is OK !)?
Thanks in advance.
Paul
Ed Wahl
In article <1992Nov12.1...@gumby.dsd.trw.com> lain...@odel.stg.TRW.COM (Mike Lainhart) writes:
>I installed a BusLogic EISA SCSI Host Adapter a few weeks ago. ...
> My decision to go with
>the BusLogic people (actually the decision was to definitely NOT go
>with the Adaptec people) was strictly based on the horrid experience I
>had with the user support (rather the LACK of user support).
and have had good/bad problems with it, and Adaptec and their service.
At one point my old roommate got a 1522 and couldn't get it to
recognoze his Sony CD-rom OR his Viper tape drive. He called them, nad
they called back and worked with him for almost 1 hour!
Now I do tech support for CimpuServe, and that was fairly impressive to me.
BUT I have been unable to get that kind of service from them myself.
I contacted their BBS to get the newer dos drivers, and found the
updated rom code, so I attempted to try to find out about just
purchasing them from adaptec. I never get any response. I don't
own a EPROM burner, or really have access to one.
(ANY KIND SOUL THAT COULD BURN THEM FOR ME? I'll pay for shipping
AND the chips!)
Anyway, I find that thir drivers do bizarre things, their rom code under
386BSD and Linux actually has bugs, etc...
BUT... under DOS I can run 4 hard drives, and boot off my IDE.
(of course trying to get the card to realise that I disabled the floppies
is next to impossible. and that APSIDISK.sys screws with memory
something awful.)
All in all I would LOVE it if they increased their support level, but
realisticaly, I know they will not.
I guess the bottom line is that their record is VERY spotty with me.
I have seen them bend over backwards to help a few times, and other times, been
ignored. Oh, well.
>a reliable user support group to back it up. The responsiveness of the
>BusLogic people has been fabulous.
Can you post some info on how to contact Buslogic? I would love to get in
touch with them. Perhaps my future Linux/BSD386 development will be on
their cards.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
ew...@csi.compuserve.com | "what do you mean you are running Windows
"Live fast, SEG FAULT young" | under Windows, and running Procomm in
1-800-848-8990 | that?!" Linux/386BSD - Program ATT free
IT Manager
> Does anyone have any experience of Buslogic SCSI controllers.
> I believe they are Adaptec clones - are they as good ?
>
> I need a SCSI controller to run a hard disk/tape drive/optical drive under
> OS/2 - has anyone tried these devices with a Buslogic. The card I have in mind
> is a BT-542B, which is supposed to be compatible with an Adaptec 1542B.
We have two system with these cards installed. Compared to the
Adaptec 1542B's we have (which are a couple years older, and older
than the Buslogic's), I like a few things more on the Buslogic boards:
1) the BIOS prints a list of the devices it finds at boot time - this
is very, very, very, handy when you've connected a new device and you
want a quick and simple way of knowing if you have the SCSI ID set
correct
2) many of the board-configurable options are on dip switches rather
than jumpers
3) I like the "on board" utilities better (very subjective here)
These are all very subjective things - we have more Adaptec boards
than we do Buslogics, and both boards perform just fine. Right now,
if I had to buy a new one, I'd go for whichever one can most quickly
clear up the "what's needed to work with drives >1GB" question,
whichever one will work correctly with SCO UNix and CD-ROM drives
(I've heard that one or the other, or peraps both, are having some
trouble with SCO and CD drives), and then whichever is least expensive
and/or happnes to be in stock at the dealer.
Good luck.
-------------
James B. O'Connor j...@tiamat.fsc.com
Information Technology Manager voice 615/821-4022 x651
Ahlstrom Filtration, Inc. fax 615/821-0616
=========
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President,
should, on no account, be allowed to do the job."
Douglas Adams, _The Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
Peng-Toh Sim
I'm using a BusTek 542B (don't know the new name for this) under
386BSD using the default 1542B device driver that comes with
386BSD. Is this board supposed to be a total AHA 1542B clone?
Well, I'm programming this thing using a AHA 1542B technical reference.
According to the manual, a CCB command 04H is a Scatter/Gather with
residual data length returned. The Data Length should contain the
number of bytes in the Data Segment list (which is NOT equal to
the actual number of bytes of for the operation requested.)
Suppose I have a file on tape of length 512 (tape block size
on Archive Viper 2150S), and I request a read of 8192 bytes
using read() from a user program. This becomes a 04H operation
with two segments of 4096 bytes (memory pages) and the Data Length
is 12. According to the manual, the opeation should succeed and
set the Data length to the "difference between the original Data Length
...and the actual number of bytes transferred across the SCSI bus...For
Operation Code 04H, the original Data Length is the sum of all
segment Data Lengths" (residual data length).
In this case, the sum of segment Data
lengths is 8192, so 8192-512 should be put into the Data Length
field of the CCB. BUT, instead, I get a value of 12, ie.
which means it does not look at the data lengths in the segments.
This "12" means both segments "failed" and read no data.
If the file on the tape was 4096 bytes instead, the
a residue length data of 6 is returned, saying the first segment
is succeeded but the second failed.
This is clearly NOT what the manual says (I know, wrong manual :)
Furthermore, if a read of 512 bytes of done after this, it will
still not pick up the remaining 512 bytes because the tape
drive thinks the data is already read. So there is no
workaround and it makes the Scatter/Gather operation useless for tape
drives because you always lose the end unless you use segments
of exactly tape block size lengths.
So, who screwed up? BusLogic? Or did *their* manual specify
the latter operation which is incompatible with the AHA 1542B?
If so, it is not so compatible after all. In any case, I think
this is a bug. Or does the AHA1542B work the same way?
Many people have programmed these boards before, so what
do you think?
Thanks.
Mike Lainhart
admittedly not printed very conspicuously, but in my campaign to tag
the bad guys of customer support these guys are still on the "A" list.
BusLogic Inc.
4151 Burton Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
(408) 492-9090 (voice)
(408) 492-1542 (FAX)
Alex Novickis
>>Does anyone have any experience of Buslogic SCSI controllers.
>>I believe they are Adaptec clones - are they as good ?
>>
>a 330Mb drive and a CD-ROM connected to it and I am very happy with the
>speed. If the Adaptec board that I had originally tried to use worked
>for me I could give you some speed comparison. My decision to go with
>the BusLogic people (actually the decision was to definitely NOT go
>with the Adaptec people) was strictly based on the horrid experience I
>had with the user support (rather the LACK of user support).
>
>I have posted here before about this so you might imagine that I feel
>strongly that shabby user support should be widely broadcast. I only
>wish that others who had experienced the frustration (and expense in
>waiting on hold long distance to be ultimately promised a call back-
>that never came...) had warned me. I could have been among the many
>people that were lucky enough to get a good board and I would be singing
>praises to Adaptec. Maybe I'm better off. I found out before I started
>depending on my SCSI Host Adapter that the Adaptec board does not have
>a reliable user support group to back it up. The responsiveness of the
>BusLogic people has been fabulous.
Yep, I can agree with that, the support I've had from buslogic is great.
I originally intended to buy adaptec, but I could not even get a pre
sale question answered ( I always call tech support for a test drive before
a sale !) As it turns out the buslogic gizmachi is faster anyway, and
except for some companies that insist on wiring (legal sense) their products
to the adaptec (techmar, for example) is 100% compat.
--
Alex P. Novickis, Real Time systems demi-guru. (W) 408-862-4541
ALINK:alex.n (H) 415-691-0657
UUCP:{amdahl,claris,pyramid,sun,decwrl,well,ubvax,ames}!a...@apple.com,apn@nonvon
"I think... I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check"-Escher.