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Performance differences HDD Controller vs. soundcard controller

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First post, by Marco

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Hi all,

situation:
- 1x ISA HDD Controller Card Winbond allowing 2 HDDs on one port
- 1x SB16 CT2830 with IDE interface
- 2x HDD
- 1x CF
- XTIDE BIOS

Question:
- Is there any recommendations which setup to use? On later Busmaster sytems it was back in the days recommended to use primary and seconday IDE ports when using 2HDDs instead of master/slave setup e.g.
- Is this similar here meaning I should put major production storages on Winboard 1x and the other on SB IDE interface?
- Or is it a mix like: yes do the separation but not on SB IDE interface as it's slow.

Thanks all

1) VLSI SCAMP 311 | 386SX25@30 | 16MB | CL-GD5434 | CT2830| SCC-1 | MT32 | Fast-SCSI AHA 1542CF + BlueSCSI v2/15k U320
2) SIS486 | 486DX/2 66(@80) | 32MB | TGUI9440 | SG NX Pro 16 | LAPC-I

Reply 1 of 5, by kingcake

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ISA hard drive "controllers" are not really controllers. The controller is on the hard drive itself. All your cards are doing is decoding the I/'O address of the drives. Put them both on the Winbond. It will be fine. XT IDE also slows down IDE performance quite a bit unless you can shadow it.

Reply 2 of 5, by Grzyb

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No busmastering on ISA IDE controllers, only plain PIO mode 0.
From hardware performance point of view, there should be no difference between a sound card IDE, and a regular IDE.

The important difference is: BIOSes on ISA-only boards usually only support Primary IDE.
XTIDE Universal BIOS can support more, but may be slower than the main BIOS.

Nie tylko, jak widzicie, w tym trudność, że nie zdołacie wejść na moją górę, lecz i w tym, że ja do was cały zejść nie mogę, gdyż schodząc, gubię po drodze to, co miałem donieść.

Reply 3 of 5, by megatron-uk

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XT-IDE BIOS shadowing makes a huge difference.

On a 386DX/486DLC shadowing the relevant region in the BIOS made the difference between 1100KByte/sec and 2970KByte/sec with the same CF card. That was on a standard 16bit ISA multi-io controller (not an XTIDE card), all other variables being equal between tests.

My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net

Reply 4 of 5, by Marco

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Thank you all. So no difference to be expected.
My XTIDE BIOS is shadow enable at D000. With my current IDE HDD I reach about 3-3,5mb/s even for seq./random accesses at the moment (ISA overlock). I will have an eye on possible slowdowns for the 3rd HDD then.

Thanks all

1) VLSI SCAMP 311 | 386SX25@30 | 16MB | CL-GD5434 | CT2830| SCC-1 | MT32 | Fast-SCSI AHA 1542CF + BlueSCSI v2/15k U320
2) SIS486 | 486DX/2 66(@80) | 32MB | TGUI9440 | SG NX Pro 16 | LAPC-I

Reply 5 of 5, by Marco

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Just for confirmation: I tested both setups and there is indeed no difference in benchmark results.

Ciao

1) VLSI SCAMP 311 | 386SX25@30 | 16MB | CL-GD5434 | CT2830| SCC-1 | MT32 | Fast-SCSI AHA 1542CF + BlueSCSI v2/15k U320
2) SIS486 | 486DX/2 66(@80) | 32MB | TGUI9440 | SG NX Pro 16 | LAPC-I

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