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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!cdc2.cdc.net!news.texas.net!node2.frontiernet.net!not-for-mail From: dsf@node5.frontiernet.net (Dan Foster) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: NEED: The Best PC for FreeBS (Advice is asked) Date: 8 Dec 1996 16:46:17 -0500 Organization: Frontier Internet, A reliable part of your life Lines: 107 Message-ID: <58fcv9$7jc@node5.frontiernet.net> References: <5882ep$amr@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <58f8ih$pdb@raven.eva.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: node5.frontiernet.net In article <58f8ih$pdb@raven.eva.net> you write: >igor vladimirovich roshchin (igor@students.uiuc.edu) wrote: > >: I need to make a decision in a couple days: >: Need to find the best - in sense of quality (reliability+support by >: FreeBSD) + : performance, PC: >: Motherboard - ? > >Just about any of the major motherboard manufacturers will work. You >might as well go with a Pentium box. If you want to go with SCSI on >the motherboard, look into Quicktech/Iwill boards. They have an >imbedded 2940U(W) motherboard. You'll end up saving about $200 by >getting SCSI on the motherboard. The only reason I wouldn't go with >this option is if you need a twin channel SCSI card. By having >SCSI imbedded on the motherboard you do lose a PCI slot. But, look at it another way.... if you *don't* have the SCSI controller embedded on the motherboard, you still lose a PCI slot (unless, of course you get one of those el cheapo ISA cards) anyway when using a decent SCSI controller in a PCI slot. I guess you're saying that at least without embedding it on the motherboard, you at least have slightly more choices of how to use your PCI slots. >: SCSI card - ? > >Buslogic BT-958 or Adaptec 2940UW. If you anticipate you may need >more than 7 devices, go for the twin channel model, the 3940UW. I >don't know if Buslogic has a twin channel card as of yet. Would generally recommend the Buslogic cards. Superior driver support. Adaptecs are decent - with 70% of the PC SCSI market (as I once heard) - are everywhere. But the 2940[UW] are somewhat more sensitive to flaky or less-than-ideal cabling/termination. So if you do go the 2940[UW] route, you *MUST* buy top-notch cabling (whether internal or external!) and termination for the SCSI devices on the bus. This, of course, is generally good practice with SCSI - but the 2940 is just somewhat more anal about it. ;-) I don't have any experience with a 3940UW so I can't comment on it, but the specs looks nothing less than awesome. How good is the driver support, though? (curious) >: Ethernet card - ? (3COM ? 3C509 ???) >PCI. There's no reason to go ISA unless you want to set up a diskless That's my gut impression.. *BUT* there is *exactly* _ONE_ reason why you wouldn't go the PCI route. That is - if you have a limited number of PCI slots (say, 3) and you have a super-duper setup where you *need* 4 or 5 cards... you'd relegate the least demanding cards to ISA, and use the rest of the slots for PCI and the more demanding cards (in terms of bus traffic). 100BaseT ethernet, though, would be an excellent candidate for PCI, imho. But if you *really* want to get more out of 100 Mbps traffic, you might consider FDDI. Take the MTU for Ethernet (10 or 100 Mbps) and FDDI - Ethernet MTU is typically set at 1500 bytes... FDDI at 4500 bytes. So even if you go from 10 Mbps Ethernet to 100 Mbps Ethernet, you still have to stop every so often (1500 bytes) to generate an interrupt or move memory into a DMA area. With FDDI, at least, it's less frequent - therefore, less overhead. FDDI cards today are *FAR* cheaper than the ones of yesteryear and resembles a token ring scheme (in terms of message passing) but has redundancy features built in (ie two rings, one for each direction typically.. if one ring fails, the other can handle both directions), among other things. So, just a thought if you really have need for LAN-based server needs...otherwise, ignore me. ;-) >FreeBSD box. According to the FAQ, only a few ISA cards support >diskless FreeBSD boxes. You can't get 100 base ISA cards since they >don't have the throughput to handle 100 base effectively. I have been >given recommendations on using PCI cards with the DEC PCI chipset (i.e. >the 'de' driver) with good results. There are quite a few cards on the >market which are compatable with the 'de' driver. This is *excellent* advice. DEC makes *SCREAMER* chipsets for certain products - Alpha systems and Ethernet cards comes to mind right away. I know at least one SMC card (forgot model offhand, mail me if interested) utilizes the DEC chipset (Tulip, I believe). >: Did anybody have any experience of using E2 or/and E8 with SCSI >: with a FreeBSD box ? > >Sorry, I have no experience with this. Ditto. :) >: And, a lame question: Is there any reason to have a "system" disk for >: a FreeBSD box (PC) with IDE interface as opposed to SCSI ? > >Only if you like headaches. :) SCSI support is much better with >FreeBSD than with (E)IDE. Ditto. :-) Yes, it is *possible*, sure... but it's generally easier to go all SCSI or all IDE/EIDE. But if you really want/need to, you can use IDE to boot off, and SCSI for rest of hard drives, or something. Was a cinch for me. (several minutes tweaking the BIOS setup options, though) To the proponents of IDE claiming SCSI is *always* more expensive than IDE drives is spewing utter bullshit. It all depends on how willing you are for looking for good bargains. IDE makes more sense if you have a single-user non-server-type system (ie economical/performance reasons). But if you have a server-class system... SCSI is a must due to many technical reasons that I won't go into here (but email me if interested). -Dan Foster Internet: dsf@frontiernet.net