In message <Pine.SUN.3.91-941213.970112144839.1243A-100000@dust0.dur.ac.uk> you wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sun, 12 Jan 1997, Mark Brinicombe wrote:
> > 
> > Hi,
> >   Ok as things stand at the moment the two SCSI cards that are
> > likely to significantly improve soon are the Cumana and powertec driver.

The powertec driver ? This sounds like good news.

When (and I know, I shouldn't ask that) in a very rough timescale can we
expect a driver that's at least as fast as the internal IDE ?

The reason I ask is that I'm just before buying an IDE drive to install 
RiscBSD on, I've just not done it yet because I need a 2nd slice 
and the larger PSU for this (and Acorn is unable to supply these ATM).
An SCSI disc would be more expensive, but probably worth the money because
it would be faster (under RiscOS, and hopefully under RiscBSD too, sometime).

I hope I'm not pushing things too much, but if there would be a chance
that things would be changing until, say, middle of the year or 
3rd quarter, then I would certainly take the SCSI route.


Or another thought: If someone could tell me if a system running from 
a powertec controller (SA RiscPC 600, 42MB RAM) would be usuable at 
all, then I could even wait longer for a better support and use RiscBSD 
nevertheless. Or would it be possible to use the old 210 MB IDE disc
(not very fast, but probably faster than a powertec controlled disc ATM) 
to store the most important parts of RiscBSD on it and use the SCSI disc
for everything else ?
              
Errrm, as this already has become a long string of questions I may as 
well ask that one too: Anyone knows a good book to give some understanding 
of Unix, suitable for use with/for RiscBSD ?              

Keep up the good work !

Yours, 

-- 
Thomas Boroske