I asked what was perhaps a half-cocked question a day or two ago and
haven't gotten a reply, so I thought I might try again and add a bit
more information.

I am now running NetBSD-1.1 on a 486 machine with a dumb ISA IDE controller.
I have been thinking of getting a VESA (VLB) controller that supports
things like fast 32-bit transfers to the cpu, faster disk transfer rates
and such like.  The question of course is whether NetBSD will support
any of this (such cards are of course offered for the DOS market and
come with "drivers" for DOS needed to take advantage of the added features).

Looking in the -current sources, I see a 32 bit transfer flag, which
looks like a step in the right direction, but there is no indication
how and if this flag gets set, so maybe this is just an embryonic step
in the direction I am interested in, If anyone knows ?? .......
Or is everyone out there running scsi, and just willing to put up with
a half-baked job of supporting IDE hardware?

I took a look at the FreeBSD-current sources and their wd.c looks
virtually identical to the one in NetBSD-current.

The real surprise was when I grabbed a copy of the linux 1.3.99 sources
and found the ide driver(s). Wow!  These guys are serious about supporting
a variety of real world hardware.  Lots of information there about VLB modes,
and they have researched how to control various IDE chipsets in their
enhanced modes. They have done something I have thought about, namely
2 separate drivers for the old MFM/ESDI world and  the IDE world.
All in all pretty impressive.  Particularly impressive is the drivers
actually have some introductory comments, but this is an axe I have to
grind that I will save for a separate posting...

	Tom

-- 
	Tom Trebisky			Steward Observatory
	ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu	University of Arizona
	(520) 621-5135			Tucson, Arizona 85721