Subject: Re: State of RiscBSD, availability
To: None <T.Boroske@tu-bs.de>
From: Neil A. Carson <neil@causality.com>
List: port-arm32
Date: 04/30/1998 20:13:04
Thomas Boroske wrote:
> Some things I would like to know are:
>
> - Is the powertec v1 scsi controller supported in a fast-ish way now ?
> Or rather a non-kerneltime-hogging way at least ?
non-kerneltime: yes
fastish: no
:-( Stick with IDE.
> - Is it now, with reasonable experience and work put into it,
> possible to get a working compiler toolchain ? With my current
> install it wasn't possible to get a working (C++) setup
> (that's 1.2G with some compiler patches, I think).
Apart from the StrongARM bug, yes.
> - Is Netscape (or QTscape) available ? Is it free and/or available
> in executable form ? Is it fast enough to be usable (SA RPC, 42MB) ?
Markus and myself have built Cryptozilla with the full motif front end.
It's very stable, and as soon as I re-link Markus' port with a static
Motif library, it'll be uploaded for all. Performance is fine (well a
damn site better than Fresco and !Browse anway, when I last looked) on
StrongARM.
> - Also, can you use highcolour now under X, and can you still switch to
> the console ?
You can still switch console, but I still don't think Rob has
implemented 16bpp working properly. However, a new X server working from
the NetBSD/XFree86 sources is on the cards for sometime however who
knows when.
> On a related topic: Chaltech's motherboard, how fast is it ? I don't
> mean the CPUs clock frequency, but how many (sequential) MB/sec you
> get over the RAM bus, the PCI bus ? How's the EIDE interface, how's
> SCSI and network cards ? Just out of interest.
Ram bus---we've never measured it mike that but I guess 200MB/secish.
PCI bus? Whatever you normally get over a PCI bus, I guess 132MB/sec
peak, over 100 actual. EIDE---it can sustain just under 11MB/sec using
UltraDMA from a dirt cheap disc. SCSI---it works. Network cards---a 25
quid Netgear 10/100BaseTX bus mastering DMA PCI card will work fine and
will allow around 6.5MB/sec in both directions (13MB/sec total, full
duplex) on a 100BaseTX network.
> That's it for now, I think.
Fine :-)
Neil