*BSD News Article 21657


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From: adam@veda.is (Adam David)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: 386BSD / NetBSD / FreeBSD
Message-ID: <CE5tu9.Eo5@veda.is>
Date: 30 Sep 93 09:17:54 GMT
References: <1993Sep28.050914.3374@cs.sfu.ca> <1993Sep29.182618.11087@news.csuohio.edu> <1993Sep29.155751.2394@resonex.com>
Organization: Veda Systems, Iceland
Lines: 21

michael@resonex.com (Michael Bryan) writes:

>In article <1993Sep29.182618.11087@news.csuohio.edu> stever@csuohio.edu (Steve Ratliff) writes:
>>I would also suggest that you only use 16Mb of mem to start with as
>>greater than that is still problematical with non EISA systems.

>Just why is this so?  I've heard it before, and I know I've even read
>an explanation, but I don't remember it anymore.  In what way is it
>a problem with the current free flavors of BSD?

Bounce buffers are not yet implemented in the SCSI system, and there may be
other device drivers using busmaster DMA which have a similar problem. The
ISA bus cards cannot address higher than the first 16MB, because there are
not enough address lines. This is not a problem with EISA cards on an EISA
bus, but continues to be a problem if ISA cards (or EISA cards configured
for ISA compatibility) are used in an EISA system. Bounce buffers are
implemented in the kernel for generic ISA bus access, but only the floppy
driver is using this feature so far.

--
adam@veda.is