... No price even close now.

Plenty!.. if you happen to have a PCI-X slot for it 

 

Or if those guys are saying the truth and this little thingy can actually do what multi-hundred-dollars PCI-X-toPCI-e bridges are doing...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-x1-Slot-to-PCI-PCI-X-32Bit-Adapter-Card-/261603863167

The description says PCI-x but the picture is just PCI plus the description says 32 bit which would imply PCI only.

... No price even close now.

Plenty!.. if you happen to have a PCI-X slot for it 

 

Or if those guys are saying the truth and this little thingy can actually do what multi-hundred-dollars PCI-X-toPCI-e bridges are doing...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-x1-Slot-to-PCI-PCI-X-32Bit-Adapter-Card-/261603863167

The description says PCI-x but the picture is just PCI plus the description says 32 bit which would imply PCI only.

Some say it would might work... if the stars voltages are right and with performance penalty, of course.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=200602

... No price even close now.

Plenty!.. if you happen to have a PCI-X slot for it 

 

Or if those guys are saying the truth and this little thingy can actually do what multi-hundred-dollars PCI-X-toPCI-e bridges are doing...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-x1-Slot-to-PCI-PCI-X-32Bit-Adapter-Card-/261603863167

 

If it worked perfectly you'd still wind up with all the drives riding on one PCIe lane. Not a good setup.

... If it worked perfectly you'd still wind up with all the drives riding on one PCIe lane. Not a good setup.

 

Agree.  And note that the connector on the converter board is a PCI connector -- NOT a PCI-X connector.  So even though this card supports PCIe v2, which has a 500MB/s bandwidth, the actual bandwidth capability would be 267MB/s (the bandwidth of the PCI slot).

 

It would, of course, work fine for all normal array operations, since that's still faster than any modern drive can support.    But parity syncs, parity checks, and drive rebuilds would be severely constrained by this bandwidth limit.

 

Actually the bandwidth of a standard PCI 32 bit slot is 133 MB/sec at 33MHz. Some motherboards support 266 speed at 66MHz.

I'm not trying to argue, it's not my cap of tea at all - I have enough PCI-X slots available 

 

I'm more like wondering - how inventive all those adapters manufacturers are. Looks like if you look for solution long enough, you will eventually be able to convert anything to anything.

... if you look for solution long enough, you will eventually be able to convert anything to anything.

 

True.  You can even buy PCIe to ISA bus converters 

 

... although I haven't seen any PCIe to S-100 converters  :)

(I wonder how many of us still have any S-100 cards in our "stash")

 

 

 

...

(I wonder how many of us still have any S-100 cards in our "stash")

Sorry, I'm not that old... 

...

(I wonder how many of us still have any S-100 cards in our "stash")

Sorry, I'm not that old... 

 

Your sig says "born in '59" ==>  I bought my first S-100 machine in 1975 and had several of them between '75 and '80 ... so you were 16-21 during that timeframe.    They WERE, however, very pricey by today's standards ... I recall buying a 4K memory card for well over $1000, and a 5.25" floppy drive was ~ $400 -- so I suspect they were out of the price range for most teens

...

(I wonder how many of us still have any S-100 cards in our "stash")

Sorry, I'm not that old... 

 

Your sig says "born in '59" ==>  I bought my first S-100 machine in 1975 and had several of them between '75 and '80 ... so you were 16-21 during that timeframe.    They WERE, however, very pricey by today's standards ... I recall buying a 4K memory card for well over $1000, and a 5.25" floppy drive was ~ $400 -- so I suspect they were out of the price range for most teens

I was reading Wikipedia article on S-100... You are right, I am that old, I was 15 when it started. If only I was not living in Soviet Union at that time, I would most probably end up in some sort of Homebrew Computer Club.

 

Unfortunately, then and there the most sofisticated electronics, available to me, was my father's luxury radio set, built on vacuum tubes, of course. It had "microphone" input sensitive enough, so we, with friends, regularly carried the beast two blocks to friends place, to use it as an amplifier for home-made electric guitars... ah, youth, dear youth. Khe-khe...

One more question bubbaQ. Is there a way to query the Areca to tell if a drive is spun up or down?

 

Yes.  But you have to do it with smartctl, not hdparm.

One more question bubbaQ. Is there a way to query the Areca to tell if a drive is spun up or down?

 

Yes.  But you have to do it with smartctl, not hdparm.

 

Wow. Didn't know smartctl had that option, but it does. Works perfectly with the Areca.

 

Completes the functionality prerequisites.

 

Thanks bubbaQ!

Here is a little code snippet you may find useful.  It checks the temps of all spun-up drives on the Areca, and determines the max temp, so I can set the cooling fans accordingly.  It ain't pretty but it works.

 

#Get the type 3 device (process) for Areca
    IN=`lsscsi -g | grep "process Areca"`
    tempAR=(${IN// / })
    ARECA_DEV=${tempAR[7]} 

maxTemp=1
for i in {1..16}
do
  TTT=`/usr/sbin/smartctl --nocheck=standby -i -A -d areca,$i/2 $ARECA_DEV`
  TXX=`echo "$TTT" | grep -m 1 Temperature | awk '{print $10}'`
  AGE=`echo "$TTT" | grep -m 1 Hours | awk '{print $10}'`
  SERIAL=`echo "$TTT" | grep -m 1 Serial | awk '{print $3}'`
  MODEL=`echo "$TTT" | grep -m 1 Device | awk '{print $4}'`  
  spinstat=`echo "$TTT" | grep -m 1 "Power mode" | awk '{print $4}'`
if [ "$TXX" ];then 
  echo $i $TXX $spinstat $AGE $SERIAL $MODEL
  if [[ $TXX -gt $maxTemp ]] ; then
    maxTemp="$TXX"
  fi
fi
done