Chuck(G)
25k Member
Ditto. If you need something that's not IDE, try SCSI. Much easier to find.
- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
Please recommend a 286 class system
- Thread starter Shadow Lord
- Start date
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
Hey show som respect! I am trying to be authentic here!
ESDI should be the right tech for the end of the 286 era... But in reality, I am still adding up the numbers and waiting on my friend to see if he has a case.And I'd go SCSI if I was going to do something like that as Chuck suggested.
Last edited:
Chuck(G)
25k Member
ESDI is neither here or there in the timelime. 286 systems are perfectly contemporaneous with SCSI. As a matter of fact, I used SCSI before I used ESDI (I still have some 5¼" ESDI gear around). SCSI was viewed as the Cadillac of small system interfaces.
Dave Farquhar
Experienced Member
People usually associate IDE with 386s, but plenty of later 286s shipped with IDE as well. I've seen 286s with MFM, RLL, IDE and SCSI drives. I'd go with IDE or SCSI if I were building one, just for availability's sake. The cards are easy to find and cheap, and so are the drives. And you can start with a mid-90s drive that's working and cheap, upgrade to a more period-correct drive down the line if/when you find a good deal on one, and in the meantime you have a working system.
I agree with Chuck that in the 286's heyday, SCSI was what people aspired to own. IDE was what became popular, because it was cheaper and most people considered it good enough. But if I were building a mid-late 80s dream machine, I'd put SCSI in it.
I agree with Chuck that in the 286's heyday, SCSI was what people aspired to own. IDE was what became popular, because it was cheaper and most people considered it good enough. But if I were building a mid-late 80s dream machine, I'd put SCSI in it.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
...It also seems to me that "cheap SCSI" is an oxymoron. The 386/16 I just used about an hour ago, has Win95B installed and running off an 8GB ST410800 drive (probably based on a CDC Wren design). Seeing Win95B come up at 16MHz non-cached is an exercise in patience. Win95 even had drivers for the DTC 3280 controller.
Consider also, that before IDE/ATA/ATAPI, the standard interface to CD-ROM drives, scanners and high-end tape drives was SCSI. ESDI, as far as my ever-more-blurry memory can recall, was only good for hard drives.
Consider also, that before IDE/ATA/ATAPI, the standard interface to CD-ROM drives, scanners and high-end tape drives was SCSI. ESDI, as far as my ever-more-blurry memory can recall, was only good for hard drives.
MikeS
Veteran Member
Who actually used ESDI with an AT other than Compaq and (?) IBM?
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I think there were some non-PC workstations that used them. I have them only because CSC offered some killer deals on them. For the Maxtor XT-8760E 650MB unit, I paid something like $600 with controller, which was a heckuva deal back then. Last year I put the thing in another 386 just to try it out. I couldn't believe how loud it was--about as loud as my Maxtor XT-1140 MFM drive.
MikeS
Veteran Member
They were an option in late high-end Cromemcos; some guys with one of those might make you a good offer for that XT-8760 (and I might even make you an offer for that XT-1140 when mine finally die ;-) ) No problem with noise, the cooling fans will drown it out.
MFM/RLL and IDE were common in 286 systems (IDE for later models), SCSI was server class and ESDI was mostly for big name high dollar servers.
I have a couple brand made 286 systems, one has MFM (NEC brand machine) and I forget what is in the other (IDE I think, added later).
Dell wasn't dell in the 286 era, they used that name starting with the 386.
I have a couple brand made 286 systems, one has MFM (NEC brand machine) and I forget what is in the other (IDE I think, added later).
Dell wasn't dell in the 286 era, they used that name starting with the 386.
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
Okay,
So I was being a bit tongue in cheek about the ESDI thing. Yes, I realize SCSI was all the rage back then all the way through the early 2Ks. I have a number of all SCSI systems (including the Everex Mega Cube) w/ SCSI HDD, CD-RWs, Tape Drives, and yes even a UMAX Astra 1200s scanner. I'll see how things go with the case first and then decide on everything else. I will probably even skip the HDD completely because I have a hardcard I can drop in there, but then I will still need a FDC.
So I was being a bit tongue in cheek about the ESDI thing. Yes, I realize SCSI was all the rage back then all the way through the early 2Ks. I have a number of all SCSI systems (including the Everex Mega Cube) w/ SCSI HDD, CD-RWs, Tape Drives, and yes even a UMAX Astra 1200s scanner. I'll see how things go with the case first and then decide on everything else. I will probably even skip the HDD completely because I have a hardcard I can drop in there, but then I will still need a FDC.
IDE is authentic as well. There is no reason not to install a regular ISA 16 bit controller card with an IDE HDD and 3.5" & 5.25" FDD in my opinion. Works great.
Building your own system is fun (especially when you have the $ to build it).
http://cgi.ebay.com/350369005821
Last edited:
286's with 25ms(ish) IDE disks seemed to fly along, compared to the XT's with ST412s still around at that time anyway.
I never understood the SCSI thing for PCs, as with DOS there would be no opportunity to benefit from command re-ordering - it would probably just be slower because of the more complex controller code. Were SCSI disks running at higher rpm already in the late 80's?
I never understood the SCSI thing for PCs, as with DOS there would be no opportunity to benefit from command re-ordering - it would probably just be slower because of the more complex controller code. Were SCSI disks running at higher rpm already in the late 80's?
There was no CPU overhead on SCSI drives during that time which was way before IDE drives had DMA capability. Considering how slow CPU's were in the 286-486 era every little bit helped. Also you didnt have the BIOS limit on SCSI drives and could have as many drives as would fit on the SCSI chain.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Well, the original 5160 MFM controller used DMA also. On the 5170, programmed I/O was faster than DMA (insw/outsw) and all controllers had at least a 1-sector buffer, so not using DMA, unless it was bus-mastering had its advantages.
SCSI addresses devices by a relative block address; the first sector is numbered 0 and sector address increment by 1 after that--none of the CHS nonsense. Many SCSI controllers had large caches (e.g. WD7000, CSC Fastcache) and 16-bit data paths, some differential, so the SCSI bus speed was very high. In addition, SCSI supports lots of different devices in a (fairly) well-defined way; many devices can operate autonomously with a controller only needed to initiate operations (e.g. copy disk-to-disk without computer intervention is supported). A single SCSI bus has 8 or 16 IDs with up to 8 logical units per ID, so a wide-SCSI controller can support, say, 120 CD drives.
And SCSI drives tend to be constructed for commercial use; 7200 and 10K RPM drives are not uncommon.
There are other advantages; SCSI is a relatively advanced protocol and it can be very fast--640MByte/sec.