On 21 Sep 1997, Wolfgang Rupprecht wrote:

> 
> mleone@neomedia.it (Marco Leone) writes:
> > I would like to know if the NetBSD kernel can build on a 
> > Motherboard ATX.
> > Are there any kind of problem?
> 
> It works fine on an Intel Venus board, which is an ATX.
> 
> The only thing that sucks on the Venus is:
> 
> 	1) The PS/2 kbd/mouse connectors are RX only.
> 	   One can not TX to the kbd or mouse to set the modes.  If
> 	   you have a mouse that comes up in a bad mode, you are out
> 	   of luck.  (eg. my mouse systems mouse is unusable, logitech
>            works fine.)

You can't diddle the DTR line to the mouse?  I have a Mouse Systems
compatible mouse, and if you don't blink the DTR line, it won't activate
the middle button.  Like the XFree86 ClearDTR flag (pointer section of the
XF86Config file).

> 
> 	2) The advanced power management stuff is so advanced it
>            powers down a running system that has plenty of disk
>            activity. It hangs it a way that forces one to reset or
> 	   power cycle to get things moving again things.  Turn APM
> 	   off.
> 
>         3) The PNP support will mangle the INT and DMA selection in a
> 	   persistant fashion.  Once you stick in a card that makes
> 	   lavish INT and DMA demands, your system will double up INTs
> 	   to assign to your other cards.  These suboptimal INTs will
> 	   persist even after you remove the offending card.  I had to
> 	   open the box and jumper the "clear nvram" pins to get back
> 	   to sanity.
> 
> If you look the other way on these minor foibles you can get a darn
> nice system thats both faster and cheaper then the Sparc stuff.
> 
> -wolfgang
> 
> 

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Chuck Robey                 | Interests include any kind of voice or data 
chuckr@eng.umd.edu          | communications topic, C programming, and Unix.
213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1  |
Greenbelt, MD 20770         | I run Journey2 and picnic, both FreeBSD
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