Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.setup,comp.periphs.scsi,alt.cd-rom Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!sdd.hp.com!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!boulder!cnsnews!rintintin.Colorado.EDU!dunnc From: dunnc@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Colin J. Dunn) Subject: ARGH! DTC 3270 SCSI controller SLOW in OS/2! Message-ID: Keywords: slow scsi OS/2 CD-ROM Toshiba XM-3401TA Sender: usenet@cnsnews.Colorado.EDU (Net News Administrator) Nntp-Posting-Host: rintintin.colorado.edu Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 18:02:35 GMT Lines: 45 Xref: cdrom.com comp.os.os2.setup:2632 comp.periphs.scsi:2143 alt.cd-rom:1482 ARGH! I just bought a DTC 3270 SCSI controller (VESA local bus version) so I could get faster CD-ROM transfers than with a Trantor 8-bit SCSI adaptor, and avoid interrupt conflicts. Problem is, every time I access the CD-ROM, the computer gets frozen up for short intervals until OS/2 pre-emptsit and lets another program work. The result is: CD-ROM transfers are about 1/5 the speed as under the Trantor 8-bit controller. This is ONLY in OS/2; in DOS, my transfers are almost twice as fast as they were under the old controller. The system will recognize and read the CD-ROM; it is just that it does not work the way it should. The jumpy-mouse, frozen-system behavior does not make a multitasking OS like OS/2 very useful. There is no going back to DOS/Windows for me. I called DTC, and they weren't sure why this was happening with their device driver, though they said other people were having this problem. The device driver is a beta driver -- but I would think this glaring a problem would have showed up by now. The beta has been going on for a few months now. Here are the details of my configuration: Motherboard: OPTi 486DX/66 motherboard (386 or 486 chip), with 6/6/92 BIOS SCSI adaptor: Data Technology Corporation (DTC) 3270-VL VESA Local Bus SCSI host adaptor (SCSI-2). CD-ROM drive: Toshiba XM-3401TA double-spin CD-ROM drive. OS/2: Version 2.11 (2.1 full edition with Service Pak installed). DOS: MS-DOS 6.0, using MSCDEX to access CD-ROM drive. RAM: 8 megabytes, 80ns RAM. SCSI adaptor IRQ setting: IRQ 11. SCSI adaptor base address: C800H. Hard drives: Two IDE hard drives, connected to Cirrus Logic combination video adaptor/hard disk adaptor (Local Bus). Should I just return the DTC SCSI adaptor and try something else? Or did I configure my system wrong? (If someone needs to look at my AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files from OS/2, I can post them later.) Colin Dunn dunnc@rintintin.colorado.edu