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Date:               Thu, 28 Dec 1995 13:58:19 +600 CDT
From:      "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com>
To:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Subject:         Re: what does NCR support look like?
Message-ID:  <DF6C0D5298E@bldg1.croute.com>

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Thus spake dkelly@iquest.com (David Kelly) (Thu, 28 Dec 1995):

|  Subject:        Re: Recommendations for SCSI card?
|  Copies to:      msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au

|  Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> said about NCR BIOS:
|  >
|  >Funny, we only have one of them in an ASUS board; the rest are in a
|  >variety of J-random Triton PCI motherboards, mostly Soyo and Expert (the
|  >Expert boards are crap, but they're relatively cheap).
|  >
|  >All of these have the NCR bios; in fact, I haven't met a PCI motherboard
|  >on sale here yet that doesn't.  YMMV.
|  
|  What does NCR (now Symbios) bios support *look* like? My Nexgen PCI-90 as
|  AMI bios but nothing within its pretty graphic-windowed setup suggests
|  support of an NCR/Symbios SCSI card. Recently checked a PCI/VL-bus 486 w/
|  AMI bios whose setup looked just like my Nexgen except for the addition of
|  some kind of EPA crap.

You should get text with NCR and a version number (mine's 3.04.00 I 
think) with drive C: set to not installed, however (I'm guessing wildly) 
the card probably has to be installed (probably wouldn't want that stuff 
popping up just any old time).  I can check mine at home tonite -- pull 
the card and fire it up to see what screaming it does.

Most well behaved BIOS's should have some entry about disabling on-board 
support if it's incorporated.

|  
|  In another discussion elsewhere it was suggested that some
|  NCR/Symbios-based cards come with a bios support module (on floppy) that
|  can be combinded with your FLASH bios image and written into the
|  motherboard FLASH bios. Also hear this often trashes your FLASH bios making
|  the system totally unusable.

Agreed; who's to say what makes for mixing binary contents and making it 
come out right -- that's why I never mess with non-BIOS SCSI cards.

|  
|  As for myself, found a "used" 2940 with no documentation or software (but
|  looked like it was new in the factory anti-static bag) for $125.
|  

Probably the OEM version (no kit: cables, software, or docs).  Good 
price, though.  Just the plain brown wrapper.




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