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From: nate@sneezy.sri.com (Nate Williams )
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: drivers for NCR53c810 and 3com 509...
Date: 18 Jan 1995 00:36:32 GMT
Organization: SRI Intl.
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <3fhnqg$kqn@unix.sri.com>
References: <ccs.790159245@ctdnet> <3fc6lc$6au@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sneezy.sri.com

In article <3fc6lc$6au@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Rafal Boni <rkb55989@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>ccs@ctdnet.acns.nwu.edu (CHRISTOPHER CSANADY) writes:
>
>>just curious, but which OS (netbsd or freebsd) has better
>>drivers for these boards?  the 3com is an ISA card, and
>>i have 32 meg of ram... i have heard that freebsd implements
>>bounce buffers to get around this, but how about netbsd?
>
>	I won't comment on which is "better", but the FreeBSD driver is
>	based on the NetBSD driver, and an *old* version at that.  This 

The *NETBSD* pci/ncr 53c8xx driver is based on an older version of
the FreeBSD driver.  One of the pci co-authors is an active FreeBSD developer
so FreeBSD tends to get the newest bits (and bugs) very quickly.  I doubt
that Charles has brought in those changes since the NetBSD drivers are 
radically different in the configuration mechanism, so porting things across
is getting increasingly difficult.

This means that the bugs in the 3C509 driver that no longer exist in the
NetBSD driver might exist in FreeBSD, and that the ncr bugs in the NetBSD 
driver no longer exist in FreeBSD.

It's a two way street, but there are still bugs in the 3C509 driver apparently
being worked on according to the commit logs.

I recommend getting a different card.



Nate
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