Where To Get A Pci Card For Scsi Boot Drive?

[diggers]

Hi - I'm building a 'new' PC out of old bits - 3.4 gig P4 on a decent motherboard - have a new 15,000 rpm SCSI drive which I'd like to use as the C drive to install Windows XP on - the only PCI SCSI card I have found doesnt have any suitable driver (only driver I found wont install at the windows installation stage, so I cant use the drive as C drive with this driver) - this is not something I've ever done before - can someone suggest a suitable PCI card, preferably available in Thailand (the one I have is ancient and probably wont support 15,000 rpm transfer rate anyway)

thanks people

[Crossy]

Have a look here http://scsi.radified.com/

It's been awhile since I had any serious dealings with SCSI, but IIRC you need a controller with its own BIOS extension ROM if you want to boot from the drive.

Time to do some serious exploring of Pantip, Fortune, Zeer

Edited October 20, 2007 by Crossy

[diggers]

Nice article, and thanks for the advice re controller needing its own BIOS... I'm still reading the article - a little confused re reported slower data transfer through explorer in XP:

"You will experience slower file transfers [~ 50% slower] in WinXP when using Windows Explorer.

WinXP's Explorer transfers files in a more secure method [using something called a WRITE_THROUGH file flag].

The phenomena is only seen in SCSI drives cuz IDE drives [which most people use] don't include the WRITE_THROUGH flag in their command set. It's scheduled to be included at some later date. Windows 2000 has a minor bug that ignores the WRITE_THROUGH command and writes the data to the (faster) cache instead of to the (slower) disk, even if the application asked it not to."

I think this means that in XP data transfered through explorer from my C (SCSI) drive (eg from my desktop) would go 50% SLOWER than an IDE drive transfer..?? So faster OS and applications, but slower drag and drop transfer, in XP..?

I dont want to go back to Windows 2000...

also slightly confused about SCSI cables and termination... anyway I'll keep reading

Also I have a helpful offer come my way of a probably suitable controller from a clearly knowledgable person, which I will follow up

again many thanks

Edited October 20, 2007 by diggers

[Firefoxx]

From what I remember, there are two shops on the top floor of fortune that sell SCSI cards. From the external escalator, walk in to the top floor (4th floor), and look to the right. The shops will be directly on the left and right corners.

Pantip also has a shop that has many SCSI controllers. It's on the 4th or 5th floor, next to the external elevator.

SCSI isn't used that much these days, since SAS is moving in on its territory, with its own 15k drives. SCSI was never easy to use in the first place.

Edited October 20, 2007 by Firefoxx

[diggers]

Thanks for tip re SCSI stuff supplies in Bangkok - looks like I may have found what I need - also SAS sounds great - never heard of that before. reason I want to use SCSI is simply that I picked up a brand new 15,000 rpm drive for next to nothing from a closing down company in the UK...

I also read up on the lower SCSI performance issue in XP explorer, and it really looks like that is a myth, thankfully. Can post article excerpt if anyone else needs to read it - the whole thing is here:

http://www.2cpu.com/articles/52_1.html