non-turbo slot for scsi card?

[Steven Buschman_3]

Will scsi cards work in non-turbo slots?
Existing info.......
System is an RP2470.
4 PCI slots, 2 of which are turbo.
graphics in turbo
single LVD/SE VHDCI card in a turbo
USB for kbd/mouse in a standard slot.

I need to add a HVD card (A5159A or B).

I can't seem to find or have access to the technical docs for the card specs.

Thanks,
Steven

[S.K. Chan · Accepted solution]

Yes they would. Though I do not have any documentation for you but I have a dual port FWD SCSI card (PCI) adapter installed in my L2000 non-turbo slot (A5159A). This should apply to A-class as well. The difference between turbo and non-turbo slots are turbo slots (each of them) have a dedicated PCI bus whereas non-turbo slots share a common PCI bus. What I noticed is if you're installing graphics card, it MUST go into the turbo slot. SCSI card however does not pose this restriction. One more thing I forgot to mention, the turbo slot support hotplug feature.

[John Payne_2]

Your USB card shouldn't contend too much with you HVD card for bandwidth... That's the primary issue on those non-turbo slots.

Hope it helps

John

[Brian M Rawlings]

Steven: yes, it will work in a normal PCI slot. The only question is, will you saturate the PCI bus from SCSI card data?

It is possible, but exteremely unlikely. Most configurations would not provide enough data to swamp the internal bus(es). Here's a quote from the RP5470 config guide about its I/O architecture:

..."The twin-turbo slots, labeled slots 1 and 2 on the chassis, each provide 500MB/s of peak bandwidth..."

And, ..."Slots 3 and 4 share two I/O channels. If only one of these slots is occupied, that slot will operate in 'twin-turbo' mode, with 500MB/s of dedicated bandwidth. If both slots are occupied, the I/O controller arbitrates the activity between them, providing 500MB/s of shared bandwidth"...

So, a dual-port Ultra160 SCSI card in both slot 3 and slot 4 could possibly max out the buses, but it is unlikely to find devices out there you could drive that much data though.

Go for it, you should have no problems.

Regards, --bmr

[Steven Buschman_3]

Thanks so much to everyone.
We shouldn't have a problem.