On Sun, 12 May 1996 11:27:17 -0600,
osymh@gemini.oscs.montana.edu (Michael L. Hitch) wrote about Re:
Fastlane/A4000 Problems:

>   I've been running on an A4000 with a FastLane with little trouble. 
> The only problem I have had is that the FastLane NetBSD driver doesn't
> work very well with reselect enabled.  If I disable it (binpatching the
> _sfas_disable_disc array), the drives work fine.
> 
>   My system has 16MB on the A4000 motherboard, and none on the FastLane.
> I think I have the Rev 11 Buster, and the 3.1 CPU card.
> 
>   Are you running with any memory other than what's on the motherboard?
> I've had nothing but trouble trying to get NetBSD to use Zorro II memory
> for pageable memory (it seemed to work fine for use as the DMA bounce
> buffer memory for a GVP Hardcard).
> 
>   I'm not certain how to track down bus error problems.  I'd have to
> look at the trap handling code again to see what information is
> available (and as to what might be causing the bus error).  Hmm - I just
> looked at trap.c a little, and it looks like there may be two types of
> "bus errors":  a hardware bus error which should cause a panic() and a
> bus error signal from the MMU fault handling.  Are you getting a kernel
> panic, or are you getting the bus errors from processes?  (The kernel
> panic should identify itself as a panic and cause the system to reboot,
> which the bus error signals would be seen from processes getting
> aborted, but wouldn't reboot the system).
 
Success!! I pulled out the FastLane and installed a WarpDrive. I connected
just the NetBSD drive to the on-board SCSI connector and Voila! Its works
beautifully. To celebrate, I compiled and installed Perl 5.002 and Perl/Tk
(Tk-b11.02). They ran right out of the box. They are the first 'generic'
packages I've installed. They are exactly what we have installed at work on
the SGI's. Now I can take my stuff home. I'm so excited! 

Now, on to more questions. When running X11R6 at 800x600, it opens up with a
virtual scrollable window four times the size of the screen. Text based
Perl/Tk demos open windows that stretch past the border of the main screen
with very large clunky fonts. Anybody know how to set the screen to be exactly
800x600 only. And are there font packages available to install for X11R6?

Thanks for everyone's input. I don't know what the deal is with the FastLane,
but I'd better quit while I'm ahead. Now I can actually use NetBSD for a
change, maybe get good at it, and help somebody else.

Ola