Subject: Linux PCI-HOWTO
From: Michael Will <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 1994 19:31:51 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.admin

Archive-name: linux/howto/pci
Last-modified: 23 Apr 94

  Linux PCI-HOWTO
  by Michael Will, [email-masked]
  version 0.3a / 1994 April 20

  Information on what works with Linux and PCI-boards and what does not.

  1.  Introduction

  Because I plan to get me a PCI-Board and because the situation is  not
  very  clear at all whether it works or not, and which configuration, I
  made a survery and took some hours to compile the information gathered
  therein.

  If you have information to add, please mail me, if you have questions,
  feel free to ask.

  Help on my style/language is welcome as well - I am no  native-speaker
  so  I expect to do occasional mistakes :-) (Speaking of "onboard-chip"
  in the following I mean a on-motherboard-chip  instead  of  expansion-
  card. Someone pointed out to me that this might not be that obvious)

  2.  Why PCI

  2.1.  General overview

  The PC-architecture has several BUS-Systems to choose from:

     ISA
        cheap, slow (usualy 8Mhz), standard, many cards available>

     EISA
        expensive, fast, some cards available>

     MCA
        ex-ibm-proprietary, fast but not very wide-spread

     VESA-Local-Bus
        based  on ISA, cheap, fast, some cards available, not very stan-
        dard>

     PCI-Local-Bus
        expensive, fast, some cards available, the up-coming standard>

  ISA/VESA-Local-Bus had some problems with high-frequenzy, and was  not
  very  relyable,  but  due to its low price and higher performance sold
  very well.

  EISA was reliable, but rather expensive,  more  for  power-users,  and
  servers, not for the average user.

  PCI  now has the advantage, that it is like EISA not proprietary, fast
  as EISA (or even faster), 64bit-wide. This will be important with  the
  i586 (they would rather like to read as Pentium).

  PCI  is not like ISA/Local-Bus prozessor-dependend. This means you can
  use the winner-1000-PCI in an Alpha-driven-PCI-board as well as  in  a
  i486/i586-driven PCI-Board).

  PCI  allows  cheaper  production  of onboard-components, no glue-logic
  needed.

  2.2.  Performance

  taken from Craig Sutphin's Pro-PCI-Propaganda

       Unlike some local buses, which  are  aimed  at  speeding  up
       graphics  alone,  the  PCI Local Bus is a total system solu-
       tion, providing increased  performance  for  networks,  disk
       drives,  full-motion  video,  graphics and the full range of
       high-speed peripherals.  At  33  MHz,  the  synchronous  PCI
       Local Bus transfers 32 bits of data at up to 132 Mbytes/sec.
       A transparent  64-bit  extension  of  the  32-bit  data  and
       address  buses can double the bus bandwidth (264 Mbytes/sec)
       and offer forward and backwards  compatibility  for  32  and
       64-bit  PCI  Local Bus peripherals.  Because it's processor-
       independent, the PCI Local Bus is optimized  for  I/O  func-
       tions, enabling the local bus to operate concurrent with the
       processor/memory subsystem.  For users of  high-end  desktop
       PCs,  PCI  makes high reliability, high performance and ease
       of use more affordable than ever, no trivial task at 33  MHz
       bus-clock  rates.   Variable  length  linear  or toggle mode
       bursting for both reads and writes improves write  dependent
       graphics performance.  By comprehending the loading and fre-
       quency requirements of the local bus at the component level,
       buffers and glue logic are eliminated.

  2.3.  The onboard-SCSI-II-chip NCR53c810

  One  very  nice feature of the PCI-Boards is the onboard-SCSI-II-chip,
  which is said to  be  as  fast  as  the  EISA-Adaptec-1742,  but  much
  cheaper.  Drivers  for  DOS/OS2 are available. Linux does not have the
  driver yet, but Drew  Eckard  is  working  on  it,  the  iX  Multiuser
  Multitasking  Magazine is supporting the driver development.  It seems
  to be not yet stable-enough for release but people are already testing
  it...  It  is  not  easy  to  write the driver, because it is radicaly
  different from the normal NCR-Chip.

  Until it is finished Linux-users have to disable the chip  and  use  a
  cheap ISA-Card...

  Drew said about the SCSI on PCI:

       Currently, your only PCI SCSI option that stands a chance of
       working is the Buslogic 946.  It purports to be Adaptec 1540
       compatable, like the EISA/VESA/ISA boards in the series.

       I'm  working  on  getting the Linux NCR53c810 driver stable,
       some one else is doing the same thing for  one  of  the  BSD
       flavors.   Fast  busmaster,  often  included  on motherboard
       implementations, supposedly available for $ 100 in card  for
       sans BIOS (many of the PCI boards that don't include the NCR
       onboard still have the NCR BIOS).

       This covers the majority of PCI SCSI adapters on the  market
       (Nexstor,   Chaintech,   Gigabyte,  FIC,  etc).  Adaptec  is
       shipping (see below) a FAST WIDE  version  of  the  AIC-7770
       with  a  PCI  interface,  AIR  is  using it on their Pentium
       boards, but I haven't seen any board level product with  it.

       Scott  Ferris is working on the AIC-7770 driver under Linux,
       but I don't know of anyone doing the same thing under one of
       the BSDs.

  Emulux  has  a  propriety  FAST+WIDE  PCI  controller,  it's
  unlikely that it will show up as supported under one of  the
  BSDs  or  Linux anytime soon since the NCR based controllers
  are cheaper  and  more  prevalant  (even  included  on  many
  mainboards  which  don't have a real price difference versus
  non SCSI equipped boards) and the Buslogic  controllers  are
  compatable with the 1540 so I doubt anyone will buy them.

  Forex  is shipping a PCI SCSI adapter, I don't have details.

  James Soutter ([email-masked]) asked me to add  the  following
  information on Fast-Wide-SCSI-2:

       Fast Wide SCSI-2 is sometimes incorrectly called SCSI-3.  It
       differs from  the  normal  Fast  SCSI-2  (like  the  Adapted
       1542B?)  because  it  uses a 16 bit data bus rather than the
       more usual 8 bit bus.  This improves  the  maximum  transfer
       rate from 10 MB/s to 20 MB/s but requires the use of special
       Fast Wide SCSI-2 drives.  The added performance of Fast Wide
       SCSI-2  will  not necessarily improve the speed of your sys-
       tem.  Most hard disk drives have a maximum internal transfer
       rate  of  less  than  10 MB/s and so one drive alone can not
       flood a FAST SCSI-2  bus.   In  Segate's  Oct  1993  product
       overview,  only  one  Fast Wide SCSI-2 drive has an internal
       transfer rate of more than 10 MB/s (the ST12450W).  Most  of
       the  drives  have a maximum internal transfer rate of 6 MB/s
       or less, although the ST12450W is not the only exception  to
       the rule.  In conclusion, Fast Wide SCSI is designed for the
       file server market and will not necessarily benefit a single
       user workstation style system.

       Rather than buying a PCI system with a SCSI interface on the
       motherboard, or rather than waiting for the NCR driver,  you
       could purchase a separate PCI based SCSI card.  According to
       Drew, the only PCI SCSI  option  that  stands  a  chance  of
       working is the Buslogic 946.  It purports to be Adaptec 1540
       compatible, like the EISA/VESA/ISA boards in the series.

       Drew commented that other PCI  based  SCSI  controllers  are
       unlikely to be supported under Linux or the BSDs because the
       NCR based controllers are cheaper and more prevalent.

  Ernst Kloecker ([email-masked]) wrote:

       Talus Corporation has  finished  a  NS/FIP  driver  for  PCI
       boards  with  NCR SCSI. It will be shipping very soon, might
       even be fee because a third party might buy it of  them  and
       donate the driver to NeXT.

  Not  every  PCI-Board  has  got the chip. ASUS does, and one of the J-
  Bond-boards does, too. Some vendors provide an alternative as you  can
  read in Drews text...

  The  NCR-Chip  is clever enough to work with drives formatted by other
  controllers, and should be no problem.

  3.  ASUS-Board

  detailed information from [email-masked]:

  o  3 PCI, 4 ISA Slots (3x16, 1x8 Bit)

  o  ZIF Sockel for the CPU

  o  room for 4 72pin-Simms (max. 128M)

  o  Award BIOS in Flash-Eprom

  o  Onboard: NCR-SCSI, 1par, 2ser (with FIFO), AT-Bus, Floppy

  The board does like most in that price-class only write-through cache,
  no  write-back. (which should not be grave, maybe 3% of performance?).

  The BIOS supports scsi-drives  under  DOS/Windows  without  additional
  drivers, but with the board come addtitional drivers which are said to
  give better performance, for DOS/Windows(ASPI), OS2, Windows-NT,  SCO-
  Unix,  Netware (3.11 and 4, if interpreted correctly)

  Gert  Doering ([email-masked]) was saying the SCO-Unix-driver for
  the onboard-SCSI-Chip was not working properly.  After  two  or  three
  times doing: "time dd if=/dev/rhd20 of=/dev/null bs=100k count=500" it
  kernel-panicked...

  The trouble some people experienced with it might be due to them using
  an  Adaptec-SCSI-Controller  with "sync negotiation" turned on. Please
  check that in the BIOS-Setup of the Adaptec-1542C if you use  one  and
  have problems with occasional hangups!

  4.  Video-Cards

  People  have  successfully  used  #  9  XGE Level 12, ELSA Winner 1000
  boards, and others with the S3928P under Linux.

  [email-masked] said about the following cards:

  o  Diamond Stealth W32 -- Text mode works, X11 sufferered from  "pixel
     dust"

  o  ET4000/W32 -- unbearable

  o  #  9GXEL13  -- Works, virtual consoles corrupted when switched. Had
     to buy card from Dell.

  Genoa Phantom 8900PCI card seems to work well  Genoa  Phantom/W32  2MB
  does not work in an ASUS-Board.  Tseng 3000/W32i chipset seems to work
  well Spea-v7 mecury-lite works perfect since XFree86-2.1

  ATI Graphics Ultra Pro for PCI with 2MB VRAM and an ATI68875C DAC runs
  great as far as [email-masked] tells us: "It's humming right
  along at 1280x1024 w/256 colors @74Hz non-interlaced.  Looks great."

  Paradise  WD90C33   PCI   does   lock   up   on   screensaver/X   says
  [email-masked] (John Edward Bauer)

  miroChrystal 8S/PCI (1MB) S3 - no problem.

  5.  Motherboards

  The people which answered where using the following boards:

  5.1.  ASUS

  o  [email-masked] - successful, but...

  o  [email-masked] - half-successful, works, but...

  o  [email-masked] - successful.

  o  [email-masked] - successful

  o  [email-masked] - successful

  o  [email-masked] - successfull - but trouble with the serialport

  o  [email-masked]  and  his  friend - successful after solving
     IDE-puzzle

  o  Lars Heinemann ([email-masked]) successful

  5.2.  Sirius SPACE

  [email-masked] - successful

  5.3.  Gateway-2000

  [email-masked] - no problems except the soundcard  he  tries  to  swap
  [email-masked]   -  successful,  but...   robert
  logan   ([email-masked])    -   flawless.    James   D.   Levine
  ([email-masked]) - flawless.

  5.4.  Intel-Premier

  [email-masked]  - successful

  5.5.  Comtrade Best Buy PCI / PCI48X MB Rev 1.0

  [email-masked] - "Works, I believe it has buggy Saturn chipset"

  5.6.  IDeal PCI / PCI48X MB Rev 1.0

  [email-masked] - "Did not work with PCI48X motherboard"

  5.7.  CMD Tech. PCI IDE / CSA-6400C

  [email-masked] - "Works"

  5.8.  GA-486iS (Gigabyte)

  [email-masked] - success with problems.

  5.9.  ESCOM 486dx2/66 - which board?

  Works perfect except the ftape-streamer (archive)

  5.10.  J-Bond with i486dx2/66

  Drew Eckhardt ([email-masked]) - The NCR53c810  doesn't
  work too hot (yet), but I'm working on fixing that.

  6.  reports on success

  6.1.  [email-masked] about Gateway2000 P-66

  Gateway2000's  P5-66  system  with Intel's PCI motherboard, with 5 ISA
  slots and 3 PCI slots.  The only PCI card I am using is the  #  9  GXe
  level 12 PCI card (2 MB VRAM and 1 MB DRAM). This card was bought from
  Dell.  Under Linux I am using the graphics in the 80x25 mode  only  (I
  am  waiting  for some XFree86 refinements before using it in 1280x1024
  resolution),  but  under  DOS/Windows  I  have  used   the   card   in
  1280x1024x256  mode  without  problems. Etherlink 3C509 Ethernet card,
  Mitsumi bus-interface card, Adaptec  1542C  SCSI  interface  card  and
  additional serial/parallel ports card (which makes the total of serial
  ports 3).

  I have total of 32 MB RAM (recognized and used by both Linux and DOS).
  There is also a bus mouse (Microsoft in the PS2 mode).

  No problems so far.

  6.2.  James D. Levine ([email-masked]) with Gateway2000

  Gateway  2000 P5-60 with an Intel Mercury motherboard, AMI-Flash-BIOS,
  (1.00.03.AF1, (c)'92) 16M RAM, on-board IDE controller and an ATI  AX0
  (Mach32 Ultra XLR) PCI display adapter.  He had absolutely no problems
  with the hardware so far but has not tried  anything  fancy,  such  as
  accelerated IDE drivers or SCSI support.

  6.3.  [email-masked] with SPACE

  SPACE-board,  8MB  RAM,  S3  805  1MB  DRAM  PCI  260MB  Seagate  IDE-
  Harddiskdrive because of lack  of  NCR53c810-Driver,  0.99pl15d,  does
  seem to work well.

  6.4.  [email-masked] with INTEL

  17 machines running a 60Mhz-i586 on Intel-Premier-PCI-Board

  6.5.  [email-masked] with ASUS

  ASUS-PCI-Board (SP3) having:

  o  -- Asus PCI-Board with AMD 486/dx2-66 and 16M RAM

  o  -- Fujitsu 2196ESA 1G SCSI-II

  o  -- Future Domain 850MEX Controller (cheap-SCSI-Controller, almost a
     clone to Seagates ST01... soon there should be  a  driver  for  the
     onboard-NCR53c810 -Controller.

  o  -- ATI Graphics Ultra (the older one with Mach-8 Chip, ISA-Bus)

  o  -- Slackware 1.1.1

  He  just  exchanged  the  boards,  plugged his cards in, connected the
  cables, and it worked perfect. He does  not  use  any  PCI-Cards  yet,
  though.

  6.6.  [email-masked] with ASUS

  ASUS-PCI-Board  with  486DX66/2,  miro-crystal  8s  PCI  driven by the
  S3-drivers of XFree86-2.0, not using the onboard SCSI-Chip yet because
  of  lack of driver, but tried it on DOS, it was very fast. No problems
  with compatibility at all.

  6.7.  Lars Heinemann ([email-masked]) with ASUS

  ASUS  PCI/I-486SP3  Motherboard  w/  486DX2/66  and  16M  RAM   (2x8),
  miroChrystal  8S/PCI  (1MB)  S3, Soundblaster PRO, Adaptec 1542b (3.20
  ROM) SCSI-Hostadapter with two harddiskdrives   (Fujitsu  M2694ESA  u.
  Quantum LPS52) and a QIC-150 Streamer attached.  No problems at all!

  6.8.  [email-masked] with ASUS

  ASUS PCI/I-486SP3 /  i486DX2-66  /  8 MB PS/2 70 ns BIOS: Award v 4.50
  CPU TO DRAM write buffer: enabled CPU TO PCI  write  buffer:   enabled
  PCI  TO  DRAM  write  buffer:  disabled, unchangeable CPU TO PCI burst
  write:   enabled Miro Crystal 8s PCI - S3 P86C805 - 1MB DRAM

  To use X-window he has to do restorefont -r /usr/lib/X11/savefont  and
  restorefont   -w  /usr/lib/X11/savefont  to  get  the  fonts  restored
  properly after getting to textmode from X-window-mode.  I believe this
  has changed with XFree86(tm)-2.1

  6.9.  robert logan ([email-masked] with GW/2000

  Gateway 2000 4DX2-66P 16 Megs RAM, PCI ATI AX0 2MB DRAM (ATI GUP).  WD
  2540 Hard Disk (528 Megs)  CrystalScan  1776LE  17inch.  (Runs  up  to
  1280x1024) Slackware 1.1.2 (0.99pl15f)

  It  is  giving no problems. He uses SLIP for networking and an Orchid-
  Soundwave-32 for niceties, awaiting the NCR-Driver.  The only  problem
  he  has  is  that  the  IDE-Drive  could be much faster on the PCI-IDE
  because it is one of the  new  Western  Digital  fast  drives  and  in
  DOS/WfW  it absolutely screams - on Linux it is just as slow as a good
  IDE-Drive.

  6.10.  [email-masked] and his friend use ASUS

  Archie and his friend have rather similar configurations:

  o  ASUS PCI-SP3 board (4 ISA, 3 PCI)

  o  Intel 486DX2/66

  o  Genoa Phantom 8900PCI card (friend: Tseng 3000/W32i chipset)

  o  Maxtor 345 MB IDE hard drive

  o  Supra 14.4 internal modem

  o  ViewSonic 6e monitor (Archie)

  o  NEC Multisync 4fge (friend)

  o  Slackware 1.2.0

  The onboard-scsi is disabled. First there where problems with the IDE-
  drive: ``The thing is that on the board there's a jumper which selects
  whether IRQ14 comes from the ISA bus or the PCI bus. The manual has an
  example  where  they show connecting it to PCI INTA. Well, we did that
  just like the example... but then later our IDE drive would  not  work
  (the  IDE  controller is on board).  Had to take it back, they guys at
  NCA were puzzled, then traced it back to this jumper. I guess the  IDE
  controller  uses IRQ14 or something? That's not documented anywhere in
  the manual. Other than that, seems  to  be  kicking  ass  nicely  now.
  Running  X,  modeming, etc. (for the Supra you have to explicitly tell
  the kernel that  the  COM  port  has  a  16550A  using  setserial  (in
  Slackware /etc/rc.d/rc.serial))''.

  6.11.  [email-masked] with G/W 2000

  He  uses  a Gateway 2000 with no problems, except the soundcard (which
  one?) he now trades in for a genuine soundblaster and hopes it  helps.

  6.12.  Joerg Wedeck ([email-masked]) / ESCOM

  486 DX2/66 from ESCOM (which board?) with onboard IDE and without  (!)
  onboard NCR-SCSI-chip. ISA-adaptec 1542cf scsi-controller instead spea
  v7 mercury lite (s3,  PCI,  1MB),  ISA-Soundblaster-16,  mitsumi-cdrom
  (the  slower one).  Anything except the archive-streamer works with no
  problems.  The spea-v7 works perfect since XFree86-2.1

  6.13.  [email-masked] / ASUS

  ASUS-PCI board with AMD486dx40 (but actualy running at  33Mhz?!)   His
  ISA-ET3000 Optima 1024A ISA works nice.

  7.  Reports of problems

  7.1.  [email-masked] and SCSI-PCI-SC200

  He  reports that after plugging that card into his Pentium-board Linux
  does no longer boot. My first guess is that it is not supported.

  7.2.  [email-masked] G/W 2000

  Gateway 2000  G/W  2000  4DX2/66  PCI  ATI-Graphics-Ultra-Pro  IDE  of
  indetermiate make

  It works nice -  only the IDE-Card runs in ISA-compatibility-mode, and
  works a lot faster when switched into  PCI-Mode  by  a  DOS-program...
  thus not that fast in Linux, patch would be nice.

  7.3.  [email-masked] (Frank Hofmann) / ASUS

  he uses the  ASUS-Board  with  16MB-RAM,  ISA-based  S3/928,  and  the
  onboard-IDE-controller with a  Seagate ST4550A harddisk, and had never
  any trouble with the newer Linux-kernels.

  His problem is:

       using X, my mouse is not responding the way I was used to before, it's
       sometimes behind movement and making jumps if moved fast. I think this
       was discussed In a Linux newsgroup before (I don't know wich one)  and
       is  due to the use of 16550 serial chips for the onboard serial inter-
       faces. After two weeks, I got used to it :-)

  Reducing the threshold of the 16550 should help. There should be  some
  patch to setserial available somewhere, but I do not know where.

  7.4.  [email-masked] (Axel Mahler) / ASUS

  ASUS  PCI/I-486SP3  Motherboard  (Award BIOS 4.50), 16 MB RAM on-Board
  NCR Chip is disabled, he had the Genoa Phantom/W32 2MB for PCI  and  a
  Adaptec AHA-1542CF (BIOS v2.01) connected to:

  o  an IBM 1.05 GB Harddisk

  o  a Toshiba CD-ROM (XM4101-B)

  o  a HP DAT-Streamer (2GB)

  when  creating  the filesystems  mke2fs (0.4, v. 1.11.93) did hang and
  installing was impossible. After replacing the Genoa  Phantom/W32  2MB
  PCI with an ELSA Winner 1000 2MB PCI it works perfectly.  He tested it
  with an old  Eizo VGA-ISA and it worked as well, so the problem was in
  the Genoa-PCI-card.

  7.5.  Frank Strauss ([email-masked]) / ASUS

  ASUS  SP3  Board   i486DX2/66  NCR53c810 disabled Adaptec 1542B in ISA
  Slot with 2 Harddiskdrives (200MB Maxtor, 420MB Fijutsu), SyQuest 88MB
  and  Tandberg Streamer ELSA Winner 1000 PCI, 1MB-VRAM Soundblaster Pro
  in ISA Slot at IRQ 5 Onboard IDE disabled Onboard serial, parallel, FD
  enabled

  after  a reset, the machine sometimes 'hangs' (soft and hard-reset the
  same) - this is probably not related to the Adaptec and the Soundcard,
  because  even without these the system sometimes fails to come up. But
  if it runs, (and the ELSA-WINNER-1000-PCI-message appears) it runs ok.

  the two serial ports are detected as 16550 as they should, but at some
  mailbox-sessions there was heavy data-loss at  V42bis...  The  problem
  seems to be in the hardware...

  CPU>-PCI-Burst seems to work well with DOS/MS-Windows

  CPU->PCI-Burst  does  not  work properly with linux0.99p15, Messing up
  when switching the virtual-consoles, crashing completely when  calling
  big apps like ghostview, or xdvi, leaving the SCSI-LED on (!).

  (I  suspect  these apps would be using a lot of CPU->PCI-burst because
  of the big heap of data to transmit to the PCI-Winner-1000)

  After disabling CPU->PCI-Burst, it  works  well,  the  Winner-1000  at
  1152x846  (not  much  fontcache with 1MB) does 93k xstones. OpaqueMove
  with twm is more than just endureable :-)

  He has got a SATURN.EXE which  he  loads  under  DOS  before  starting
  Linux, helping to turn on burst without hangs...

  Someone  stated  that  these  problems  might go away when turning off
  "sync negotiation" on the Adaptec - I do not know if this is  possible
  with the adaptec1542B too? But I guess so.

  With  CPU->PCI-Burst it yielded 95k xstones, so he considers it as not
  too grave to do without. His only problem is that he would like to run
  his  Winner-1000  at 1152x900 which fails because it seems to take any
  x-resolution higher than 1024pixels as  a  1280pixel-resolution,  thus
  wasting a lot end resulting in a y-resolution of 816pixels... but this
  is probably no PCI-related problem. It  should  have  gone  away  with
  XFree86-2.1

  7.6.  [email-masked] / ASUS

  o  BOARD  ASUS PCI/I-486 SP3      RAM: 16MB (4x4M-SIMM)

  o  CPU    486DX33 CPU

  o  BIOS   Ver. 4.50 (12/30/93)

  o  Floppy          Two  floppy  drives  (1.2 and 1.44), using ASUS on-
     board floppy controller

  o  SCSI    tried both WD7000 SCSI controller and  Adaptec  1542CF  and
     worked.

  o  Two SCSI 320M hard drives

  o  SCSI NEC84 CDROM drive

  o  SCSI QIC150 Archive tape drive

  o  Video          Tseng ET4000 ISA graphics card

  o  Sound  PAS16 sound card

  o  Printer attached to on-board ASUS parallel port

  He  has  nothing  in  the PCI-Slots yet, but wants to buy a PCI-Video-
  Card, currently uses WD7000 SCSI controller but  will  switch  to  the
  NCR-Chip onboard as soon as the driver is out.

  Everything  works  perfect  -  only  the first serial port which has a
  14.4K-Modem attached does hang occasianly after reconnecting with  the
  modem  after  having  used  it  previously.  He says that would not be
  unique to ASUS but rather  a  bug  in  the  SMC-LSI  device  with  its
  16550UART.  The  logitech-serial-mouse  on the second port works fine.
  Setting down the threshhold of  the  16550  for  the  mouseport  would
  definitly  help, one does seem to need a special patched setserial for
  that? I have not got the information yet, please  contact  me  if  you
  know more!

  7.7.  [email-masked] / GigaByte

  o  Board          GA-486iS from Gigabyte w/  256Kb 2L-Cache, i486-DX2

  o  Bios    AMI, 93/8

  o  SCSI   no scsi-NCR-chip on-board, using Adaptec 1542C,

  o  Video  ELSA Winner 1000

  o  Linux  0.99pl14 + SCSI-Clustering-Patches / Slackware 1.1.1

  All  seems  to  go  well,  but  he  has  not tried neither networking,
  printing or a streamer yet. Before applying the Clustering- patches he
  had  some  problems with hangs triggered by "find", but this no longer
  is the case - perhaps it was an older kernel-bug.

  The ELSA-Winner-1000 sometimes hangs. very  strange  patterns  on  the
  screen  resolved  only  by booting... The dealer has told him it was a
  bug in the ELSA-Card, but the manufacturer claims it  had  solved  the
  problem. The bug is not reproducable so he does not take any action at
  the moment.

  All in all the machine seems to work very well  using  it  a  lot  for
  textprocessing   (emacs,  LaTeX,  xfig,  ghostview).   Interaction  is
  surprisingly responsive, few difference  from  the  3  to  4-times  as
  expensive sun he works on...

  CPU->PCI-Burst is still disabled because the bios does not support the
  PCI-things well?

  7.8.  Tom Drabenstott ([email-masked]) with Comtrade / PCI48IX

  PCI48IX  Motherboard Rev. 1.0.  Made by ???  documentation copyrighted
  by "TMC". The BIOS says not very much about PCI.

  His E-315E Super  IDE  UMC  (863+865)  ISA-Controller-card  does  make
  trouble.  (it  is  a  multifunction controller-card). It seems to work
  well under DOS/OS2 but not under Linux.

  8.  Conclusion

  Not a clear one, yet... *sigh*... Most people seem to have  set  their
  heart  on the ASUS-Board, some sucessful, some with Problems. It seems
  to be due to the bug in the Saturn-Chipset which does  not  do  write-
  back  and  posting properly, ASUS seems to use that buggy version 2.0.
  Intel claimed that version 3 would be bugfixed and available since end
  of  feburary.  Someone stated that most of the problems would disappar
  when disabling "sync negotiation" on the adaptec-scsi-controller.

  9.  Thanks

  I gathered my Information mostly by mail and by three news-postings by
  the following people:

       [email-masked],        [email-masked],
       [email-masked] (Working at  the  PCI-NCR53c810-Driver),
       [email-masked],           [email-masked],
       [email-masked],  [email-masked],  [email-masked]   (iX-Magazine),
  [email-masked],           [email-masked],          [email-masked],
  [email-masked],            [email-masked]
  dortmund.de,                  [email-masked],
  [email-masked],   [email-masked],    [email-masked],
  [email-masked],   [email-masked],   [email-masked]
  karlsruhe.de,           [email-masked],           Ste-
  [email-masked],  [email-masked],  mund-
  [email-masked],     [email-masked],      Gert      Doering
  ([email-masked]),     James     D.    Levine    ([email-masked]),
  [email-masked] and his friend [email-masked].

  10.  copyright/legalese

  Copyright 1993, 1994 by Michael  Will  ([email-masked]
  tuebingen.de).

  Professional printing (as in magazines) requires special permission by
  the author, Michael  Will.  Contact  me,  either  via  eMail  or  call
  +49-7071-67551.

  Trademarks  are  owned  by  their  owners. There is no warranty on the
  information in this document.