On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Pat Wendorf wrote:

> - The SCSI performance seems a little slow.  I know this is a fairly old
> machine, but I have a few x86 boxes of similar CPU speed (33mhz), and
> the IDE on my 486's seems significantly faster in NetBSD.  Not that I'm
> complaining, I'm just wondering if it's the drive or the architecture. 
> Once something is loaded into memory, it seems to run reasonably fast.

Architectural limitation.  Mac's don't have DMA, so we have to simulate
it.  It is _very_ slow.


> - The installer I found on the Walkthrough page does not create the
> /dev/ttyE0 device.  I had to add that manually.  It did however create a
> ttye0 (lowercase "e").  Not too sure if that is a bug in the installer
> or not.

Installer needs an update here.  Or, after you've installed, and booted
to single user, you can ``cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV all''


> - How do I enable soft-updates?

Not sure, but I thought it was on by default now.


> - Why does the /etc/rc.conf come so bare?  The 1.4.2 x86 NetBSD
> /etc/rc.conf has all sorts of options that are turned off by default,
> but are already documented in rc.conf.  Yes, I'm very lazy :)

1.5 has a new rc structure.  There's a /etc/defaults/rc.conf with all
the default values.  So, you just place in /etc/rc.conf those things
that you want to change.


> - If I created a /dev/ttyE1 E2, etc... would I be able to have virtual
> terminals? (assuming I enabled them in /etc/ttys).  If so, what key
> sequence do I need to use to switch between them?

Nope.  Mac68k's wscons doesn't handle multiple screens.


> - What type of stability does this platform offer?  Should I trust it to
> do secondary DNS or similarly light tasks for a network of 25
> computers?  What about something like more demanding like dialup
> NAT/Firewall/Socks5 with 25 computers?
> 
> - Can the serial ports on a Quadra 800 handle 57,600 baud (or 115,200).
> In the x86 world we have to worry about which UART chip our serial ports
> use when adding a 28.8K or higher external modem (UART buffer
> overflows), is it the same with older Macs?

These last two questions I'll leave to someone more knowledgeable.  My
Mac IIci is no longer my main system.

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