Considering I spent 80 bucks on a P/390E card and about 20 bucks on a PC
Server 330 to put it in, I would say that the prices on PCI cards have
come down quite a bit.  The problem with the MCA cards is that they are a
lot slower than the PCI cards.  Another problem is that they max out at
128 MB RAM (rare to find the 96 MB cards).  You can get P/390 PCIs with
128 MB on the board, and P/390Es with 256 MB or 1 GB on the board.  Plus
P/390Es can use host system RAM as extended storage.  I don't have
anything against the MCA cards, it's just that I think the P/390E is a
better solution.  You can even use the P/390E under AIX on the newer
RS/6000s and xServer pSeries.  I actually have an MCA P/390 running in an
RS/6000 J50.  Fast machine.

I have Hercules running on a PC Server 704 quad-processor anyway, and I
have to admit it's not so bad.  It's just not as good as real hardware.  
I use it for testing software to ensure compatibility with Hercules.  
NetBSD would not run as fast on Hercules as it would on the underlying
hardware anyway.  I happen to be lucky enough to have a real full-size
S/390 G5, so I don't really have to worry too much about doing actual
development on Hercules.

Peace...  Sridhar

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Jay Maynard wrote:

> I figured I oughtta join this lsit just in case I can help folks with
> getting Hercules running...
> 
> Oh, and while I'm here...Sridhar wrote:
> >If you can get a P/390 or a P/390E, or an R/390 or anything like that, it
> >would help you a lot with any development you wanted to do, and it only
> >requires a PCI PC capable of running OS/2.
> 
> The best bet for real hardware in a range the average person might be able
> to afford is a Micro Channel-based P/390 board and a low-end RS/6000. The
> PCI P/390s are somewhat picky about the system they run in, and you get to
> deal with getting OS/2 running as well - which, while interesting, can be
> aggravating as well unless you're running bog-stock IBM hardware. The MCA
> stuff is much more forgiving, and installing the drivers and such under AIX
> is actually pretty easy and bulletproof. I paid $1300 for my P/390 with 128
> MB real memory (no, you can't just stuff DIMMs on the board, unfortunately)
> a while back, and only another $150 for the RS/6000 7009-C10 I stuffed it
> in.
> 
> Or you could bag that and get a nice fast x86. Hercules on a 1 GHz PIII runs
> about as fast as a P/390.
>