SMD controllers on 4D/240

[Mark Bradley]

In article <1989Dec18.113838.27875 at hellgate.utah.edu>, mjb%hoosier.utah.edu at cs.utah.edu (Mark Bradakis) writes:
> But now I have some questions about different disks on a different machine.
> 
> We have a 4D/240gtx and we are interested in putting some SMD disks on it.
> Does anyone have any good or bad comments about doing this?  What controllers,
> and how much do they cost?  How is the IO throughput?  I imagine that a fast
> machine like the 240gtx should really have no trouble with several gigabytes
> of disk hanging off the thing.
> 
We sell a 4 port 6u controller.  And we sell 1 GB SMD disks.  You can expect
2+ MB/sec through EFS on sequential reads.  In spite of some early bugs that
needed to be fixed, this is presently a very stable product.  I belive that
the controller, disk in a rack, cabling and s/w is in the low $20K range 
today.  Your sales person will have more accurate pricing information for you.

As for buying and integrating your own, I don't recommend it, as you may or
may not get the right rev. levels of f/w, h/w or whatever.  And cable impedance
is critical for these disk drives, as is the right grounding scheme, etc.

I recently also heard that one of our customers mistakenly plugged a drive
into the wrong voltage (easy to do) and blew up the power supply for the
drive.

But, that's my opinion (and in this case, maybe that of my employer...)


						markb

--
Mark Bradley				"Faster, faster, until the thrill of
I/O Subsystems				 speed overcomes the fear of death."
Silicon Graphics Computer Systems
Mountain View, CA 94039-7311		     ---Hunter S. Thompson

********************************************************************************
* Disclaimer:  Anything I say is my opinion.  If someone else wants to use it, *
*             it will cost...						       *
********************************************************************************