>1) I'm looking to put together a mid-performance machine; this
>asus board seems really nice, and has scsi onboard, although
>it is NCR :-(

I am the proud owner of two Asus motherboards, which work quite
excellently (a Pentium and a Pentium Pro).  They make very good
quality stuff, although their boards are sometimes lacking in the
expansion category compared to others (ISA/PCI slots, and SIMM sockets
is what I'm referring to).

>	Asus 486-sp3g motherboard with saturn II chipset and a "dx4"/100
>	(and the fast sram tag to enable the write-back on the board)

I think you're really throwing your money away if you're buying a
brand new 486 system.  It's maxed out.  You're buying it about the
fastest it will ever go.  There just isn't any headroom left in the
486 performance area.  Forget about "upgrading" its CPU later.

Pentiums are cheap these days, and their performance is very
definitely measurably better.  And you could opt for one of the Cyrix
6x86 chips, which are a very cheap bang for the buck.

That's my recommendation, anyway.

>2) Until I built my recent news machine with ncr scsi controllers,
>I've been happy using adaptec or buslogic mailbox controllers such as
>the 1542, 1742, and 946.  I see that buslogic no longer manufactures
>the 946c/956c, which has apparently been replaced with the 948c/958c
>ultra scsi controller.  Are these newer controllers still mailbox
>compatible (read as "work with the bt driver":-), or are they
>something new and wonderful and incompatible?

Yes, they look basically the same to the OS as the 946/956, from what
I understand (except that they can do Ultra SCSI, of course).  Don't
buy the FlashPointe, though.

>	I may be looking for two buslogic controllers to replace the
>	ncr controllers in the news box if I can't resolve the
>	reliability problems with the NCR scsi driver.  Any
>	suggestions on places that have *really good* prices on 9[45]6
>	or the 9[45]8 if they are compatible?

I know a place that has really good prices on 2940UWs.  You'd have to
check for yourself if they carry the BusLogic cards.
http://www.basoncomputer.com/ (or basoncomputers, can never remember).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                           michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
        Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------