ciss and SmartArray 5300, performance expectations?

[Daniel Eriksson]

Hi! I have been offered to buy a Compaq SmartArray 5300 (not sure exactly
what version, I think it's the 5302/64) and some discs (14 x 36GB) that is
no longer being used after an upgrade. I'm not getting it for free, so I'm
only interested if it actually provides decent performance.

What is the word on this controller and the support for it in FreeBSD
5.3/6.0? I understand it is supported through the ciss driver, but I have
been unable to find any recent detailed discussions on how well this driver
works. I did find a discussion about the lack of support for TCQ from 2002,
but that's about it as far as detailed discussions go.

Also, can I expect the 5300 to play nice with my non-Compaq server? It uses
a Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard so it has 64bit/66MHz PCI, but I'm worried that
maybe the card wants to live in a Compaq Proliant machine and won't work
properly in my server (with regards to building arrays from BIOS and similar
tasks). How about firmware upgrades of the card and/or the discs? Can that
be done without a Proliant server?

I would appreciate any information!

/Daniel Eriksson