Card recommendation

[Mads Bondo Dydensborg]

Hi there

I have been modifying a aha7xxx 5.1.20 driver to work over a distributed
shared memory net. It works rather nicely, to the extent that I have been
able to reach the bandwidth limit on my rather old SCSI hardware - an 7871
chip on a 2940 card. The disk here, can only transfer about 5 MB/s
locally, and I am within 96 % of that speed on both writing and reading.

Unfortunatly, 5 MB/s is only about 6 % of what I can transfer across the
PCI bus and DSM nic. Due to the promising results, I have been allowed to
buy another SCSI interface, and one or two disks. (I am a graduate
student, writing on my thesis, and I can't afford it myself, but the
department I am in, have surprisingly granted this purchase). 

So, all of a sudden I am looking for a SCSI controller that will allow me
to press more data down the bus. But I do not know which one to buy. I
really do not have the time to modify a never version of the driver, which
hold me back from the 29160. I can't reach 160 MB/s anyway, since I only
have 32 bit pci busses running at 33 MHz. What I would like is a card that
looks like a 7871 as much as possible (so my modifications do not break),
but can get me, say, 80 MB/s on the SCSI bus (my network wont transfer
more the 88 MB/s with the pci bus I have anyway). And, it should be as
cheap as possible (since it is probably not going to be used afterwards).

Is a 2940U2W a good buy? How about a 3950U2W? Any others?

Any recommendation or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, 

Mads

-- 
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               madsdyd at challenge.dk
I don't even consider working for MS Shops, or shops with extensive MS
deployment anymore. These companies are rape victims, and too self-abusive to 
get away. Why waste time trying to help those who will not help themselves? 
                                                       - David C. Manchester



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