*BSD News Article 72379


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From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: PentiumPro: Any Decent Motherboards?
Date: 29 Jun 1996 07:55:12 GMT
Organization: Symantec Corporation
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <4r2nh0$4sa@symiserver2.symantec.com>
References: <4qshb3$f3b@pier2.bayarea.net> <4qut13$9p@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.1
X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2

In <4qut13$9p@uriah.heep.sax.de>, j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes:
>mcnab@bayarea.net (David McNab) wrote:
>
>>      Are there /any/ P6 motherboards that work properly?
>
>wcarchive's one? :-)  But i think it's a gift from Intel.
>
>> Or am I better off sticking with a faster pentium until
>> the next generation chipsets come out?
>
>There have been rumours that Intel has been fixing their chipset
>problems.
>

I talked to an Intel tech engineer about this last week and here is the current
poop:

Intel has NOT trademarked the name "Triton" and the rep took many
pains to tell me that there is absolutely NO guarentee that anything labeled Triton,
or Triton II, or whatever ever meant anything.  In other words, it is perfectly
legal for SIS or Cyrix or some other chipset competetitor to label their chipset
"Triton" and there is nothing Intel can do about it.  So, in shopping for
motherboards, the name Triton is totally and completely meaningless.

Now, before you all tell me that Intel uses the name Triton on their web site,
etc. the rep told me that Intel has been forced into using the Triton name
when communicating with their customers, espically because it was stamped
on some of the chipsets!  However, she assured me that Intel actively discourages
use of that name. (at least now they do, obviously)

I was specifically asking about Pentium, not Pentium Pro, chipsets and I asked
about the famous "Triton doesen't support parity memory" and that drew blood.
It is quite obvious to me that Intel took a terrible PR beating when they released
the first versions of that chipset, that didn't support parity memory, and it is
also obvious that they have decided in the future never to do that again.  So,
While I didn't specifically ask about it, I feel pretty confident that we won't have
to deal with _that_ problem again.

With the Pentium line: the official chipset name is:

The Intel 82430HX, or the 82430VX, or the 82430MX.  These are the 3 "current"
chipsets, they all support parity memory, and have various other features.  I
suspect that these are labeled "Triton 2"

The Intel 82430FX is the non-parity memory chipset, and the rep told me Intel
considers it obsolete, which I translated into meaning that they are not making
it anymore and probably wish they never had done so.  I assume that these are
the "Triton" chipsets.

The rep also told me that the absolute best place for data on Intel chipsets is the
Intel FaxBack system, document #7279 apparently lists all PCI chipsets.