Subject: Re: sw0 performance...
To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: Mike Frisch <mfrisch@saturn.tlug.org>
List: port-sparc
Date: 03/05/1996 13:43:00
At 07:52 AM 3/5/96 -0800, Jason Thorpe wrote:
>If you build a kernel from recent sources and add "flags 0x1" to the 
>"sw0" line, you will enable DMA (which is disabled by default out of 
>paranoia).  The performance increase is substantial.  Andrew Gillham has 

        Can I build a new kernel on SunOS?  I couldn't imagine how slow it
would be under NetBSD given the disk performance right now.  (Sorry if this
is a FAQ...)

>been running on his 4/100 with DMA enabled ever since I worked around a 
>hardware bug in the driver about a week ago, and he tells me that he no 
>longer sees the occasional data corruption he was seeing.  I'm going to 
>give it another week or two before I change the driver to enable DMA by 
>default.

        That's great!  I'm dying to get a decent NetBSD/sparc system going
here and it's this small hinderance that's holding me up.  Everything in the
system seems to work well (even that new P4 code is GREAT!)!

>Note that test kernel I had up for FTP had a bug in it that kept DMA from 
>being enabled on the 4/100..."oops" :-)

        I had noticed you mentioning this on the this, but wasn't sure if it
applied to me.

Thanks for the info!

Mike.

======================================================================
Mike Frisch                             Email: mfrisch@saturn.tlug.org
Northstar Technologies                 WWW: http://www.io.org/~mfrisch
Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA                      Compuserve: 76620,2534