"Aron T. Roberts" writes:
> Current Hardware config:
> (* = something I am pretty sure will need to be swapped out for better
> supported hardware)
> 
> * Adaptec 2940UW

Actually this is a reasonable controller if you are running -current.

> * 3COM 3c905

My recommendation: replace with one of the DEC tulip based cards. They
are about $100. I don't know if they are actually the best hardware
out there, but Matt Thomas' drivers make them act damn nicely.

> I'm considering getting a few scsi adapters and more disks and spreading a
> ccd interleave across them... any comments? is ccd considered stable
> enough for "production environments" ?

Thats a question for others to answer.

> I also have a Digital TZ87x (forget the last number) it's basically a 5
> tape DLT unit that I am thinking of putting on this box... any one know if
> this should work and if so what kind of greif I might expect?

We have some support for this sort of thing.

> all of the main servers at this company are currently underpowered NT
> boxes... This NetBSD box needs to establish credibility so I can justify
> decomisioning more of the NT machines. It doesn't have to be the fastest
> solution... downtime is the real killer.

I'm doing pretty well with NetBSD, myself. 1.3 should be a killer
release if we ever get enough round tuits together to cut it.

> as an aside I am thinking of proding them to port our bsp generator to run
> on NetBSD and IRIX. and was idling wondering how well NetBSD/i386 utilised
> the FPU.. I remeber seeing some posts a while back with FreeBSD and Linux
> folks comparing thier FPU lib penis size and was wondering how NetBSD
> performed in that area.

NetBSD's float libraries are nearly identical. The trick is you want
to compile them to use the x87 support if you are going to do heavy
crunching. As it stands, by default they are set up not to stress our
(bad) emulator very much. Native support is far faster.

Perry