Interesting SCSI/IDE tests (Duo 2300)

[Dan K]

"Thomas G. Monclova" <samoht at bl.org> wrote:
>I decided to test it out and bought a SCSI-2 compatible
>IDE-to-SCSI interface board and slapped my 10GB Travelstar on it.  The
>test results were surprising.
<snipped stuff>
>Disk Test results
>EIDE Drive to SCSI board to SCSI controller:	56.2 (!)
>
>stock Mac SE:	47.8
>PBDuo 210:	99.7

As you've seen, some bridgeboards are dog slow. However, even with a 
modern bridge like Century's the slow onboard SCSI of the nubus 
PowerBooks will never show fast transfer rates.

>I think we can agree that something seems to be very wrong.  I'll
>update the list when I get a test hard drive (1GB SCSI, about the same age
>as the stock 1GB IDE Duo drive) and go through this again.

The 1GB SCSI drive which you mention is probably also an adapted IDE 
drive. The largest _generally_ available_ 2.5" SCSI drive is the 800MB 
Toshiba.

I did a bunch of similar testing in a 2300 awhile back and while I cannot 
now recall exactly, I do remember roughly similar results. That was with 
a ADTX adapter board as shipped with the Apple 1GB SCSI drives. As noted 
below, in my experience the ADTX adapters are relatively slow. IIRC I 
never tested a Century-adapted drive in a 2300, though I do have a 30 GB 
IBM/Century in one of my PPC PB500s. One day I'll have to pop that 30 
gigger into a 2300 just to see how that Duo's SCSI bus compares to that 
of the Blackbird's.

Here's my FAQ-of-sorts on the subject of IDE-SCSI adapters:

I'm aware of five IDE-to-SCSI adapters, ACARD, ADTX, Addonics, Artmix and 
Century. Of those, I have a pair each of the ADTX and Century adapters.

The 2.5" ACARD adapter is no longer being made according to the ACARD 
engineer with whom I spoke at MacWorld/CreativePro NY 2003. I'd never 
heard of an ACARD 2.5" adapter until then, but according to the engineer 
with whom I spoke they did indeed make such an animal at some point.

ADTX may still make their adapter, at least it is still listed on their 
website. This was the unit Apple sold, as a 1GB drive for use in the scsi 
PBs. The same drive/adapter combo was sold by aftermarket vendors (eg: 
MicroTech) for PowerBooks, SparcBooks, etc. Apparently IBM owns (owned?) 
a piece of ADTX.
<http://www.adtx.com/us/>
<http://www.adtx.com/us/conv-SCSI-IDE.html>
more info:
<http://mickey.lucifier.net/adtx/>

The Addonics item linked below is for an adapter for 3.5" HDs, I don't 
know if they make anything for 2.5". I don't know anything else about 
this outfit.
<http://www.addonics.com/products/hub_adapter_converter/ide_scsi.asp>

Artmix looks almost like some kind of Mac 'club' or co-operative, here's 
a product page link:
<http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%
2Fwww.artmix.com%2Fj_sales.html>

more info:
<http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lin
kclub.or.jp%2F%7Ehero%2FOldies%2FPeripherals%2F25SCSI_IDE.html&lp=ja_en&tt=
url>

Century's is currently available, one of mine is in a PPC540C/166 
attached to an IBM 30 gigger:
<http://online.century.co.jp/BittradeTest/e_shop/chb25int.html>

With the Apple 1GB+ADTX PB SCSI drive, you can replace the drive with any 
12.5mm or thinner IDE drive. However my ADTX adapters can recognize only 
a max of ~8GB, where the Century adapters have a 32GB limit. Also, the 
ADTX adapters I have are somewhat slow, the Century is faster (ADTX = 
~400K/s vs. Century = ~1.1MB/S) in a PPC PB 500. Of course, neither can 
make anywhere near complete use of modern HD speed as a SCSI PowerBook's 
scsi bus is the bottleneck.

The Century adapter is not cheap at ~$90, the Artmix item costs less but 
I don't know if they will ship to the US. An ADTX adapter (most likely 
still attached to its original HD) can be had on eBay for $20 to $100 
depending on the phase of the moon, the current Dow index level . . . 
etc. :-)

hth,

Dan K

.................................
http://macdan.n3.net/
carracho://dankephoto.dhs.org:9700
hotline://dankephoto.dhs.org:9500
.................................