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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!hunter.premier.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.texas.net!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!204.245.3.50!news.primenet.com!bkogawa From: bkogawa@primenet.com (Bryan Ogawa) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: NEED: The Best PC for FreeBS (Advice is asked) Date: 8 Dec 1996 15:59:03 -0700 Organization: Primenet Services for the Internet Lines: 148 Message-ID: <58fh7n$qn@nnrp1.news.primenet.com> References: <5882ep$amr@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <58f8ih$pdb@raven.eva.net> <58fcv9$7jc@node5.frontiernet.net> X-Posted-By: bkogawa@206.165.5.106 (bkogawa) dsf@node5.frontiernet.net (Dan Foster) writes: >In article <58f8ih$pdb@raven.eva.net> you write: >>igor vladimirovich roshchin (igor@students.uiuc.edu) wrote: >> >>: I need to make a decision in a couple days: >>: Need to find the best - in sense of quality (reliability+support by >>: FreeBSD) + : performance, PC: >>: Motherboard - ? >> >>Just about any of the major motherboard manufacturers will work. You >>might as well go with a Pentium box. If you want to go with SCSI on >>the motherboard, look into Quicktech/Iwill boards. They have an >>imbedded 2940U(W) motherboard. You'll end up saving about $200 by >>getting SCSI on the motherboard. The only reason I wouldn't go with >>this option is if you need a twin channel SCSI card. By having >>SCSI imbedded on the motherboard you do lose a PCI slot. >But, look at it another way.... if you *don't* have the SCSI controller >embedded on the motherboard, you still lose a PCI slot (unless, of course >you get one of those el cheapo ISA cards) anyway when using a decent >SCSI controller in a PCI slot. >I guess you're saying that at least without embedding it on the motherboard, >you at least have slightly more choices of how to use your PCI slots. Just FYI, there's a page somewhere on http://www.freebsd.org/ which gives Jordan Hubbard's recommendations. They're very conservative (IMO), but they are a good starting point. The two mb manufacturer names you'll hear on the freebsd mailing lists are Asus (#1) and Tyan (a somewhat distant second). Personally, I have a Super Micro board which has served me well. Only recommendation is to get the Intel 430HX chipset. They are more expensive than the 430VX (the newer ones), but are mostly superior, from what I understand. >>: SCSI card - ? >> >>Buslogic BT-958 or Adaptec 2940UW. If you anticipate you may need >>more than 7 devices, go for the twin channel model, the 3940UW. I >>don't know if Buslogic has a twin channel card as of yet. The third choice here are NCR/Symbios based cards. The 810s and 815s are supported, although I'm not sure if the 825s are. Note that you'll need BIOS support to boot from these cards, either on the mb (the ASUS boards have this, and maybe the Tyans do?), or on the card itself. The major advantage of these cards is low price -- running between US$60 and US$120 per card -- and performace that's supposed to be close to the Adaptec/Buslogic level (slightly higher interrupt use, I believe). Driver support under freebsd is very good. If you're building a machine which requires HUGE disk bandwidth, it's possible to toss several of these on a PCI board and 6 or 9 disks and get very good performance, from what I understand. personally, I have an Adaptec 2940UW which I like, although I rarely use my disk bandwidth meaningfully. I'm considering a SymBios based card for my next machine. >Would generally recommend the Buslogic cards. Superior driver support. >Adaptecs are decent - with 70% of the PC SCSI market (as I once heard) - >are everywhere. But the 2940[UW] are somewhat more sensitive to flaky or >less-than-ideal cabling/termination. So if you do go the 2940[UW] route, >you *MUST* buy top-notch cabling (whether internal or external!) and >termination for the SCSI devices on the bus. This, of course, is generally >good practice with SCSI - but the 2940 is just somewhat more anal about >it. ;-) >I don't have any experience with a 3940UW so I can't comment on it, >but the specs looks nothing less than awesome. How good is the driver >support, though? (curious) >>: Ethernet card - ? (3COM ? 3C509 ???) >>PCI. There's no reason to go ISA unless you want to set up a diskless >That's my gut impression.. *BUT* there is *exactly* _ONE_ reason why >you wouldn't go the PCI route. That is - if you have a limited number >of PCI slots (say, 3) and you have a super-duper setup where you *need* >4 or 5 cards... you'd relegate the least demanding cards to ISA, and use >the rest of the slots for PCI and the more demanding cards (in terms of >bus traffic). >100BaseT ethernet, though, would be an excellent candidate for PCI, imho. >But if you *really* want to get more out of 100 Mbps traffic, you might >consider FDDI. Take the MTU for Ethernet (10 or 100 Mbps) and FDDI - >Ethernet MTU is typically set at 1500 bytes... FDDI at 4500 bytes. >So even if you go from 10 Mbps Ethernet to 100 Mbps Ethernet, you still >have to stop every so often (1500 bytes) to generate an interrupt or >move memory into a DMA area. With FDDI, at least, it's less frequent - >therefore, less overhead. FDDI cards today are *FAR* cheaper than the >ones of yesteryear and resembles a token ring scheme (in terms of >message passing) but has redundancy features built in (ie two rings, one >for each direction typically.. if one ring fails, the other can handle >both directions), among other things. So, just a thought if you really >have need for LAN-based server needs...otherwise, ignore me. ;-) >>FreeBSD box. According to the FAQ, only a few ISA cards support >>diskless FreeBSD boxes. You can't get 100 base ISA cards since they >>don't have the throughput to handle 100 base effectively. I have been >>given recommendations on using PCI cards with the DEC PCI chipset (i.e. >>the 'de' driver) with good results. There are quite a few cards on the >>market which are compatable with the 'de' driver. >This is *excellent* advice. DEC makes *SCREAMER* chipsets for certain >products - Alpha systems and Ethernet cards comes to mind right away. >I know at least one SMC card (forgot model offhand, mail me if interested) >utilizes the DEC chipset (Tulip, I believe). >>: Did anybody have any experience of using E2 or/and E8 with SCSI >>: with a FreeBSD box ? >> >>Sorry, I have no experience with this. >Ditto. :) make that three... >>: And, a lame question: Is there any reason to have a "system" disk for >>: a FreeBSD box (PC) with IDE interface as opposed to SCSI ? >> >>Only if you like headaches. :) SCSI support is much better with >>FreeBSD than with (E)IDE. >Ditto. :-) Yes, it is *possible*, sure... but it's generally easier to >go all SCSI or all IDE/EIDE. But if you really want/need to, you can use >IDE to boot off, and SCSI for rest of hard drives, or something. Was >a cinch for me. (several minutes tweaking the BIOS setup options, though) >To the proponents of IDE claiming SCSI is *always* more expensive than IDE >drives is spewing utter bullshit. It all depends on how willing you are for >looking for good bargains. IDE makes more sense if you have a >single-user non-server-type system (ie economical/performance reasons). >But if you have a server-class system... SCSI is a must due to many >technical reasons that I won't go into here (but email me if interested). I agree. I'm toying with the idea of a cheap system to run -current, OS/2, win95, and possibly linux, on (think under $1000), and an all SCSI system is still under consideration (esp. since I don't need a fast CD-ROM). Cheap SCSI's out there, although you may have to dig. >-Dan Foster >Internet: dsf@frontiernet.net -- bryan k. ogawa <bkogawa@primenet.com> <bkogawa@netvoyage.net>