On Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 04:41:43PM +0200, Havard Eidnes wrote:
>
> > I just purchased a new PC164SX bare mainboard on which to install
> > NetBSD.  I would like to obtain a good, solid, well-supported
> > Ultra-wide SCSI host adapter for this system.  Searching the Net
> > yielded that any NCR, SYMBIOS or Qlogic controller should be
> > supported by SRM (it needs to be supported because I will have one
> > drive and I want to boot off of it).  Are there any 64-bit SCSI
> > boards out there that I might be able to find which really serve
> > well under NetBSD, and can be booted from SRM?
> 
> Finding a new SCSI card that is supported by SRM is probably going to
> be difficult.  First off, this depends on the SRM variant you're
> using; my information is for an Alpha PC164.  For the NCR/Symbios
> cards, you will probably need an original plain 810, not 810a, and
> that's a narrow card.  For the Qlogic, you also apparently need
> hardware which is considered slightly "historic" at this point --
> Qlogic 1020, again a narrow card.  I have a Qlogic 1040B in mine, and
> SRM does not recognize it as a bootable device.
> 
> You'll probably find the same situation being the case if you want to
> find a network card which is bootable.
> 
> Your best bet is probably to get your hands on a used card from that
> era which is of the right type, and which is (re)labeled by DEC.
> 
> What I ended up doing was getting an IDE drive for my system, and
> using that as the system disk.  Doesn't the PC164SX also have an
> on-board IDE controller?
> 
> As for 64-bit SCSI, I'd probably go with a Qlogic 1080 or look for one
> of the iWill Qlogic-based cards, some of which are dual-channel and
> which are probably more reasonable priced than the Qlogic-original
> cards (even though they use the same chips).

I am running an NCR/Symbios 875 ultra/wide in mine and I boot
from it.  You see these occasionally... I really should try
dropping a 2940 in to see if it can also see that.

I tend to keep my SRM flashed to something current also. 
(I occasionally track Tru64 via their hobbyist license)

The PC164SX is quite a bit newer than say a PC64 that indeed
I spent a long time hunting down a Qlogic board (1040a) just
so I could actually boot the thing (the onboard IDE is not
seen by the long ago abandoned SRM available for that board).

The PC164SX does have onboard IDE and I now completely avoid
it (I had enough problems with it and believe there are some
significant bugs in the Cypress chip-set involced, but could
be wrong...)

I am hoping the new owner of the PC164SX board also has a
CPU on it B^)  It is a somewhat unique CPU...

Cheers,

-- Ken