DE Tom heeft een aardig compleet artikeltje on-line gezet hoe men de Promise Ultra66 controller ombouwt tot een FastTrak66 controller, dat kost precies 1 weerstandje en wat soldeertin. Volgens pricewatch krijg je zo een kaartje van 304 piek voor 84 piek (je zou bijna denken dat de winstmarge op een FastTrak66 controller hoger is dan microsoft haalt met windows).
I personally like the FastTrak66 made out of a Promise Ultra66 controller, because it offers a performance that is very impressive at a rather small price. However, this performance may not be required by you. I'd also like to point out that I don't appreciate the high price of the FastTrak66 if you should be honest enough to buy it as such. Promise cannot possibly tell me that the $50-$80 price difference to the technically identical Ultra66 can be justified by high development costs for the RAID-software. The predecessor 'FastTrak33' was using the same software and is available for a long time already. Promise is trying to make big money with a product that doesn't cost them a penny more to produce than the Ultra66.
I suggest that performance hungry people who've got the right soldering iron and who want top notch hard drive performance cannot go too wrong in buying an Ultra66 and modifying it, as long as they realize that they need at least two identical hard drives to make usage of RAID 0. If you are into digital video or photo editing you get excellent performance without the need for SCSI.
I doubt that FastTrak66 is an alternative for servers, even at entry level. The problem with two failing hard drives if only one is broken in a RAID 0,1 array is too annoying.
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