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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:1236 comp.os.linux:56259 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!yorkohm!minster!al-b From: al-b@minster.york.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux Subject: Re: FYI.. benchmarks on linux and 386bsd Message-ID: <750514620.19363@minster.york.ac.uk> Date: 13 Oct 1993 12:17:00 GMT References: <750282279.25432@minster.york.ac.uk> <CEq8q0.M3A@veda.is> <1993Oct11.123706.23431@swan.pyr> Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England Lines: 50 In article <1993Oct11.123706.23431@swan.pyr> iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox) writes: >In article <CEq8q0.M3A@veda.is> adam@veda.is (Adam David) writes: >>al-b@minster.york.ac.uk writes: >> >>>386BSD will only boot off the harddisk if the internal cache is disabled AND the >>>external cache is disabled AND the turbo button is disabled. >> >>To be quite frank, your motherboard is garbage. It would be possible for 386bsd >>to jump through hoops (and take a performance hit) to run on it, just like I >>presume Linux does, but you would be better off with a motherboard that has >>working cache hardware. Sometime later, it is likely that the current versions >>of *BSD will support broken hardware, but not yet. >Linux doesn't jump through any hoops. I guess BSD doesn't jump through the >proper ones. With respect to this I'd suggest the original author tries the >current NETBSD. The old 386BSD had so many bugs with device drivers and general >memory handling that have been fixed that NetBSD may well work. On the other >hand I'll stick to Linux. I will be trying NetBSD soon, honest! :-) But I doubt I'll get rid of Linux... >>In the meantime, make sure motherboards do caching correctly and make sure >>IDE cards handle things correctly. Otherwise you will see nothing but grief. >>I have been through both of these pitfalls and now have a stable *BSD system >>that is running on _working_ hardware. The bad hardware cannot be returned >>to the store, but someone will want to run DOS on it. >Good advice for all barring IDE cards don't cause any cache problems because >neither Linux nor BSD use IDE DMA mode, and since IDE drives that support it >are as common as a live dodo. > >Alan [iiitac@pyr.swan.ac.uk] I do not have *any* IDE hardware in my machine. I can even set the AH-1542C to IRQ 14 and Linux will still boot perfectly. (DOS is no problem either, but Windows doesn't like it at all!) I did not try that with 386BSD... Various "cache test" programs have detected a perfectly normal 256K write-back cache with Dirty-TAG RAM installed. The board comes from Informtech and uses OPTI 495SX-WB chipset. The original 386BSD release seems to be quite out of date from what I have seen, I guess Bill Jolitz (sp?) doesn't want people mucking around with his release and hasn't had time to put out a new one... (Still 0.1!!!) Since I first heard of Linux about a year ago there have been more than three SLS releases. Linux has a lot more choice in the "ready-to-run" department, but I also want a true BSD system, so NetBSD here I come..!