8-bit ISA SCSI (was Re: Possible to speed up I/O subsystem of 5150?)

As usual, I'm coming into this conversation late, but for those who are interested, you can still buy Rancho RT-1000B 8-bit ISA SCSI controllers for $15, brand new with a 90-day warranty: http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?dept_id=4&sku=RT1000B-2 I used these extensively years ago, and built hundreds of Win 3.1 and Win 95 machines with them. They are bootable, and used to include the driver diskette (I still have some of the diskettes -- as well as a few of the controllers). Remarkably, I never, ever saw one fail, and they worked with every (small) SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM I ever tried with them. Until a couple of months ago, I was still using one with a 50MB drive in the machine we used for a cash register in our shop. And, now that I recall, I've done a number of data transfers from XT clones to newer machines for customers by sticking an RT-1000B, with a small hard drive attached, into the XT clone, xcopy-ing the data from an ST-225, then moving the controller and the SCSI drive to the newer machine and reversing the process. Later -- Glen 0/0 ----- Original Message ----- From: Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:40 PM Subject: Re: Possible to speed up I/O subsystem of 5150? useful. >But wouldn't a few hundred K of cache be helpful? > >While it's true that XTs can not have more than 640K of REAL memory >(actually 1M minus some overhead with some hardware and software hacks), >not even HIMEM, and certainly no XMS (Extended Memory Specification), >I have had up to 8meg of "Expanded" memory on XTs. >I have a tote full of TallTree JRAM, JLASER, etc. stuff. >I don't know what the max was on the later LIM (Lotus Intel MicroSoft) >EMS (Expanded Memory Specification). > >-- >Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com >