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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!purdue!mozo.cc.purdue.edu!staff.cc.purdue.edu!bj From: bj@staff.cc.purdue.edu (Ben Jackson) Subject: Re: FreeBSD platform Sender: news@mozo.cc.purdue.edu (USENET News) Message-ID: <Cs19IJ.B07@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 01:59:07 GMT References: <2uacoc$gfi@reuter.cse.ogi.edu> <2ukb2g$r7b@huey.cc.utexas.edu> Organization: Purdue University Keywords: configuration Lines: 48 In article <2ukb2g$r7b@huey.cc.utexas.edu>, Chris Ficklin <cseanf@huey.cc.utexas.edu> wrote: >In article <2uacoc$gfi@reuter.cse.ogi.edu>, >Mike Rudnick <rudnick@cse.ogi.edu> wrote: >>I'm buying a pentium system to run freeBSD (and occasionally DOS/windows). >>I will be writing C/C++ code for a floating point intensive application, >>probably using the GNU tool set. [...] >> I want 256K cache, 16 meg ram, 1280x1024 video with a 17" The 256K cache is *highly* recommended. I've heard that a DX2/66 is about 40% faster (wall clock time) with a 256K external cache. The Pentium supports 512k, and the extra 256K might be worth the $60-100 you'll pay for it. I have 16M in my 486/66, and it's pretty smooth. Another 8M would be nice for those times when I've got several X applications running and a "rayshade" going in the background. I might spring for the ~$350 when Zeos finally gets around to shipping me the 8M SIMMs they charged me for but didn't bother to install (no slots free right now). 1280x1024 would be crowded on a 17" monitor. For comfortable viewing, you would be better off with either 1152x900 or a 19" monitor. >>color monitor (for X windows), and at least 500Meg disk, but would >>like guidance. What has worked best in your experience? When I went disk-shopping, I discovered that you get the best $/Mb when you make the jump from the ~1050M drives to the ~1800M drives. I bought a Quantum ProDrive 1800S for about $250 more than I would have paid for a similar 1050M drive, which worked out to $0.58/M. With my 200M Maxtor, I have about 2G of disk space, and at this rate I'll fill it in the year. Sheesh, that's 100x more space than my first HD. :-) >PCI is the best way to go on the bus. Drivers are almost completely >finished for the NCR chip and possibly others. For video, almost >anything but Diamond cards will work. I have a Diamond SpeedStar Alpine 64 PCI, and it works well. I still can't recommend Diamond, since their tech support is either ignorant or dishonest about the boards they sell. Right now I'd have to recommend you avoid the Adaptec 1542Cf. I'm getting horrible performance from it. The board can DMA at 8M/s, the SCS2 disks can talk to it at 3-5M/s, and somehow on the other side of my filesystem layer, I get 650k/s. Bleah. -- Ben Jackson, bj@cs.purdue.edu