*BSD News Article 30671


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From: stowaway@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Jef Pearlman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Questions (New System, XFree/86, *BSD)
Date: 22 May 1994 08:57:14 -0400
Organization: MIT LCS guest machine
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <2rnkra$d01@bronze.lcs.mit.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bronze.ai.mit.edu

     I am planning on purchasing a new 80x86 based computer system, with 
either MS-DOS or OS/2 on one 540 meg IDE drive, and a flavour of unix (most 
likely a *BSD) on another 540 meg IDE drive. I have a couple questions relating
to this system, and any help would be appreciated.
NOTE: Please respond be e-mail, so as not to clutter up the newsgroup. ;)
NOTE: If this appears (in similar form) twice, I apologize. I posted it (I
      thought) 3 days ago and it never appeared in the group and I got no
      replies, so I figure for one reason or another, it didn't go up.

1) Originally I was planning on purchasing the PCI ATI Mach32 w/2 megs on board,
   because of its relatively high Windows and DOS speeds, and the fact that it
   was supported by XFree/86. Now it seems I may not be able to get that card,
   and I need a few things. First of all, I remember that there was a list of
   supported cards periodically posted, but I can't seem to find it. If someone
   can point me to it, please do so. Also, I may be able to get the Matrox
   Atlas, but I have no knowledge of this card. If anyone does (including 
   overall speed and whether it's supported by XFree, it might be useful. 
   Finally, if anyone out there has suggestions, good experiences, or bad
   experiences with certain cards, please tell me them! The only thing I
   remember is that ATI was supported, the Viper wasn't (except for generic
   VGA modes), and that my Trident would have been unbearable.

2) I know from the various flame-wars (especially about the proposed merger)
   that FreeBSD and NetBSD have their own points, their own philosophies, and
   their own features, advantages, and disadvantages. However, if anyone knows
   where I can find these features to compare and decide which is best for me,
   it would be great. (I mean other than searching the NewsGroups for a month
   and collecting pieces of articles :)

3) Where can I find one (or several) of the various multi-boot utilities? Also,
   if anyone has advice about which to choose, especially given my
   setup (I can give more info if you need it), it would probably make my life
   less hellish when I actually get this thing and try to put it together.

						Thanks!
                                             Jef Pearlman
                                      stowaway@bronze.lcs.mit.edu 

P.S. More questions to come, possibly. Brace yourselves :)

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| "I can't think of anything really witty | Jef Pearlman                |
|  to say here..."          -Me, 09/14/93 | stowaway@bronze.lcs.mit.edu |
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