>A data point: I'm the NetBSD/pmax chief port-slave.  Some colleagues
>here (e.g., CS faculty) have recently asked me about free Unices with
>more solid networking than Linux.  I end up advising them that they
>should use FreeBSD, because NetBSD/i386 just isn't *REAL*, because to
>the best of my knowledge NetBSD/i386 doesn't support more than 16
>Mbytes with ISA cards like an aha1542.  And I end up reassuring these
>people that the two systems aren't really _that_ different, at least
>on x86 hardware.

I find this a bit extreme.  NetBSD is very "real".  ISA hardware is
broken in this respect -- not NetBSD.  And, how many people with
modern hardware don't have either a PCI or VLB bus, which will work
fine with > 16MB and a relevant SCSI controller.

I'm not saying that this excuses the ISA mess.  On the contrary, I
agree it needs to be fixed, badly.

But, to say NetBSD isn't "real" is really pushing it, IMHO.  People
either with a 154X *and* > 16MB RAM, or people who are going to buy
hardware, and won't consider anything other than ISA *and* must have >
16MB, are a small subset of all the computer users out there.  NetBSD
runs fine on the majority of hardware combinations.

Yes, fix the ISA buffer problem, please.  But, don't automatically
discount NetBSD on Intel before even attempting to find out if this is
really a problem for the specific cases.  I just can't believe it is a
barrier *that* often.

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  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
       --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4,
                           DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532
     NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others...
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