Hello,

On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Nick Bull wrote:

> 
> I have a shiny new Risc PC, on which I intend to install either RiscBSD or
> ArmLinux. I'm a bit torn because RiscBSD seems to be in a much more advanced
> stage of development wrt drivers for third-party hardware, but ArmLinux holds
> out the promise of access to the large amount of Linux software available
> globally.

Most software can be compiled for netbsd with a little help.  It depends
on the program, and it's install/makefiles.  I did attempt to install
armlinux but you really need it on cd to install, as there's nothing
similair to UnixFS (although I could be speaking rubbish, this was about 6
months ago...)
 
> The problem is, because there is already a hard drive and a CD-ROM
> on the IDE bus, and I don't want to use the first HD, I need to buy some form
> of extra interface (IDE or SCSI - no preference) and a new drive. Now, a good
> time to do this would be at Acorn World, but unfortunately there doesn't seem
> to be any up-to-date information ATM about which hardware is currently
> supported.

Up-to-date list at end of email, My preference though is IDE as the drives
are generally cheaper (mainly because most PC's come with IDE drives) and
under riscbsd the speed is better, I think SCSI hits about 500k/s max,
under bsd, because of problems with the drivers, ide though goes as fast
as it can (I think...),  I know my quantums run nicely. 

I've personally got a RapIDE, but there's a few problems with it, eg the
latest drivers on the net don't have the cd-driver with them to put into
the flash rom, but they do recognise the bsd partition, and don't say the
drive has incorrect partition info.

A lot of people out there have SCSI cards, although the preference/general
feeling is to not buy Cunama ones as they've NDA'd some of the information
(NDA: Non-disclosure agreement)  The choice is yours, with SCSI of course
you can have 8 devices connected (as well as the 2 on the interal IDE)

If you do go for SCSI it might be worth considering using the IDE disc for
BSD and the new SCSI one for Risc-OS. 

Cheers,
Chris

List of HD drivers supported (it's cut out of the GENERIC config file for
the kernel): 

# IDE disk controller
wdc0    at mainbus? base 0x002107c0 irq 9
wd*     at wdc? drive ?

asc*	at podulebus?			# Acorn SCSI card
scsibus* at asc?

cosc*	at podulebus?			# MCS Connect32 SCSI II card
scsibus* at cosc?

#csc*	at podulebus?			# Cumana SCSI II card
#scsibus* at csc?

ptsc*	at podulebus?			# Power-Tec SCSI II card
scsibus* at ptsc?

oak*	at podulebus?			# Oak SCSI I card
scsibus* at oak?

icside*	at podulebus?			# ICS IDE card
wdc*	at icside?

rapide*	at podulebus?			# Yellowstone RapIDE card
wdc*	at rapide?