Subject: Re: Adaptec 1542
To: Nick Loman <nick@csosl.co.uk>
From: Simon Burge <simonb@telstra.com.au>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/13/1996 08:48:44
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 09:22:34 -0700  "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" wrote:

> >I've got an Adaptec 1542 running on an ISA bus in a 486/33. When I installed NetBSD 1.1 I had to r
> emove 4mb of memory bringing it down to 16mb to make the adapter function reliably. Are there any w
> ays I can upgrade to 32mb or more without buying a machine with a 32-bit bus?
> 
> With NetBSD, you need a 32-bit bus-mastering controller to use more
> than 16MB of memory.  An alternative is to go completely IDE, since
> that doesn't (currently) do bus-mastering.  That really isn't a very
> good alternative, though.
> 
> If you want to keep most of what you have, 486 PCI motherboards are
> dirt cheap these days.  You could get one of those, and an NCR 53c810
> SCSI controller for propbably about $150 altogether (speaking American
> dollers here, of course).  You could stick an AMD 5x86 133MHz in there
> in a few months when you save up some more cash, too.

Another choice is to use Juergen Hannken-Illjes' bounce buffer
patches.  I've been using them for a couple of weeks now with a
1542CF and 5x86-133 and 32MB...  Look in:

	ftp://bseis.eis.cs.tu-bs.de/pub/hannken

> Your final alternative would be to run an OS that has bounce buffer
> support, such as FreeBSD.

Simon.
--
Simon Burge						simonb@telstra.com.au
UNIX Support, CPR Project, Telstra.			+61 3 9634 3974
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