*BSD News Article 29536


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From: guy@dearg.cuillin.org.uk (Guy Dawson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Hardware for *BSD next weekend!
Date: 12 Apr 1994 16:29:15 GMT
Organization: Cuillin
Lines: 35
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2oei8r$bc5@dearg.cuillin.org.uk>
References: <2nip6pINNgm7@grumpy.symantec.com> <1994Apr3.054516.27308@hal.depaul.edu> <Co43us.61x@latcs1.lat.oz.au> <michaelv.766119620@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: dearg.cuillin.org.uk

In article <michaelv.766119620@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>, michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes:

[ stuff about the VL300 card being based on the Adaptec 6360 chip like the
AHA-1522 PIO card ]

|> Even though this card may work under Linux, understand that there is
|> no support for it that I know of under NetBSD or FreeBSD.  Also,
|> please realize that this card, like IDE, requires the CPU to do all
|> the work and will be *much* slower than an intelligent SCSI card such
|> as the BusLogic cards or the Adaptec 154x and 174x.  It's up to you,
|> but be aware of the limitations before you buy.

Disk transfer may not be much slower with the CPU performing the I/O
data transfers to and from the card and memory. However, since *BSD and
Linus are multi-tasking the CPU will be busy doing the transfers and
the processing of *OTHER* tasks will suffer.

The big win with DMA is not faster transfers but a free CPU while the
transfer is occuring. This is reflected in better throughtput over all...

|> 
|> -- 
|> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|>  Michael L. VanLoon                 Iowa State University Computation Center
|>     michaelv@iastate.edu                    Project Vincent Systems Staff
|>   Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
|> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

   

Guy
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guy Dawson 	home	:	guy@cuillin.org.uk
		work	:	guyd@hoskyns.co.uk
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