hey all, I've been doing some tests using sysspeed on drive speed, I get 4mb/s on an old scsi-2 drive, and 6mb/s to 7 mb/s on my newer UW-SCSI drives, is this about right for cyberstormppc scsi?

Robert

@Robert17

You should get much higher, but it depends on what harddisk you have. I.e. if it's old or just a slow model.

What program do you use to test the speed?

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@Crusher

Using SysSpeed, the two newer drives I have should be fast, one of them gives 7mb/s but it's a Seagate Cheetah 10k rpm with 8mb cache.

Does it help to have the drives in sequence of ID number, at the moment on the chain I think they go 1,4,8,3

Robert

Edit: forgot to mention, Using SFS 1.13
Blocksize 512, how do I change the buffers?

Last edited by Robert17 on 09-Aug-2005 at 11:07 AM.

@Robert17

I've got a pair of PFS3-formatted Western Digital drives connected to my CSPPC which, according to both SCSIBench and SCSISpeed, reach speeds in excess of 30MB/sec. It sounds like you're still running your drives in asynchronous mode. You can reconfigure them to run synchronously, then use a tool like UnitControl together with the CSPPC pre-boot SCSI config and tweak the bus speeds until you get faster access.

Don't go crazy with it though because, while you can increase the read and write speed, overdoing it will introduce errors which can destroy your data. You'd be best served by configuring the drive immediately after formatting, and then test it thoroughly before you trust it. The docs that are provided with UnitControl do a fair job of explaining how all that stuff works.

Good luck.

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@Robert17

SFS 1.13?!? are you sure?

How big are the partitions?

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@Framiga

Sorry, it's SFS 1.227

@Roj

Aha, I had no idea about synchronus/asynchronus modes, and as you said, all drives were running asynchronus. Now that I've made the changes, I get 30mb/s from my cheetah and 22 mb/s from the IBM drive. So quite a large increase, thanks guys Also maybe someone can explain to me what LUNs are? All drives I have are set to 8 Luns, not sure what this setting does. I've not 'tweaked' any drives, just set them to Sync. mode, 8 luns

Thanks for your help guys

Robert

Edit: Oh, also I've had trouble making Secondspin MP3 encoder work in the past, getting all kinds of errors, drive missmatch etc, could this be to do with running the drives in Asynchronus mode?

Last edited by Robert17 on 09-Aug-2005 at 03:07 PM.

@Robert17

I keep getting similar errors with my CDR on the CyberSCSI... Same thing maybe?

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@Robert17

just for fine SFS tuning:

replace the SFS 1 227 (IIRC had problems) with a more recent one.

http://home.wtal.de/js/ (not "mandatory" . . . if you have no problem now)

use at least 400-500 dosbuffers per partition (more if the partition is very large)

Use SFSConfig (put it in C: and add a line in User-Startup)

C:SFSconfig NIL: PartitionName: 32 32768 107 5 1 COPYBACK

for every SFS partition (this sets the read-ahead cache system)

Use OFTEN SFSCheck to see if all its OK.

All the above . . . even not

Last edited by Framiga on 09-Aug-2005 at 03:30 PM.

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@Roj

I'm getting all sorts of errors right now, Unit is buggy, parity error, phase missmatch etc, is there a guide on how to tune these up properly? The problem mainy\ly seems to be with copying files from my cd-rom, which I know to be not fauly, anyone care to give me some examples of their configs, the manual doesn't say anything about the early boot menu.

Robert

@Robert17

LUN's are used (in my experience) when you put devices on the same connector, when I use my cdrom-changer then it gets one scsi-id but 5 more scsi-id's on the same connector i.e. LUN's.

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A1G3XE 800MHz, 768MB, 150GB Raptor, 9250, OS4.1

@Robert17

There are several reasons for you to be receiving drive errors. Two of the most likely are bad termination and/or overdoing it on the SCSI bus transmission rate.

Because you didn't indicate any errors before you switched to synchronous, it's a safe bet that termination is fine and you've just moved the transmission rate slider beyond its safe maximum. I do hope you've backed up your drive before making the switch because overclocking it is a great way to destroy your data, as I'd indicated previously.

The way I tested mine was to move the slider to max, format the drive, write a good 100MB or more to it, read from it, and then run drive test software to check for any drive errors. If any showed up, I moved the slider back down a notch until I found the highest setting that wouldn't cause errors.

In UnitControl, my settings are 15 Bytes/Handshake and 40 Synchron MB/s. In the CSPPC Pre-boot menu, I have it set to 8 Transfer Offset and 6Mhz Sync Period. That works for my drives, but it may still be too fast for yours. I really couldn't say without trying first.

Normally you'll want to leave the LUN setting at 1.

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@Roj

erm . . . the UnitControl "Bytes/Handshake" is exactly the same option as the CSPPC Early boot menu "Transfer OFFset".

As the "Synchron MB/s" its the same as "Sync Period".

How do you have different settings in UnitControl obsolete and redundant if you already use the CSPPC Early Boot Menu?

Just for curiosity.


BNye

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@Framiga

Those were just the settings I have and they work well on my system. I haven't had to fiddle with them in years. The pre-boot Transfer Offset slider ranges from 1-15 while the UnitControl Bytes/Handshake slider ranges from 0-16. At the very least they're not coordinated very well. Only Ralph Schmidt could give you a proper answer what the difference is. I'd imagine that the drive settings override the pre-boot settings, but I'm only guessing. It could be the other way around.

Last edited by Roj on 09-Aug-2005 at 11:40 PM.

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@Framiga

Sometimes the SCSI parameters you are trying to set need to be manually activated with
unitcontrol. This is especially the case if the parameters on the RDB differ from what
the early boot menu are telling the hard drive. There is a tool to set the various settings on
the RDB, but if someone is not comfortable with that, unitcontrol can step in. Fortunately,
unitcontrol supports CLI, so you can add to the appropiate entries in the user-startup to
set all those things on bootup.

C Snyder

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@Roj

thats a nonsense . . . theres NOTHING in UnitControl more than in CSPPC Early Boot menu, nothing.

I don't see the point to set in Early menu 8 bites handshake and then correct it by UnitControl to 15. (BTW- try to set it to 16 if you are able)

Check . . . .remove Unit Control line and you'll see that the settings are the same. (to see it start UnitControl from WB)

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@Robert17

Well... some little things about UW-SCSI in CSIII-CSPPC:

- Hardware and connection are very, very important to set up correctly (see p5's manual) : active wide termations, right (and not too long) UW cabling, right termination on SCSI-2 side, ...

- If possible, to get best performance, don't mix UW and SCSI-2 units on the same bus (at least use units 8-15 for UW)

- Everything can be set up in CS's early boot menu

- In early boot, deselect every unit which doesn't have a drive connected (ie LUN=0), and set LUN=1 for others (I don't think you have device with logical units)

- Normally, the "AUTO" setup in early boot is well suited; you can eventually override it but it's at your own risk. For max performance, you should have SYNCHRON and 40Mb/s, no matter how many bits/handshake.

- p5's UnitControl should show FWBMode ON

- Disable reselect when you have only one drive on the bus, activate it otherwise

- In HDToolBox, be sure Sync xfers are set at RDB level

Now, with a 10krpm drive, you may achieve some 20Mb/s through the scsi bus (with some buffers and good memory, >20Mb/s at filesystem level).

I'm not right now in front of my 1990 (!!) A3000 (CSPPC+CVPPC) and I hope I don't say you sillies...

Remember: these performances will show up only with a perfect hardware setup, which isn't so easy to achieve (and not cheap, dunno remember how much costs an active terminator).

Hope this helps...

@elcabron

pity that in the mainwhile, Robert17 with its crossposting habits, has already found the problem (lacks of termination on controller side) without say anything here

Even if he has a UW>SCSI2 adapter for a CD(?) so, don't know if his problems are really ended

BTW- you said:

"p5's UnitControl should show FWBMode ON"

now i have 2 HDs (one UW and one SCA 10000rpm with adapter) but only the first shows "FWBMode ON". The second one is always OFF (no way to force it in ON).

Its normal?

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@Framiga

I think you'd better double check. The two configuration settings may be trying to do the same thing, but they certainly don't accomplish it. The pre-boot Sync Period slider doesn't even have the same range as the UnitControl Sync slider. Pre-boot Sync ranges 1-20, while UnitControl ranges 0-80. How do you propose I set the bus sync clock to 40Mb/sec without UnitControl when the pre-boot slider doesn't even go that far?

Nonsense or not, that's the way it is.

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@Framiga

Hey framiga, sorry I didn't post back. Yeah I found the problem with a lot of help, my seagate drive is giving errors now though, when I encode some mp3s to it using secondpsin it works nicely, until the 6th or 7th one when I get an error requester saying the drive is in an invalid state. It's fine to my main drive though (Fujitsu) That said the ibm is old and may be knackered, it was only $20 for a 48gb drive, after all

Robert