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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux.misc:22339 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems:5053 comp.os.386bsd.misc:3334 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems,comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!uchinews!kimbark!lair From: lair@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Scott A. Laird) Subject: Re: Any Royal users out there? Message-ID: <1994Aug20.181253.4796@midway.uchicago.edu> Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu (News System) Reply-To: lair@midway.uchicago.edu Organization: uchicago strn fanclub References: <Cut7Ds.92A@ucdavis.edu> Date: Sat, 20 Aug 1994 18:12:53 GMT Lines: 75 In article <Cut7Ds.92A@ucdavis.edu>, Bill Broadley <broadley@ucdmath.ucdavis.edu> wrote: >Anyone have some feed back on royal? > >Especially if it's a SCSI-II machine using the NCR controller. > >I got a quote for: >p5-60, 16 Mb ram, 520 Mb SCSI-II + NCR, #9 964 pro 2 MB, 17" mag .26" $2870 > >Sounds like a great unix box ;-) If the NCR scsi works. I'm mainly >worried about the motherboard not having the NCR bios on board. > >Thanks for any input. > I bought a similar system (except it's a 90 Mhz box) about two months ago. I got it with 16 Mb and a 420 Mb IDE drive, since it was a few hundred cheaper, and I was at the edge of my budget (and I had about 800 Mb on two other drives ready to add). I dropped the 17" monitor they quoted (at CTX, the 1760LR if memory serves) and ordered a Idek MF-8617. Very _very_ nice tube, only about $750 these days. I had they upgrade it from the 16450 serial ports includes (2) to 16550s. They said it was based on the Neptune chipset, 4 ISA slots, 4 PCI slots. When I got it, it had a "Super P54VLPCI" or similar motherboard, with 4 PCI slots, 5 ISA (one shared PCI/ISA) with 2 of the ISA slots also VL-bus slots. This uses the Opti chipset, and for a 90 MHz pentium is pretty slow. They included a PCI IDE card (from IDEal or similar) that kept giving me errors under Linux, but they also had a standard ISA IDE multi-IO board with the IDE disabled, so I used that instead. The interesting thing is, instead of upgrading to a multi-IO board with 16550s, they gave me a board with 2 16550s and a parallel ports (actually, a 16553, for those keeping score at home). So I had 2 ISA slots filled and a couple of PCI slots filled, when they had claimed that it had *no* ISA slots used, and 4 ready to use. To give me 16 Mb, they also used *4* 1x32 SIMMs, using all 4 SIMM slots and providing no parity. All in all, this is sort of a mixed review. They could have configured it better (_much_ better), but it's still a nice system. I spent quite a while monkeying around with the BIOS settings until I found the fastest settings that wouldn't give me disk errors under Linux. I also spent quite a while (about 4 hours) trying to get 3 working COM ports, with the third on IRQ 5. I have never succeeded. I have tried every combination of the two cards provided, with no success. I figure that I'll just go buy a fancy 4F2H4S2P1G-type IO board and toss both of the cards it came with. In all honesty, you might want to look elsewhere for a system, since there are usually a couple of places (Quantex is usually one) that are cheaper than Royal, and offer better systems. But, as for this system (assuming that they use the 60 MHz version of my motherboard), it should include the NCR SCSI BIOS in the regular BIOS. Mine seems to (there's a setting for 'SCSI BIOS for offboard SCSI devic'e, or similar in the BIOS config). It also includes the nifty new AMI "WinBIOS" bit, which lets you use your mouse to browse through all of the various BIOS settings. This is built into the ROM, not some add on program. It's just chrome, but still :-). Also, you might be better looking at 90 MHz systems, since they are all 3.3 volts, and will offer a better upgrade path in the future. They also use a lot less power than the 60 MHz systems, and run cooler. Feel free to send me mail with any questions you may have. Scott. -- Scott A. Laird | "But this goes to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615" lair@midway.uchicago.edu | - Nigel on his 64-bit computer