From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Sep 11 16:29:09 1995 Return-Path: hardware-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id QAA11133 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 11 Sep 1995 16:29:09 -0700 Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [192.216.222.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id QAA11114 for ; Mon, 11 Sep 1995 16:29:07 -0700 Received: from heart.cas.und.nodak.edu (heart.cas.und.NoDak.edu [134.129.212.33]) by who.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.11) with ESMTP id PAA26618 for ; Mon, 11 Sep 1995 15:41:09 -0700 Received: from sirius.cas.und.NoDak.edu (sirius.cas.und.NoDak.edu [134.129.212.30]) by heart.cas.und.nodak.edu (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id RAA33994 for ; Mon, 11 Sep 1995 17:41:15 -0500 Received: (from rand@localhost) by sirius.cas.und.NoDak.edu (8.6.12/8.6.6) id RAA23002; Mon, 11 Sep 1995 17:41:40 -0500 Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 17:41:40 -0500 From: "Douglas K. Rand" Message-Id: <199509112241.RAA23002@sirius.cas.und.NoDak.edu> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Motherboards & SCSI Sender: hardware-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I'm looking to upgrade my poor old and slow 66 MHz 486 to a Pentium system. (Its old and slow with Windows '95 on it, not FreeBSD!) I've got 20 Mbytes of RAM in 30 pin simms, a VLB BusLogic SCSI2 controller, and a VLB ATI Graphics Ultra Pro. I'm looking at a 120 or 133 MHz Pentium PCI mother board (replacing the SCSI and video cards). But, I haven't been keeping up with developments, so I'm looking for advice. I've also heard that there are (were?) some problems with specific PCI chip sets and some cards. Does anybody have any favorite motherboards and/or vendors? I've seen a few with built in SCSI controllers (both fast SCSI-2 and F/W SCSI-2). Should I get a system capable of EDO memory? (I was planning on either having my 32 pin simms converted to 72 pin or buying one of those adapters for holding 4 30 pin simms in 72 pin slot.) Anybody got a favorite SCSI controller? How about video cards? I'm assuming that the synchronous pipeline-burst cache is better than the normal ones. But would a 512K or 1M "normal" cache be better? Thanks for any assistance. -- Douglas K. Rand rand@aero.und.nodak.edu System/Network Administrator Scientific Computing Center -- UND Aerospace Office: +1 701 777 2801 University of North Dakota FAX: +1 701 777 2940 Box 9022, Grand Forks ND 58202-9022