Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 00:00:25 -0500 From: Matt Penna <mdp1261@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: oldtlhingan@hotmail.com Subject: Re: legacy ISA IDE controller card Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020210234410.023ebec0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> In-Reply-To: <F170rYILoygXLsxpTlj00005c7b@hotmail.com>
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At 11:20 PM 2/10/02 -0500, Noone Here wrote:
>i have an old ISA controller card which i wanted to use so i can go beyond
>the 4 IDE drives my pc handles onboard. are there any special
>considerations? would /stand/sysinstall see this additional controller and
>any drives(s) attached to it? or would it be better to install it "by
>hand" - and if so, how?
>
>is it possible, if i had more than one of these ISA controller cards, to
>use them all? how many IDE drives can i hook up this way on one machine? i
>was imagining some kind of raid/vinum thing with a slew of cheapo disks.
It's been a while since I've used one of these, so my memory may be foggy
on this. Anyone, please feel free to correct me.
Unless the card has its own on-board BIOS - and I have never seen an old
legacy ISA controller that did, though some of the newest ISA controllers
may have one - the drives are detected by the system BIOS, so I assume you
cannot have more than 4 drives. (Or whatever your system's limits is - some
can only take 2.) I've never tried to push this limit myself, though, so
it's possible it will do what you're hoping.
I'd be interested in hearing if the OS could actually see a drive that the
BIOS does not know about. If it can, you can probably load up the system
with as many controllers as the system's resources will allow and not have
any trouble.
All I can say is, plug in 5 hard disks and see if it works. Perhaps someone
else has actually tried this already and can offer something more substantive.
Beware of conflicts with your ISA devices - choose your settings carefully.
Matt
--
Matt Penna mdp1261@rit.edu
ICQ: 399825 S0ba on AOLIM
"The trouble with computers, of course, is
that they're very sophisticated idiots." -Dr. Who
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