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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!uunet!world!hd From: hd@world.std.com (HD Associates) Subject: Re: AH2840 VL Message-ID: <CuH2x3.IJ7@world.std.com> Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA References: <32a3od$1ab@urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> <michaelv.776576696@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> <32cenr$3bk@u.cc.utah.edu> Date: Sat, 13 Aug 1994 12:05:27 GMT Lines: 39 In article <32cenr$3bk@u.cc.utah.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote: >In article <michaelv.776576696@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes: (the ordinary Adaptec question) >How about 2 glimmers? > >1) There's an Alpha AHA2740 (also an AIC7770) driver for Linux > in the Alpha directory on sunsite.unc.edu. The difference is > the AHA2840 is a VLB card (not that much difference -- the > dirver "should work for the 2840" according to the authors. > >2) You don't need to sign non-disclosure to use the default > microcode in these things (once again, people, ask yourselves, > if it doesn't have any microcode until you put it there, how > the hell can DOS boot from it?). You just need to get docs > for the default stuff (available). I thought about option 2 the first time I saw you propose it and consider it high risk. >From Adaptec's point of view, all the base microcode needs to do is boot DOS. Given their history of declining to fix buggy microcode if they don't see a large enough market, I wouldn't want to be off working in that little corner of their software (I can hear tech support now: "You mean you are using the bootstrap microcode??!!?!?!", or even more likely the mantra "You need to download the microcode... You need to download the microcode..."). Possible problems include no sync negotiation, boggled disconnect/reconnect, and almost anything else that isn't involved with slowly reading the boot image off disk. Peter -- Peter Dufault Real Time Machine Control and Simulation HD Associates, Inc. Voice: 508 433 6936 hd@world.std.com Fax: 508 433 5267