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Date:      Wed, 16 May 2001 09:49:50 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
To:        Riccardo.Veraldi@fi.infn.it
Cc:        "Michael A. Smith" <msmith@code-fu.com>, <freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: 500a/au
Message-ID:  <15106.34174.166105.432424@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0105161439370.13070-100000@nikita.fi.infn.it>
References:  <5.0.2.1.2.20010516095407.00a6dd48@www.maiatech.com> <Pine.NEB.4.33.0105161439370.13070-100000@nikita.fi.infn.it>

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Riccardo.Veraldi@fi.infn.it writes:
 > 
 > Anyway in the file HARDWARE.TXT in the FreeBSD ftp site there is written
 > that the thing which make difference in recognizing a Miata MX5 against a
 > Miata GL is that the last one has 2 USB ports. But is it really correct ??
 > 
 > Rick

As far as I know, yes, as long as the USB ports are on the MLB.  One
would think that one could just use the version of the chipset.
However, I was told that they couldn't change the version number when
they fixed the problems.  If they did, they'd be forced to re-certify
the platform with Microsoft for use with NT.  This was expensive &
time consuming, so they avoided it, and now we have this confusing
situation.

I do know that the MLB was redesigned when they came out with the
fixed pyxis (21174) chipset.  The MX5 Miatas uses an Intel PCI/ISA
bridge, a National PC87303 Super I/O chip and a CMD PCI0646 IDE
controller.

The newer GL models have a Cypress 82C693 which has the PCI/ISA
bridge (function 0), SuperIO (on ISA bus) and IDE controller
functionality (functions 1 & 2) in one chip.
Additionally, at function 3, it has the USB controller.

As to why I'm pretty sure that this is true -- DEC was contractually
obligated to supply stable Miatas to us (*) so we got an early
engineering sample of the GL MLB.  As far as I can tell, both it and
the production MLB upgrades we received are identical to the above
description.

I'm pretty sure the MLB upgrade coincided with the PCI riser upgrade.
This upgrade involved integrating the ISP1040 SCSI adapter onto the
PCI riser card, as well as upgrading the version of the PCI-PCI
bridge.  When we received our MLB upgrades, we also received riser
upgrades and were told we must upgrade the risers as well.  I only
bothered if I needed to free up a SCSI adapter, as it was such as a
PITA.  (the MLB upgrades are trivially easy).

BTW, I think this is where the discrepancy in the version of scsi
controllers on the "a" and "au" models comes from.  Since the 1040 is
integrated onto the riser board, there is little point in slapping a
2940 into an a-series GL, so the a-series GLs almost certainly shipped
with ISP1040 adapters.

Cheers,

Drew
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Gallatin, Sr Systems Programmer	http://www.cs.duke.edu/~gallatin
Duke University				Email: gallatin@cs.duke.edu
Department of Computer Science		Phone: (919) 660-6590

				   
(*) MX5s aren't stable under heavy PCI load.  By heavy PCI load, I
mean multiple bus masters on the 64-bit bus which are capable of
sustaining over 120MB/sec.  I doubt you'll push it this hard.

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