Date: Wed, 12 Mar 97 22:54:16 CST From: Joe Greco <jgreco@solaria.sol.net> To: batie@agora.rdrop.com (Alan Batie) Cc: ping@stepnet.com, neal@pernet.net, mmead@goof.com, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, julian@whistle.com, tom@sdf.com, isp@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: freebsd as a news server? Message-ID: <199703130454.WAA12296@solaria.sol.net> In-Reply-To: <m0w51Vg-0008zMC@agora.rdrop.com> from "Alan Batie" at Mar 12, 97 07:48:56 pm
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> > BTW, where can i find ncr-8xx based cards cheap? what brand/model > > should i be looking for? > > Be careful --- some motherboards/bios's have trouble booting from them. The ASUS SC-200 is a well-designed controller, based on the NCR-810, that will cost about $60-$70 US. It is not ASUS-specific. I have seen similar cards for $30-$40 that are poorly designed: they typically have discrete SIP termination resistor packs on them which are often installed backwards from the factory, and are not as nice as the ASUS cards. NCR-810 based cards rely on the host BIOS to support them; they do not have an onboard BIOS like a 2940. All ASUS PCI boards I've seen support them. Many others do too, even a good number of boards which make NO mention of the fact. Award BIOS based boards in particular are good suspects. Additionally, if your BIOS does not support them, you can buy one 2940 (to boot from) and have a few 810's for extra SCSI channels (FreeBSD has no need for "BIOS support" per se). Or you could boot off of a crummy IDE drive. Lastly, MR BIOS is an option that may be feasible for some folks. I've upgraded a few Intel motherboards to an MR BIOS plus the NCR extensions, and it works fantastic. With all that in mind, I agree with the original poster: be careful. However, given the price, and the performance, you really aren't risking too much. :-) ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847
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