On Fri, 11 May 2001, Vance Dereksen wrote:

> On Fri, 11 May 2001, Chris Tribo wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 10 May 2001, Vance Dereksen wrote:
> > 
> > > Which is the fastest?  The PMAGB-BA, the PMAG-F, or the PMAGD-BA?  Also,
> > 
> > 	PMAGB-BA Would be the fastest 2D card if we had accelerated
> > console drivers or an accelerated Xserver for pmax, but alas we do
> > not. PMAGB-BA is very slow on the console, and in X. I prefer to use a
> > serial console over using a PMAGB-BA. PMAG-F blows a PMAGB-BA out of the
> > water, but there is no Xserver available for it, and it takes up three TC
> > slots. PMAGD-BA is the best of 2D and 3D acceleration on one card, but
> > it's not supported at all yet on NetBSD/pmax AFAIK, should work fine if
> > you have an Alpha 3000 series to plug it into though.
> 
> Well, I am trying to build an array of 5900s, so the PMAG-F's slot
> requirement is not a big deal for me.  However, you're saying if I want
> any 3D acceleration, I have to go with the PMAGD-BA?  How does the 2D

	There is no acceleration period on NetBSD/pmax, not 2D or 3D. The
PMAGB-BA is a 2D only card with "Smart frame buffer" technology. However,
NetBSD/pmax treats the PMAGB-BA as if it were a PMAG-B (dumb color frame
buffer). No acceleration features have been implemented unless you're
using -current with wscons enabled. Search for the thread on "wscons
kernel" for more info.

> speed of the PMAGD-BA compare with the 2D speed of the PMAG-F?  If I use

	On Netbsd/pmax the PMAG-F will beat a PMAGD-BA at anything because
if you try and boot a kernel with a PMAGD you won't see anything because
it isn't supported. At least the PMAG-F has console support, though it
won't run X. But, If you were running Digital Unix or OSF/1 on an Alpha,
the PMAGD-BA would be faster.

> > > what are the chances of the KZTSA FWD-SCSI card being supported, if I were
> > > to lend one to someone (with a FWD drive, probably) to write support
> > 
> > 	Pretty reasonable, if the Alpha port already has a driver for
> > it. If not, depends on free time.
> 
> Who would I contact about lending a card to someone to port the alpha
> driver to pmax?  I don't have the time to write the driver myself, as I
> will be doing a lot of stuff for NetBSD/s390.

	The only name that comes to mind is Jason Thorpe, but without
knowing, I'd guess that he's got his hands full debugging all the recent
changes from merging Thorpej_SCSI into the source tree. You could post it
on the NetBSD web page as being available for development.
 
> Well, the 58x0 means that x is the number of CPU's in the machine.  
> Anybody have technical info on the ISIS machines?

	I've not seen anything posted to the list or any pictures of an
ISIS machine on E-Bay. I can only guess that it's some manner of Qbus /
XMI VAX relative with MIPS CPUs instead of VAX. Anything you can dig up or
Pictures would be sweet.

	Chris