From owner-freebsd-hackers  Thu Sep 19 12:39:50 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA09170
          for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:39:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA09131
          for <hackers@FreeBSD.org>; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:39:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA01311; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:37:17 -0700
From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Message-Id: <199609191937.MAA01311@phaeton.artisoft.com>
Subject: Re: the old intel aurora board...
To: michaelv@MindBender.serv.net (Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:37:17 -0700 (MST)
Cc: macgyver@infinet.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <199609190801.BAA07949@MindBender.serv.net> from "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" at Sep 19, 96 01:01:14 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> >I have a chance to purchase a Aurora board for $800. It has
> >a P6-200 CPU, ATX Case.
> >I know this board use the old orion chipset, though I also
> >heard that some of the later stepings of the chipset is
> >"fixed". Is this a good deal, or should I fork out the
> >extra and get a Venus Board instead?
> 
> I personally wouldn't buy any Intel board, but that's just MHO...
> 
> See related discussions on the lists recently for alternatives.

I would, if it came from their server products group.

Unfrotunately, the ones they sell outside the company tend to come
from their OEM products group, and generally fall into the category
of "technical and minimal standards compliance".  That is, they do
stupid things like making all PCI cards go to the same interrupt
because the PCI standard technically allows this, even though it
means that you can't interleave interrupts from multiple PCI cards
(for instance, oh, say, reading a disk on a PCI controller and
writing NFS packets to a PCI ethernet card at the same time).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.