VOGONS


Reply 40 of 55, by Zeerex

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I don’t know why y’all talking about SCSI. I found a 2.4 GHz dual core computer on the street (literally), with a SATA 320gb hard drive. For fun I got Windows 98 installed on it and I swear to god it booted so fast I couldn’t believe it. And this was in compatibility mode. I bet a good IDE drive would load just as fast. All a SCSI will do is *add* a minimum of 10 seconds during the detection. I’d skip that entirely.

Reply 41 of 55, by Regressed93

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Zeerex wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:43:

I don’t know why y’all talking about SCSI. I found a 2.4 GHz dual core computer on the street (literally), with a SATA 320gb hard drive. For fun I got Windows 98 installed on it and I swear to god it booted so fast I couldn’t believe it. And this was in compatibility mode. I bet a good IDE drive would load just as fast. All a SCSI will do is *add* a minimum of 10 seconds during the detection. I’d skip that entirely.

I was gonna say, SCSI is a bit complex for a first timer.

Reply 42 of 55, by schlang

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SCSI is overrated... more a "look how cool I am" feature for retro PCs in 2022

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

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Reply 43 of 55, by TrashPanda

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 11:45:

SCSI is overrated... more a "look how cool I am" feature for retro PCs in 2022

Mhm quad 15k scsi 320 drives also sound cool but are not very practical for your average retro rig.

I prefer raptors over scsi and raptor raid over even ssd.

Reply 44 of 55, by schlang

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if only all that bandwidth could be used I would put in NVMe drives in a heartbeat

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532

Reply 46 of 55, by schlang

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wouldn't that be fascinating to try it out on a VIA chipset with Vlink bus (266MB/s)?

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532

Reply 47 of 55, by TrashPanda

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 12:01:

wouldn't that be fascinating to try it out on a VIA chipset with Vlink bus (266MB/s)?

Might need a bios wizard too if we want to ever boot from it but the idea intrigues me.

Reply 48 of 55, by schlang

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wouldn't be too expensive to try it out:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JJTVGZM
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0037ECAM2

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532

Reply 49 of 55, by lawyerpepper

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 11:45:

SCSI is overrated... more a "look how cool I am" feature for retro PCs in 2022

Depends on how seriously you take your retro, I guess.

For a late 90's PC, you talking about ATA-4 topping out at UDMA/33 (ATA-5 w UDMA/66 did come around until 2000: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/ata.htm). Compared to that, Ultra-2 SCSI from 1997 running at 80 MB/s and Cheetah 10k RPM HDDs (1996) is going to have lower latency, higher throughput, and lower CPU utilization.

The difference is a lot narrower by the mid/late 2000s and desktop SCSI stopped making sense once SATA came along.

It's not like we're building these machines for any practical purpose, but if you want both top performance and late-90's authenticity, SCSI has a place in the conversation.e

Reply 50 of 55, by schlang

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SCSI drives are heavy and noisy, I don't see the practical (!) benefit in retro PCs. All the stuff you are going to do on these old computers will be random access, you will almost never do stuff that will achieve linear reads and high troughput

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532

Reply 51 of 55, by lawyerpepper

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 15:48:

SCSI drives are heavy and noisy, I don't see the practical (!) benefit in retro PCs. All the stuff you are going to do on these old computers will be random access, you will almost never do stuff that will achieve linear reads and high troughput

Everyone should do what pleases them and meets their objectives, IMHO. For me, "as-it-was" is part of the fun of retro, and I'm very hardware-oriented. Part of that is probably that I lived and worked through the 90's computing era and remember what it felt like to install and run software on those systems, so I need that old hardware to really scratch the nostalgia itch.

At any rate, I didn't mean to hijack this thread, just to offer some thoughts on an aspect of high-end systems back in the '98 era that the OP might not have considered because SCSI was somewhat uncommon.

Reply 52 of 55, by schlang

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lawyerpepper wrote on 2022-03-03, 16:19:

Everyone should do what pleases them and meets their objectives, IMHO.

I totally agree on that. I just wanted to come back to our Berlin hipster with his SCSI nonsense

PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16

Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532

Reply 53 of 55, by RandomStranger

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 15:48:

SCSI drives are heavy and noisy, I don't see the practical (!) benefit in retro PCs.

You are on a retro forum. The things we do are not always about practicality and some of us enjoy the noises various retro hardware make.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 54 of 55, by Jo22

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schlang wrote on 2022-03-03, 15:48:

SCSI drives are heavy and noisy, I don't see the practical (!) benefit in retro PCs. All the stuff you are going to do on these old computers will be random access, you will almost never do stuff that will achieve linear reads and high troughput

SCSI has a long history, though, so it's inevitable linked to retro computing.

The early Macintosh used it for example, and certain MIDI devices.
The Japanese systems also used SCSI at some point.
That's why projects like RaSCSI exist in first place, I suppose.

Personally, I never really had trouble with SCSI myself.
I admit I didn't do use cutting-edge SCSI technology, either, on the other hand.

I mean, such things like that Trantor controller on my PAS16 weren't very quick, either.
But they seemingly did work they way they should. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: There used to be caching controllers, also.
SCSI was nice in multi-tasking/-user environments, I guess.
Early IDE was limited to PIO etc most of the time (DOS) and relied on brute-force, whereas SCSI was more intelligent.

Edit: To be fair, there was a drawbrack, also.
Not all of the SCSI controllers provided an int13h handler, which was required for DOS.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 55 of 55, by Alistar1776

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-03-03, 16:38:

You are on a retro forum. The things we do are not always about practicality and some of us enjoy the noises various retro hardware make.

I like hearing floppy drives. Random comment on an old thread, but i was looking for other info 🤣.