From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Apr 22 1:53:22 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.169.15]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77DBA37B424 for ; Sun, 22 Apr 2001 01:53:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) Received: from tedm.placo.com (nat-rtr.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.168.154]) by mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id f3M8rCk55298; Sun, 22 Apr 2001 01:53:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" To: "Andrew C. Hornback" , Cc: "FreeBSD Questions" Subject: RE: Install problem Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 01:53:12 -0700 Message-ID: <00f901c0cb09$a9778360$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 In-Reply-To: <001b01c0c91c$d856ac40$0e00000a@tomcat> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Andrew C. >Hornback > > What you are running into is the wonderful foresight of >IBM's engineers when they came up with MCA, back in the mid 80s. >MCA doesn't allow hardware to occupy an IRQ, as the rest of the >world understands it. > Actually, the MCA bus is a lot like the PCI bus. IBM wanted to permit interrupt sharing so they did, and actually the MCA bus had dozens to hundreds of technical advancements over ISA. At the time that MCA came out, there were MANY motherboard manufacturers that were wanting to implement it on their boards. Unfortunately, IBM got greedy and demanded very steep licensing fees. As a result, the rest of the industry came up with EISA which is technically poorer. Otherwise, today we would all be running MCA. > As much as I hate to say it, there is a version of Linux >that will run on MCA, if you can find it. And I believe Solaris >might run on it, but that would be an old version as Sol8 doesn't >even support ISA anymore. > > IBM builds good, strong, solid hardware... your machine >still being around and in good running shape is a testament to >that. Just good luck in finding software that'll work with their >quirky "next generation" architecture... > OS/2 anyone? Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message