Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!allred
From: allred@ut-emx.UUCP (Kevin L. Allred)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: SCSI drive/controller
Keywords: SCSI drive controlloer
Message-ID: <17147@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 22:27:25 GMT
References: <1451@hydra.gatech.EDU> <823@gumby.cc.wmich.edu>
Organization: UT-Austin, Dept. of Chem. Engr
Lines: 27

> The stories that I hear are that some of the drives will do 900K/sec,
> others will only do about 450K/sec.  The people that are getting 900K/sec
> have version 7 ROMs in their drives, the 450K/sec group have version 8 
> ROMs.  What happened was that (supposedly) Seagate purposely slowed down 
> the drive so that it would work with the Macintosh, thus crippling it for 
> everyone else in the world.  It means that the best you can do is a 2:1 

The speed result you've seen match those given by my 386sx at both 16
and 8MHz.  You're the first person I've seen who has suggested the
problem is in the drive and not the ST0x SCSI adaptor.  My drive is brand
new -- manufactured in May; so I'm pretty sure it would have the most
recent BIOS.  I think I'll call Seagate and try and verify this.  If
you get a v7 rom and can prove this is true, I bet we can drum up a
lot of letters and phone calls to Seagate suggesting they make the
better BIOS available to us speed hungry users.  I talked to Shamrock
(see Computer Shopper) on the phone before buying mine, and they
claimed that their 16MHz was able to attain 900 KBPS using the ST02
and ST296N.  I wonder if they have a costom BIOS.  I ended up buying
my drive from Treasure Chest and saving $70, so I don't have one from
Shamrock to know if their drive is standard issue or not.


-- 

	Kevin Allred
	allred@emx.cc.utexas.edu
	allred@ut-emx.UUCP