On May 26, Dave Huang <khym@bga.com> wrote:
> Hi, I was thinking of getting some sort of 53c875 based card, probably
> either an Asus SC875 or Tekram DC390F, and I wanted to make sure that the
> ncr driver works well with it. I'm running NetBSD, but since it uses the
> FreeBSD driver, everything should be the same :) I'll be running a 2gig
> Wide Quantum Atlas and a 4gig Wide Atlas off the card... 

I don't know the state of the NCR driver in NetBSD, but 
do assume that the 875 is supported. Let me know, if you
have any trouble with it ...

> Any recommendation on whether I should get the Asus or the Tekram? I
> notice the driver has some code to read the Tekram's EPROM; what does that
> do? :)

I have a Tekram DC-390F and a Symbios Sym8751S, and I do
prefer the Symbios. Tekram wrote a FreeBSD driver that is 
specific to their card and published the sources. I did 
appreciate this, and it was one of the reasons I bought
the DC-390F.

But I do not like the Tekram SCSI BIOS. I found no way to
obtain a more recent version than came with my card, and
that one sometimes just hangs on reboot. It is also slow
to probe the devices, it seems longer before the Tekram
starts to probe for the first SCSI target than the Symbios
needs to complete the bus scan.

I used the Tekram sources to add code that dumps the config
settings stored in Flash ROM. The generic SCSI code in 
FreeBSD is currently being reworked, and I plan to make the
driver use the card's configuration as soon as the new SCSI 
code is available. There will also be support for the SDMS
config NVRAM, then.

Since I never saw an ASUS SC-875, I can't comment on that
card. It is currently sold at very attractive prices over 
here, but I didn't check whether it comes with an internal
WIDE SCSI cable (the Tekram does!).

I have heard, that ASUS uses yet another SCSI BIOS of their
own, not SDMS, but don't really know ...

My typical setup is internal WIDE and external 8bit drives,
but nearly all l875 based cards come with an external WIDE 
connector. Tyan seems to have build cards with internal WIDE
SCSI and an external high density SCSI II connector (non-WIDE),
and I definitely will try to get such a card, next time ...

Be sure to check out which SCSI cables are supplied with the 
SCSI card, when comparing prices. An internal WIDE SCSI cable 
may cost an additional $50, if you buy it seperately.

Regards, STefan