From owner-freebsd-scsi Thu Nov 25 11:26:14 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Received: from front5m.grolier.fr (front5m.grolier.fr [195.36.216.55]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 333C814C97 for ; Thu, 25 Nov 1999 11:26:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from groudier@club-internet.fr) Received: from localhost (ppp-115-161.villette.club-internet.fr [194.158.115.161]) by front5m.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with SMTP id UAA16498; Thu, 25 Nov 1999 20:25:55 +0100 (MET) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 21:50:37 +0100 (MET) From: Gerard Roudier X-Sender: groudier@localhost To: Wilko Bulte Cc: cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NEWS: SYM53C1010 and Ultra3 support In-Reply-To: <199911242219.XAA84898@yedi.iaf.nl> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Wilko Bulte wrote: > As Gerard Roudier wrote ... > >=20 > >=20 > > On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Chris Dillon wrote: > >=20 > > > On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Ollivier Robert wrote: > > >=20 > > > > According to Gerard Roudier: >=20 > [...] >=20 > > > support for certain cards has to be turned off in the older ncr > > > driver, but I assume that can be conditionalized to happen only when > > > the new sym driver is compiled in. > >=20 > > The SYM driver needs LOAD/STORE SCRIPTS instructions to be supported by > > the PCI/SCSI chip.=20 > > As a result, 810 rev < 0x10, 825 rev < 0x10 and 815 all revisions suppo= rt > > is dropped. LOAD/STORE have lots of advantages (I have detailed some in >=20 > Allow me to make a remark here: where does that leave people with older > *mainboards with embedded NCR chips* ? Might be not too interesting=20 > for Intel folks, but most likely *is* for the Alpha folks. >=20 > Mind you, I have not checked this on my Alphas (and the one Intel > with embedded ncr) but I have a *bad* feeling over it as they are > older stuff. >=20 > The 'lets throw away the old hardware' that reigns the Intel world is > less applicable to the Alpha world. A driver that cannot accomodate > older hardware is a step in the wrong direction here.=20 >=20 > Just my $ 0.02 You just lost your money. There is no problem using the both drivers on either Linux or FreeBSD. On Linux, user can enter boot commands options in order to assign any cards to the driver it desires, providing the desired driver supports the board. This is not so easy under FreeBSD now, but I do use the both drivers at the same time on my box. The right direction is, in my opinion, to have drivers that allows users to get IN TIME functionnalities and performances they pay for. By the way, this not only requires development but also maintainance.=20 I have decided to have 2 drivers for the SYM53C8XX family and, as you should have known, nobody else seemed to have decided to do differently for _actually_ providing users features users pay for and not having to deal for a long time with to complex driver code. By the way, SYMBIOS did the same, independantly. G=E9rard. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message