Disk controller specialist Adaptec Inc, Milpitas, California has a string of new disk controller products to take advantage of Local Bus standards and boost throughput. The company has launched the AIC-25VL01 controller chip for motherboards and the AHA-2840VL SCSI-2 host adaptor family. The motherboard controller is designed to enable designers to hook VESA Local Bus (VL-Bus) architectures into IDE-based storage devices on 80386 and 80486 boxes. The 2840VL SCSI-2 controller will link SCSI-2 peripherals into VL-Bus architectures, providing data transfer rates of 10M-bytes per second. The company claims a cut of up to 90% in the time taken to process commands from its use of a RISC processor chip. It is trying to focus on user-friendly operation by implementing its SCSISelect configuration feature, which does away with jumper settings. The version of the board that supports 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives, called the AHA-2842VL, will come bundled complete with cables, installation guides and EZ-SCSI 2.03 software in a kit called the VL-SCSI Master. The kit costs $400 the controller chip costs $6 to $8 in volume. OEM customers wanting the boards will have to negotiate their own price. Adaptec’s next move will be to produce products to interface with Intel Corp’s Peripheral Component Interconnect standard: they’re due out by year-end.
