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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.nacamar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!main.Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD Date: 12 Feb 1997 11:45:45 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 57 Message-ID: <5dsah9$7qb@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <slrn5ekm26.5ml.ralsina@ultra7.unl.edu.ar> <32F68743.2781E494@freebsd.org> <slrn5feb63.93l.ralsina@ultra7.unl.edu.ar> <32F73973.167EB0E7@freebsd.org> <32F96662.F67@citynet.net> <5dcpoj$r8a@halon.vggas.com> <tx6804aigt.fsf@ime.usp.br> <5dpg38$1th@innocence.interface-business.de> <slrn5g135j.nml.exfjnzl@c01021-111poe.eos.ncsu.edu> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:158588 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2509 exfjnzl@rbf.apfh.rqh (Ravi K. Swamy) wrote: > >Well, but that's only a performance problem. Just to prevent > >miscomprehension: FreeBSD runs of course fine on IDE drives, too. > > But what about the various IDE interfaces? I seem to remember a > FreeBSD core member stating that 3 out of 5 IDE interfaces were > broken and that like all sane people everybody should go out and > buy a good SCSI controller and SCSI drives. Well that's a perfectly First: FreeBSD core-team members are just persons. Unless they mark it expressedly otherwise, they first and foremost present their very own opinions, and nothing else. I wouldn't assume you would represent the opinion of NCSU just because that's where you're posting from. Then, yes, at some time back, there were 3 out of 5 IDE chipsets around buggy and broken enough to not even think about using them _in DMA mode_. At least, that's how i understand it. (Apart from my notebook, i don't run IDE disks on any of my machines.) If Terry Lambert's opinion was right, not even Win 95 and other more in the PC line operating systems tried to use DMA on them. > I've got one > of those RZ1000's with the buggy read ahead. Does FreeBSD work with > this in a safe manner? Safe: yes. It doesn't use DMA mode, and PIO mode is ok. But it eats up CPU cycles. If your CPU is going to be idle all the time, that's probably nothing you would notice (and indeed, you could get good single-tasking performance then with a fast disk drive), but i wouldn't burn the valuable cycles of an 486/33 CPU with it. :-) > What about the buggy CMD640's? Are Somebody posted a workaround for their brokeness recently. Still, many people certainly wouldn't trust such a broken chipset at all (who knows if it will wipe out your disk some day if they couldn't even get the simplest tasks right?), but i also think it will find its way into the source tree. (For those who don't know: the CMD640 cannot handle both controller channels simultaneously. And no, you don't tell me news by explaining me that Linux can handle them, nor am i surprised about this.) > IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMS supported? Of course. Those that adhered well to the ATAPI standard were already in FreeBSD 2.1.x, but unfortunately, only the minority of CD-ROM vendors seem to make standard conformity their virtue. FreeBSD 2.2 (and higher) supports probably 80 or 90 % of the drives, leaving out only those that seriously break with standards. You'll note that these drives usually don't run with a generic driver under something like windows either, but require vendor drivers there. -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j