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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU!ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au!lugb!latcs1!wongm Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: ISA or EISA ? Message-ID: <CD8wJM.7n8@latcs1.lat.oz.au> From: wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au (M.C. Wong) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 14:35:46 GMT Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia Lines: 36 Hi, I am thinking of upgrading to an EISA + VLB (if one exsists) board, mainly for performance and 32 RAM access purpose! However, having chatted to my vendor (of my existing ISA machine), I was told that EISA + VLB slots board does not exist, and EISA is going to face extinction soon! I was shocked by that sort of statement, and would like to confirm with people who use EISA machine! To my impression, it seems as if EISA is more likely to be the trend over ISA, who is right, me or my vendor ? Is there such a config of EISA + VLB slots ? Secondly, my vendor claimed that for EISA and ISA, the performance of Ethernet card is unlikely to make an observable difference, since the peak transfer rate is 10Mbits/sec! And accordingly, he suggested me to stick with my ISA + VLB slots board instead of investing in an EISA + VLB slots board! Also, he claimed that HDD transfer rate depends mainly on the controller instead of the type of bus ! Finally, he said the different components prices for EISA is going to be more expensive than an ISA one, and does not worth the extra dollars! In my opinion, many of the people out there who use Unix boxes seem to go for EISA, for whatever reasons they've got! For myself, I would like to know for 386bsd/FreeBSD/NetBSD Unix box, does EISA show much difference over ISA ? And with EISA, will it promise greater trnafer rate for Ethernet card, and how about SCSI-2 HDD, is that affected by the type of bus (since it is DMA) ? Has anyone done any sort of benchmarking with 386bsd/FreeBSD/NetBSD between ISA and EISA machines of same CPU ? Thanks in advance and email replies appreciated! - wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au -- - wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au