Cyberstorm PPC SCSI transfer rates ?

[Mugo]

        Hello Guys,

I have an A4000D, with a CPPC (060@50/604e@200), and a 17GB SCSI HD (68 pin) connected to it's onboard interface.

The problem is that i can only have transfer rates of 11MB/s top.

Tried some benchmark utils (DiskMonTools, SCSIBench and SysSpeed) and all of them shows about the same results. These figures are with sequencial read, using 156kb files or higher !

This HD is the only device in the chain. The cable is attached to the CPPB by a connector in the middle of the cable, and there's an active terminator after it (on the end of the cable), then the other end goes to the HD, that have termination enabled.

Everything works fine, but i feel it could be faster.

So i would like to know if any of you guys have a similar configuration, and can achieve higher transfer rates ?

If so, could you tell me your settings in the PPC firmware's menu ?

Thanks !

PS to moderators: sorry if this is the wrong forum section . . .

[Mugo]

Hi Guys,

Thank you all very much for your advices.

Just to add some points i've forgot:

This HD have 4 partitions. 2 of them are used to my two boot partitions with different system setups, and they are FFS, because i really don't rely on other FS that much. If something goes wrong, i need at least one partition with tools in it, that can try and repair the problem with other FS.

The other 2 partitions, have PFS3 on them. Also i've added lots of buffers to all the partitions.
 
I tried to benchmark all of them, and the results are almost the same. Nothing that could show so much difference. And this is another thing that make me think something is not the way it was supposed to be . . .

I didn't know about the UnitControl utility. I didn't know it could be called with parameters from the Startup script. I tried it from WB, but i thought that a reboot was needed to make the changes to take effect. I'll try this later.

And i thought about the RDB thing. Seems that this can be the problem.

This HD was previously used in my A1200T BPPC SCSI interface ! So the partitions was created there, and the system was installed there as well. As i don't have any other HD at hand, i just moved the HD to this new machine, and corrected some system configurations, so it could work on the A4000.

I'll try to get an IDE HD to copy all my files over, and repartition this SCSI HD. But let me first try the UnitControl trick.

By the way, what about the 40MB/S figures that I've read in somewhere, and is mentioned in the Cyberstorm Manual ? How can this be if there's only a maximum 20MB/s option on the Firmware's menu ? Is that information (in the menu that is) wrong ?

Thanks again guys. I really appreciatte your help.

[Mugo]

zipper wrote:
Even my slowest UWSCSI disk does about 24 MB/s raw, fastest 30-31 MB/s. The most important is synchron mode, async stays well under 20 MB/s.

Damn . . . forgot some info again.  :roll:

In the CPPC SCSI menu, this HD's ID is already as Synchron, and the reselection is already on.

I'm really looking forward to achieve 30MB/s !

[Mugo]

Hi again Guys,

Thank you all very much for all help.

I tried to mess a little with UnitControl, and managed to achieve better transfer rates with my harddrive.

Seems that 40MB/s Synchron, with 10 bytes handshake is the optimal setup for me.

SCSIBench reported 24MB/s rates in same sector readind with a block size of 16kB ! Previously it was about 11MB/s . . .

The problem is that i want to use UnitControl in my User-startup, but i cant get it to work from the shell.

It says "Commandline error", or something . . .

Do someone knows the right command arguments ? I'm trying something like this:

UnitControl cybppc.device 6 Wide Reselection FWC

Also, what are the best settings for the controller no the PPC Menu ?

And do someone knows if the SCSI controller on the Cyberstorm support 32-Bit Devices ? Would it be noticeably faster ?

I'll look for another drive, and would like to have a faster one if it's possible.

Oh God . .. so many questions :-P

Thanks guys !

[Mugo]

Piru wrote:
If you take a look at the template: Decice/K,...

/K means the option name must be present. Thus:

UnitControl Device cybppc.device 6 Wide Reselection FWC

Ops ! My mistake. Seems that i'm overlooking somethings . . .  :roll:

Thank you Piru ! I'll try this again as soon as i have time.