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Date:      Sun, 22 Apr 2001 01:53:12 -0700
From:      "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
To:        "Andrew C. Hornback" <hornback@wireco.net>, <genocide@adelphia.net>
Cc:        "FreeBSD Questions" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: Install problem
Message-ID:  <00f901c0cb09$a9778360$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
In-Reply-To: <001b01c0c91c$d856ac40$0e00000a@tomcat>

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>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Andrew C.
>Hornback
>
>	What you are running into is the wonderful foresight of 
>IBM's engineers when they came up with MCA, back in the mid 80s.  
>MCA doesn't allow hardware to occupy an IRQ, as the rest of the 
>world understands it.
>

Actually, the MCA bus is a lot like the PCI bus.  IBM wanted to
permit interrupt sharing so they did, and actually the MCA
bus had dozens to hundreds of technical advancements over ISA.

At the time that MCA came out, there were MANY motherboard
manufacturers that were wanting to implement it on their boards.
Unfortunately, IBM got greedy and demanded very steep licensing
fees.  As a result, the rest of the industry came up with EISA
which is technically poorer.  Otherwise, today we would all be running
MCA.

>	As much as I hate to say it, there is a version of Linux 
>that will run on MCA, if you can find it.  And I believe Solaris 
>might run on it, but that would be an old version as Sol8 doesn't 
>even support ISA anymore.
>
>	IBM builds good, strong, solid hardware... your machine 
>still being around and in good running shape is a testament to 
>that.  Just good luck in finding software that'll work with their 
>quirky "next generation" architecture...
>

OS/2 anyone?

Ted Mittelstaedt                      tedm@toybox.placo.com
Author of:          The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide
Book website:         http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com




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