Henry B. Hotz wrote:
> 
> I just got an 840AV to replace the IIci I was using for a MacBSD machine at
> work.  (Wish I could take the ci home to replace my old cx. . .)  I'll find
> out soon enough what does and doesn't work on it, but I'd like some advice
> and information.

Cool!  Fastest '040 Mac made...I wish I had one ;-) 

> My standard booting OS is 7.1, but this machine is too new to be supported.
> Should I upgrade to 7.5, 7.5.1, 7.5.3, 7.5.5, or 7.6.1?  I know this is
> sort of a who-cares kind of issue but I only know that 7.5+ is a lot
> bigger/slower on the older hardware with no detail.

>From what I've heard here, 7.6.1 should be snappy enough (supposedly
faster than 7.5.5) especially on an 840AV, and probably stable enough as
well.

> Since there has been a lot of work on the newer Mac's since 1.2.1 I expect
> I should install -current.  Any dissenting opinions?

Since 1.2.1 probably won't even boot with an NFS disk and a serial console
on that machine, you'll have to go with -current.

> I recall a post that said the 840Av was one of the few Mac's with true DMA.
> I presume that is not yet supported, true?

The AV Quadra's were the only 68k-based Macs with true DMA (although I
think that the IIfx had something DMA-ish).  This is not supported yet,
tho :-(

> I'll gladly help with development, at least by test-booting kernels and
> running hardware probes on request.  The main caveat is that my charge
> numbers start getting dinged $50/month for the network connection so I need
> a work justification for having the machine around now.
> 
> If I can get the public FTP mirror of puma going again I will.  It should
> be a bit more useful with the extra disk space I now have.

That'd be nice :-)

One thing to keep in mind when trying to boot for the first time, I
believe that many AV Mac users have posted that they need to zap the PRAM
before it will boot.  I think you only need to do this once :-)

Good luck!

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                 cwood@ichips.intel.com
Component Design Engineer - MD6                 Intel Corporation
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I speak only on my own behalf, not for my employer.