*BSD News Article 28857


Return to BSD News archive

Xref: sserve comp.os.os2.misc:89194 comp.windows.x.i386unix:8178 comp.os.linux.misc:11802 comp.os.linux.help:26660 comp.os.386bsd.misc:2135 comp.os.386bsd.questions:9492 comp.sys.next.software:10337 comp.sys.next:17030
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!netmbx.de!zib-berlin.de!news.th-darmstadt.de!fauern!lrz-muenchen.de!colin.muc.de!ars.muc.de!rommel
From: rommel@ars.muc.de (Kai Uwe Rommel)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc,comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.sys.next.software,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: PCI bus cards (graphics and SCSI) which work?
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2d95d09f.415253@ars.muc.de>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 19:29:51 +0100
References: <2mslqq$1vl8@rs560.cl.msu.edu> <Cn9pq2.8yq@inter.NL.net> <2n1lo6$olj@davinci.uni-paderborn.de>
Organization: Private
X-Posting-Software: UUPC/extended 1.12i inews (18Mar94 13:14)
Lines: 43

laire@davinci.uni-paderborn.de (Ralph Schmidt) writes in article <2n1lo6$olj@davinci.uni-paderborn.de>:
>josv@inter.NL.net (Jos Vos) writes:
>
>
>>I'm considering to buy the SPEA/Video-7 Mercury PCI with 2 MB VRAM.
>>It can do what you want.  Unfortunately I have (until now) only heard 
>>of people using the VLB version of this card, so I'm not sure about
>>100 % compatibility between the VLB and PCI versions.
>
>I'm also interested in some NS-PCI-Support information...
>i plan to buy a PCI board with build in SCSI(NCR) and i'm
>wondering if there's already driver support or something in
>the pipeline.

SCSI (NCR) support is there, although it has a few shortcomings still.
Besides offering great performance, their driver currently can't
address memory >16MB, due to a bug. A new driver is said to be
released (according to NCR support people) during the end of April
which will solve that problem. Another known problem is that current
versions of the NCR SCSI BIOS (SDMS) can't correctly handle disks
larger than 1 GB. Again, according NCR support people and verified by
a board maker who uses it, a new version of it is currently in test at
the board maker's and will soon solve this problem. Besides these two
problems, the NCR SCSI chip on PCI boards seems to be very fast and
also quite stable.

For graphics cards, the fact that such a card has PCI bus should be
transparent (invisible), except that it is faster. We have one PCI
machine here with a PCI version of the Miro Crystal 8S (S3805) and it
is *really* fast, even about 20% faster than the VLB version in a
machine with the same bus clock. The IBM S3 drivers worked fine
immediately, like they also run fine on the VLB and ISA versions of
that graphics card.

Kai Uwe Rommel

--
/* Kai Uwe Rommel                                      Muenchen, Germany *
 * rommel@ars.muc.de                              CompuServe 100265,2651 *
 * rommel@informatik.tu-muenchen.de                  Fax +49 89 324 4524 */

DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt
handler, and always will be.                -Russell Williams