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From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Adaptec 1522x SCSI
Date: 9 Mar 94 05:49:35 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <michaelv.763192175@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
References: <1994Mar7.213518.60003@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <CMDCCu.1I3v@austin.ibm.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ponderous.cc.iastate.edu
In <CMDCCu.1I3v@austin.ibm.com> rajat@austin.ibm.com (Rajat Datta) writes:
>I just tried to install on a machine with an Adaptec 1522 SCSI. Sure
>enough, the FreeBSD install diskettes does not recognize the adapter.
>Ah well! This pretty much forces me to install Linux.
No, the free BSD's (NetBSD/FreeBSD) do not provide support for the
Adaptec 1522 adapter. They have drivers only for the adapters which
have bus-mastering capability. Which is to say, they adapter must be
"intelligent" and be able to do its own SCSI processing and busmaster
DMA without assistance from the CPU. The 1522 and many other low-cost
SCSI adapters don't have this ability and are not supported by the
low-level SCSI drivers currently available.
Anyone is free to write a low-level driver for such an adapter for
{Net,Free}BSD, and I'm sure we'd all welcome such an addition simply
for compatibility reasons. But it will be somewhat slower, so most
users have opted instead just to upgrade to more powerful hardware.
The performance improvement is well worth it.
--
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Michael L. VanLoon Iowa State University Computation Center
michaelv@iastate.edu Project Vincent Systems Staff
Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Unix for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.