
Then don't complain (maybe it wasn't you) that SCSI was so expensive on
PC's because all we've had until a year or two ago was the ISA bus.
(ie no one buys SCSI for ISA because ISA is slow)
Are you saying that SCSI on an ISA bus is not an automatic winner when
compared to IDE?


I get different transfer rates out of my IDE when I change my ISA bus speed.


IDE is just a variant of the old IBM- MFM AT controller.  (at least that's
how it looks from a software point of view).  It was never meant to be
an all-encompassing protocal/standard to be implimented across different
platforms.

Is there any argument that 
IDE can (or can't) transfer data from the IDE drive at least as fast as the
drive is able to provide the data?  Are SCSI versions of IDE drives able
to deliver higher sustained transfer rates to their SCSI interface (because
of a higher RPM platter, different arrangement of heads, etc?)?


If data is going from one drive to another, and if SCSI has the ability to
perform that transfer without the data having to go through the CPU or main
memory, then yes, that is the optimal way to do it.  As far as I know, IDE
can't do that.  But when the CPU wants data from both drives (data to be stored
in main memory) are you saying that SCSI can grab data from both drives 
at the same time *and* store/transfer that data to main memory also at the
same time?  Working off 1 IRQ and 1 DMA channel on an ISA (or whatever) bus?


A friend of mine just got a Maxtor 245 meg IDE drive for $320.  (that's 245
million bytes, or 234 mega-bytes).  With the basic $20 interface, he gets
close to 1 meg/sec transfer on his 286-20.  Does your figure include a few
hundred $$$ for SCSI drivers?


So you're saying that SCSI would have been the default interface type,
considering that the vast majority of PC's don't have cd-rom drives or
tape backups or etc?  That most PC's only have (or had) 1 hard drive and
run DOS?  That SCSI hard drives cost a lot more than MFM or RLL drives
at the time?  (and how common were SCSI drives under 80 megs 4 to 10 years
ago?)  There's a lot more than the lack of a common interface card that
prevented SCSI from becoming the connection medium of choice.


But on that point, is it faster?  This is what all this is about.  Do you
get more performance for the money.  For all the people that will only have
a single hard drive in their system (regardless of the OS) will the SCSI
choice really give them more performance than IDE?


True, but expandibility can also start on the bus, which means the option
is there for cd-rom drives or tape backups that run off their own cards.


No argument.  This is always held up to the first time SCSI buyer as the
best reason.  But how many SCSI devices will the first time SCSI buyer
eventually acquire?  Again does it make sense to go SCSI for a single
hard drive system?


With all the postings on the SCSI I or II specs, are you really sure that
PC and Apple SCSI hard drives are compatible?  And even if they are, 
is the data accessible from either machine (ie are there no formatting/
partitioning or file table differences?)  Is it really plug'n'play?


So the C: drive on the connor becomes a logical D: drive to DOS.  Is this
really a problem?  


After having two IDE drives in my system for temporary file transfers,
I have never seen any differences when switching between drives, nor
have I ever seen any differences when transfering files between drives or
to/from the same drive.


That is nice (as long as the power supply can keep up).  I do believe that
there is the possibility for up to 4 IDE drives on a PC.
