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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!paul From: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Subject: Re: Vesa Local Bus 50 MHz IDE controller / 386bsd? Message-ID: <1993May21.132435.19799@cm.cf.ac.uk> Sender: news@cm.cf.ac.uk (Network News System) Organization: /usr/local/lib/rn/organisation References: <1stqsdINNk3v@unidoct.Chemietechnik.Uni-Dortmund.DE> <C75L96.B7B@csi.compuserve.com> <C78BBt.2yrr@austin.ibm.com> <1tbckgINN7vi@unidoct.Chemietechnik.Uni-Dortmund.DE> Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 13:24:34 +0000 Lines: 39 In article <1tbckgINN7vi@unidoct.Chemietechnik.Uni-Dortmund.DE> sn@plato.chemietechnik.uni-dortmund.de (sn) writes: >guyd@austin.ibm.com (Guy Dawson) writes: > >>> My advice is: don't. The VL local bus is only "officially" >>> rated at 33MHz and a variety of interesting things begin to happen when >>> you run cards on it at 50. It tends to overheat the CPU and the failure >>> rate of the cards is pretty substantial. I would advise that you either >>> wait to see what happens with the Intel local bus (I know, I know, but >>> the word is that it is really a decent product) or get a 33MHz board >>> instead. > >>There is also a VESA spec for slots at 40Mhz - same pinouts etc, just a >>faster clock. I don't remember if it allows for 1 ( probably ) or 2 slots. > >>Guy > >At 40 Mhz, the VLB only allows one slot. >Anyways, I've had some people mail me with 50 MHz boards and they were >having no problems. I don't know if NOBODY has problems, but it looks >like it can be done. You just have to be lucky and get a motherboard >and cards that handle the 50 MHz. > I'm pretty sure that I read a BYTE article sometime in tha last few issues that stated that the new local bus boards don't have these restrictions. The number of slots is limited, due to loading of the bus, but the speed limitation seems to be elminated. In fact, they were claiming that the local bus spec was capabale of surviving a number of years of further chip speedups. Maybe this is a new VESA spec, I only glanced through the article, but it was a comparison of the new intel, apple and vesa local bus systems and they all seemed pretty comparable. >-Sven > -- Paul Richards, University of Wales, College Cardiff Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk