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Adaptec Ultra 160MB/sec SCSI support for Linux 54

Posted by CmdrTaco from the faster-than-you-can-spit dept.
hooligan writes "This is an annoucement from Adaptec for support for their new transfer speed for Linux. Check the press release."
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Adaptec Ultra 160MB/sec SCSI support for Linux More

Adaptec Ultra 160MB/sec SCSI support for Linux

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  • Re:When RAID? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AMI's MegaRaid controllers have good Linux support. Even got a GUI to config the thing.
    Their latest U2W RAID card costs $1200 but
    a UW one costs only $269 (max 128MB simms).
  • How about support for the AAA-130 RAID controllers? We've had one for ten months, but it only supports NT, Novell, DOS and SCO. It's currently running in non-RAID mode, appearing as three AIC-7883Us and is scheduled for replacement with a non-Adaptec RAID controller that works on a Linux system.
  • 64 bits at 66MHz is still 528MBytes/sec. Or is that one transfer/2 clocks? Still, 264MBps.
  • Posted by 2B||!2B:

    I've done programming on punch-cards before. You know your storage is pathetic when it can be messed up by skipping a page.

    (and I'm only 30! I started programming _before_ getting my TI99/4A)
  • I also am quite interested in getting support for Adaptec RAID controllers. Until then I will stick to AMI controllers, which aren't bad.

    Dell's PERC's used to be all AMI products, until the release of the PERC2 which is an Adaptec controller. That is why Dell's Linux boxes only come with the PERC2/SC (single channel) which is a low-end AMI U2/LVD RAID controller. This card is useless for anything other than a workgroup server.

  • redhat? (Score:1)

    by Aaron ( 1233 )
    I am a little confused about why adaptec is specifically mentioning redhat 6.0 as a base... shouldnt this be in the kernel? Also, since redhat has been out for a lot longer than this press release, how is it my copy of rh6 that i downloaded a month ago already has support? :P
  • 64 bits at 66MHz is still 528MBytes/sec. Or is that one transfer/2 clocks? Still, 264MBps.

    I was a bit off, but a dual channel U3W card theoretically gets 320 MBps. 64/66 PCI at 528MBps (400MBps in good implementation)/practice. It would give 64/33 a good run for the money, that is if you can afford to load it up with enough drives and use it effectively.
  • I checked the release for an ASIC - their dual channel U3W can ride a 66MHz 64 bit bus. This still pretty much maxes _that_ bus too.
  • I have talked to several of the techs at Adaptec and it would seem that they know about the Linux Communities intrest in their RAID cards. I, for one, would love to see a port of their RAID port driver, that little card ($150) is quite a deal when trying to sell a lower end server with RAID implemented at the hardware level.
  • Before someone does a clone and you cease to exist!

    *wink*

    These transfer rates are perfect for multitrack digital recording. AND the size of hard drives these days are big enough for entire multitrack projects to be done without constant CDR archiving. Instead you could do tape back-ups..

    The stability of linux and the true multitasking would actually make it a better OS for these applications than MacOS 8.5. We have lost entire weeks of work due to OS failure followed by some disk failure.

    Digi Design has an NT port but I still have no heard of ANY recording studio opting for that solution.


    Ken


  • Heck, the transfer rate is 8x the size of my first hard drive!
  • They mean that the latest aic7xxx driver (in kernel 2.2.5 and later I think) supports the new card. Doug Ledford, who maintains the kernel driver, works for Redhat, and he keeps the latest driver version as patches for 2.0.x and 2.2.x kernels on his web page (http://www.redhat.com/~dledford/aic7xxx.html).
  • It's because Doug Ledford, maintainer of the aic7xxx device driver, works for RedHat.

    And, RedHat release a patched boot disk with support for special hardware? They haven't done that in years.
  • Check out the benchmarks on Storagereview.com. Note the adapter will not be available to us till the fall.
  • The mind boggles at how much faster it is compared to my first tape drive. Acorn Electron (souped up BBC-A or BBC-B, can't remember)..man that baby rocked.
  • Actually, I've heard street prices for a dual-channel Ultra160 card will be around $525.
  • The average slashdotter is not the target market.

    IT folks would be the target market
  • Check out Infortrend.

    www.infortrend.com

    I used them in a previous life, nice controllers, and they abstract RAID 0,1,3,5,0+1 so that you don't have to sweat the kernel support thing. It's all done in hardware.
  • whose computer gets 130mb/s throughput? UWSCSI is somewhat useless to the average slashdotter...




  • Seconded. I would sure like an Adaptec RAID controller on my server... I use only Adaptec SCSI controllers in my Linux machines, but my next server will have RAID -- of one kind or another.
  • It's 26x my first HD.. and I'm definately not all that old!

    (gotta love hacker "back in the old days" competitions. :)
  • Hi Ken

    Quick tip. Use 8.1 with OT 1.3.1 + from 8.5/8.6. (Manual transplant.) It needs OT for linking with its Total Control Units, even if you don't have one... The PT 4.3x will run more reliably. 8.6 is fine but 8.5.x was a disaster! As for NT, I know 2 studios using it, one has Mac too, and they hate it...

    As for Linux, tried it, loved it! Got a way to go before you can use PT on it though. Watch out for an Irix/SGI version... (Avid etc..)

    Yours

    Bobbi

    PS I use Adaptec 33940UW at the moment, but I can sense an upgrade comming.. :-)
  • Pro Tools for Linux, ha, not in your lifetime. FYI MacOS 8.6 is amazing running Protools, not 8.5 though. I have seen a pre-release carbonized running on OS X, not server. There are some serious changes coming, wait until you see this baby on OS X!

  • I assume that this beast sits on a 64 bit PCI bus? I seem to remember that 32 bit 33MHz PCI theoretically maxes out at 133MBps, and Intel chipsets seem to have a 80MBps upper limit.

    I suppose that this is an argument for the newer Alpha systems as they have several independed PCI buses, each tested capable of 200MBps in 64 bit mode.
  • Doug Ledford works for Redhat and he is the maintainer of the aic7xxx. So, yes, they do mean Redhat, and yes, it is in the standard kernel.

    --
    http://www.wholepop.com/ [wholepop.com]
    Whole Pop Magazine Online - Pop Culture
  • Yes. Justin Gibbs, FreeBSD core member and author of the FreeBSD scsi CAM subsystem, wrote the aic7xxx driver. He works closely with the Linux people who have ported his driver to Linux. Up until very recently, I worked with Justin. I saw him running this stuff a month or two ago while adding support for this....

    Adaptec gives him excellent tech support... He has an impressive collection of adaptec cards in his office.

    I don't know if he's actually committed these changes to the tree on freefall yet or not.

  • My kernel sources, based on the web-available patches and Alan Cox (2.2.10-ac10), shows support for the Ultra 160/m in drivers/scsi/aic7xxx.c. I don't know when it showed up, but it's probably in the config scripts, so go buy one of the little Adaptec beasties and drop it in.

    And yes, it is in the kernel, not just Red Hat. This is not a conspiracy to coopt Linux, this is marketing droids giving out comfortable data points that they can understand. I wonder if it's in FreeBSD as well?

  • My question is when is Adaptec going to start supporting RAID for linux. I have yet to see a competent way of using Adaptec's RAID adapter for RH 6.0. Adaptec makes almost the best raid drives out there, but if I can't use them I can't buy them.
  • Update: Darrin Johnson (of Adaptec) has written with the following information:

    " The source code for the new drivers (which by the way was developed by the "community") is and will
    always be available and should by now have found it's way into the core Linux code. Although we did our
    initial effort with Redhat the code will migrate quickly into all of the distributions. "

  • Well, it sounds (at least from the stuff I've seen) that adaptec didn't write the stuff, they just let the people see the specs. It would make sense that if someone was willing to write BeOS drivers, that adaptec could probably get them the information they need.
    Even if adaptec didn't want to, with the FreeBSD and Linux drivers being open source, it would make sense that you could get one working(perhaps not at full utilization though) without any help from adaptec.
    Thats just what it seems like to me though...

    Erik -- journey

  • Read What Alan Cox had to Say about it... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11, 1999 @10:57AM (#1808145)
    This is what Alan Cox wrote about it at
    http://linuxtoday.com/talkback/25240.html
    ------------------------------------------------ -
    Red Hat 6 ships with the source code to all the
    included drivers in the kernel it ships with. The
    code is afaik all in recent aic7xxx drivers from
    any source.

    Alan
    ------------------------------------------------ -
    In short:

    1. It is not new.
    2. It is not unique to RH.

    And let me add, that even if its production will
    start soon, don't expect prices lower than $1000.
    Add to it the high prices of fast SCSI disks (it's
    stupid to attach a slow disk to SCSI/160), and you
    end up with prices of supercomputers.

    Eli Marmor

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