Hi Manuel,

>On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 06:12:13PM +0200, Guenther.Grau@epost.de wrote:
>> while browsing the netbsd mail archives I found your
>> email concerning HPT366/HPT370 support.
>> 
>> Does this include support for HPT368 as well?
>
>What's the HPT368 ? Any pointers to docs ?

Not really a pointer to docs, but
www.highpoint-tech.com has some information about
it. HPT386 seems to be very similar to HPT366, except
that it supports RAID 0,1,0+1, like the HPT370.
There are pointers to Linux drivers for all their chips.
The site also states that FreeBSD supports their
chips. Maybe the NetBSD PR guys should contact them
and tell them that NetBSD supports their chips as well.

>> Will NetBSD be able to use the RAID features of
>> the HPT370(/HPT368)?
>
>Not directly. The RAID features of the HPT (this is true for promise too)
>is software RAID, hardware is just a standart pciide controller.
>NetBSD can do software RAID (and I use it :) but the format is not 

I knew this. I just thought that hardware RAID might be faster
than software RAID. If it's all software RAID then I wonder
what the difference between the RAID and the non-RAID
versions of the chips is. Is it just the BIOS?

>compatible
>with the HPT's BIOS. So you can't boot directly from a RAID  partition,
>you need to workaround this (a small boot partition on both disks,
>with the same kernel on all of them).

Is it true that the HPT controller can only mirror complete disks
and not partitions?
For now i'd like to have a cheap and simple mirror for two disks.
Would it be possible to set up two identical boot partitions containing
just the kernel and have the other partitions mirrored automatically
by the controller? Would it be faster than raidframe? Will it boot
if one disk fails?

I am glad I finally found someone who actually has such a controller
because the tech support people I spoke to so far didn't know.
There is a German manufacturer/reseller who sells a card for around
100 Euro. See http://www.visionsystems.de/products.php3 and 
look for IDE-Controllers. The pages are in English.

  Guenther