>      - Do I need to do anything to my kernel to make it work with the EISA
>        motherboard/BIOS? (I'm NOT changing to an EISA drive controller, yet)
>        (It'll be inconvenient to rebuild the kernel after the board swap)

No.  EISA is transparent to the software.  The only thing you would
need special is if you bought an EISA device, like a bt747s SCSI
controller or 3c579 ethernet card, where you'd want to build a new
kernel to use the new device (but this would be the same as if you
bought a new ISA device, too).

>      - Can I safely turn on the chip and board-level caches, now that it'll
>        be an Intel 486DX2 chip, instead of a Cyrix 486DLC?
>        (Wary of reactivating the filesystem decay we were having)

Probably, yes.  It depends on how well designed your motherboard is.
Most modern motherboards have decent cache circuitry, so you shouldn't
have any problem.  Some really cut-rate motherboards, however, skimp
on things and may cause you problems -- it just depends on how well
designed your motherboard is.  The only way to tell is to turn all the
caching on and try it.  If you have write-back cache and you get
problems, you might have to change it to write-through.

For example, my motherboard (NICE Super-EISA) works perfectly with all
caching enabled in full write-back mode, with my EISA bt747s SCSI
controller (although I did have to disable parity checking).  Other
motherboards may not give you as satisfactory results, though most
EISA motherboards are better made than the absolute cheapest ISA
counterparts.

>2. I looked around and see that NetBSD-1.0 is out, but I don't see any
> FAQ about upgrading from a running 0.9 system to 1.0, reasons I might want
> to do so, reasons I might not want to do so, how I can do it without losing
> any of the data on my 5+ GB of disk, etc. Could someone point me to the
> FAQ, or at least to answers to some of those installation/upgrade questions?

I believe official announcement of 1.0 is due for this weekend, or
soon thereafter.  You might check the INSTALL doc and see if that has
upgrade instructions.

				--Michael

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   Michael L. VanLoon     michaelv@HeadCandy.com     michaelv@iastate.edu
  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
     Working NetBSD ports: 386+PC, Mac, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4c, PC532
               In progress: DEC pmax (MIPS R2k/3k), VAX, Sun4m
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