*BSD News Article 11325


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From: tjw00@zombie.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Tom Wye)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386BSD Machine Configurations > 16Megabytes
Message-ID: <92r702cX36Nv01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>
Date: 18 Feb 93 01:22:26 GMT
References: <C2E7KL.1sx@acsu.buffalo.edu> <JKH.93Feb13170535@whisker.lotus.ie>
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In article <JKH.93Feb13170535@whisker.lotus.ie>, jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes:
|> In article <C2E7KL.1sx@acsu.buffalo.edu> jones@acsu.buffalo.edu (T. Jones) writes:
|> 
|> 	   I have seen this question posed before but do not recall seeing
|>    any definitive responses.  I wanted to know what it would take to configure
|>    an ISA machine running 386BSD with greater than 16 meg of memory and a
|>    1542 host adapter.  Is the issue of DMA addressing beyond the 16 meg limit
|>    (bounce buffers) handled by Julian's SCSI driver?  If not, what would it
|>    take?
|> 
|> Julian's drivers won't handle this.  You'd need to implement some sort
|> of copy-down scheme to make sure the DMA buffers were in the lower 16MB.
|> 
|> 386bsd doesn't adequately use memory >16MB anyway, so I'd say that your
|> price/performance ratio isn't worth purchasing an extra 16MB if it's
|> just to get better performance out of 386bsd, at least not for now.
|>

I had this same problem when I installed 386BSD on my 486/50 with 20 megabytes installed.
UNFORTUNATELY after spending a few days with the system crashing and burning REAL badly
some kind soul answered my posting pointing out this problem.

This would be a nice problem to write up in a OFFICAL 386BSD FAQ if there is never one produced!

By the way other than that problem and a few other problems I have had, I think 386bsd is great!
THANK YOU all who have made it possible.

I have trashed by copy of SCO UNIX which by the way supported >16M and the 1542 host adapter.

Also in the past someone had posted that they put in the support for >16M put performance
was poor so they did not release the patches. Any news why performance went to hell?


PS: I have pulled out the 4M and put it on the shelf waiting for the day when the 386BSD 
SCSI driver supports it!