*BSD News Article 79290


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FBSD and EISA machines
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 15:50:30 -0700
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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Message-ID: <324B08B6.695678E2@FreeBSD.org>
References: <324ac5e5.4422121@news.tiac.net>
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To: tarbet@swaa.com

Margaret Tarbet wrote:
> I think that not-so-long-ago i started to read a discussion, or
> maybe it was only a contention, that FBSD doesn't really take
> advantage of EISA address space; that anything over 16Mb
> is just as useless as under DOS.  I wish i could go back and

Not true on several counts:

1. We can and do talk to EISA cards in the EISA address space.
2. The 24 bit DMA address limitation only applies to ISA cards.
3. Even with ISA cards, we support "bounce buffering" so that DMA
   buffers are all allocated in < 16MB memory (that's just for DMA,
   you can still access any other region of memory for the copy in/out).

P.S. That's an inhumanely long signature you have there. :)
-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  President, FreeBSD Project