detailed information on the old ASUS PCI-I-SP3 from heinrich@zsv.gmd.de:
The board does like most in that price-class only write-through cache, no write-back. (which should not be grave, maybe 3% of performance?).
The BIOS supports scsi-drives under DOS/Windows without additional drivers, but with the board come addtitional drivers which are said to give better performance, for DOS/Windows(ASPI), OS2, Windows-NT, SCO-Unix, Netware (3.11 and 4, if interpreted correctly)
Gert Doering (gert@greenie.muc.de) was saying the SCO-Unix-driver for the onboard-SCSI-Chip was not working properly. After two or three times doing: "time dd if=/dev/rhd20 of=/dev/null bs=100k count=500" it kernel-panicked...
The trouble some people experienced with it might be due to them using an Adaptec-SCSI-Controller with "sync negotiation" turned on. Please check that in the BIOS-Setup of the Adaptec-1542C if you use one and have problems with occasional hangups!
There is a new version of the ASUS-Board which should have definitly less problems. It is called ASUS-PCI-I/SP3G, the G is important. It has got the new saturn-chipset rev. 4 and the bugs should be gone. They use the Saturn-ZX-variant and so the new SP3G has fully PCI conforming level triggered shareable and BIOS-configurable interrupts. It has got a PS/2-mouseport, EPA-power-saving-modes and DX4-support, too. It performs excellent. If you can get the german computermagazine C't from July (?), you will find a test where the ASUS-Board is the best around.
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