Thomas Boroske wrote:

> Some things I would like to know are:
> 
> - Is the powertec v1 scsi controller supported in a fast-ish way now ?
>   Or rather a non-kerneltime-hogging way at least ?

non-kerneltime:	yes
fastish:	no

:-( Stick with IDE.

> - Is it now, with reasonable experience and work put into it,
>   possible to get a working compiler toolchain ? With my current
>   install it wasn't possible to get a working (C++) setup
>   (that's 1.2G with some compiler patches, I think).

Apart from the StrongARM bug, yes.

> - Is Netscape (or QTscape) available ? Is it free and/or available
>   in executable form ? Is it fast enough to be usable (SA RPC, 42MB) ?

Markus and myself have built Cryptozilla with the full motif front end.
It's very stable, and as soon as I re-link Markus' port with a static
Motif library, it'll be uploaded for all. Performance is fine (well a
damn site better than Fresco and !Browse anway, when I last looked) on
StrongARM.

> - Also, can you use highcolour now under X, and can you still switch to
>   the console ?

You can still switch console, but I still don't think Rob has
implemented 16bpp working properly. However, a new X server working from
the NetBSD/XFree86 sources is on the cards for sometime however who
knows when.

> On a related topic: Chaltech's motherboard, how fast is it ? I don't
> mean the CPUs clock frequency, but how many (sequential) MB/sec you
> get over the RAM bus, the PCI bus ? How's the EIDE interface, how's
> SCSI and network cards ? Just out of interest.

Ram bus---we've never measured it mike that but I guess 200MB/secish.
PCI bus? Whatever you normally get over a PCI bus, I guess 132MB/sec
peak, over 100 actual. EIDE---it can sustain just under 11MB/sec using
UltraDMA from a dirt cheap disc. SCSI---it works. Network cards---a 25
quid Netgear 10/100BaseTX bus mastering DMA PCI card will work fine and
will allow around 6.5MB/sec in both directions (13MB/sec total, full
duplex) on a 100BaseTX network.

> That's it for now, I think.

	Fine :-)

	Neil