From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jun 8 13:06:40 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA10626 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:06:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lserver.infoworld.com (lserver.infoworld.com [192.216.48.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA10598; Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:06:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ccgate.infoworld.com by lserver.infoworld.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #12) id m0uSVO0-000wzdC; Sat, 8 Jun 96 14:17 PDT Received: from cc:Mail by ccgate.infoworld.com id AA834264287; Sat, 08 Jun 96 14:56:54 PST Date: Sat, 08 Jun 96 14:56:54 PST From: "Brett Glass" Message-Id: <9605088342.AA834264287@ccgate.infoworld.com> To: "Rodney W. Grimes" Cc: sef@kithrup.com, questions@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Which dual Pentium motherboard? Cyrix SMP? Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > This makes the card not a _pure_ EISA card. If it has resources on it > that respond to I/O cycles that are not controlled by the EISA > configuration parameters, the card is in violation of the EISA spec. Perhaps true. But of course, given the choice between "purity" and a gazillion or so support calls, we all know which any vendor in his right mind will choose. > Yepp.... it's just not a pretty picture either way you dice it. Remeber, > part of the idea of EISA was to eliminate jumper settings and go to a > soft configure, but everyone seems to have cheated on this one :-(. The problem is that the spec wasn't well thought-out -- in quite a number of ways. There was no way to "bootstrap;" that is, a machine whose floppy controller was not configured to work could not run the configuration program. The configuration programs were also horrors: big, slow, and ugly. And a full set of configuration files couldn't fit on a disk. The bad engineering that went into that software is largely responsible for the failure of EISA. --Brett