Tom T. Thai wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 10 Jan 1996, VaX#n8 wrote:
> 
> > I currently have:
> >  486/66 on a HiNT chipset mboard, claims to be VLB/EISA/ISA but doesn't
> >  support level-sensitive interrupts and other EISA stuff so it's not
> >  really worth upgrading.  16MB of RAM, 30-pin sockets.
> > 
> > I will eventually want to upgrade the RAM, which means I'll either have to
> > wait for bounce-buffer support (I use an AHA-1542, ISA DMA card) or get
> > a better drive controller... seems everyone is going PCI these days,
> > so I was looking at a minimal-cost upgrade path to such a beast...
> > 
> > All I've seen so far is the ASUS 486SP-G or whatever.
> 
> I have the ASUS 486SP3G, PCI/SCSI2.  But am not sure if the still make it.
> > 
I have one too - works great for me... I DID have a funny in the days I
ran Gates - going into graphics mode (ASUS S3 864 card) from the buildin
IDE disk with a SCSI disk enabled (it had NetBSD on) I got a 'sector not
found' error on returning to character mode. But I think its a BIOS hassle
- the BIOS on the board is flash, but I never bothered to update.

On NetBSD I can merrily zip between X and charmodes on SCSI and IDE with
no hassles. The board has 2 16550s, parallel, one IDE and one NCR SCSI.
The NCR SCSI takes one PCI device and you only have 3 PCI slots and 3 ISA
slots - there is a 4th ISA slot, but if you use it you lose a PCI slot...

I saw the board was still in the latest ASUS cat. I do have ONE gripe
though - only 4 SIMM sockets and the Saturn ChipSet I got (I don't know IF
the new boards still use it) has a 64bit memory subsystem - so you HAVE to
run two SIMMs at a time, kinda kill funny memory configs...
Oh, also the board did not come with an external SCSI connector, so you
can only use it internally - but then NCR SCSI cards are do cheap I bought
another one :-) and wow its nice, I can clobber a SCSI channel with a dd
and STILL work on the other disks on the other card 8-)

It's a REAL pity that the Intel/(Gates) has made IDE more important - I
can't find another board as nice as this one with onboard SCSI... and
the 486 is getting a tad slow for me now.

just me 0.02
et
-- 
Ernst J. du Toit (TED5)           Internet: ernstjdt@maxwell.ctech.ac.za
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