SVR3.2.2 on an EISA machine?

Dick Dunn rcd at ico.isc.com
Fri Jun 1 09:18:31 AEST 1990


I think a few general comments may be useful here.

jxf at procyon.cis.ksu.edu (Jerry Frain) writes:
> My brother works for a company who is going to purchase a Compaq 486
> machine and wants to run UNIX on it.  He has talked with an AT&T
> reseller who claims that SVR3.2.2 won't run on an EISA machine, and
> that he will have to wait for 4.0.

Hmmm...well, it's an interesting way to sell 4.0, I guess...

I'm currently running a vanilla out-of-the-box Interactive rel. 2.2 on a
Compaq 486/25, which is definitely an EISA machine.  HOWEVER, let's be
careful about that!  The system, as I'm running it, is running in ISA mode.
There aren't EISA drivers in the release I have, but the hardware is well-
behaved and works in ISA mode.  (I've "only" got 12 Mb on the machine right
now.)

What's the real picture?  If you get an EISA box now, and you're careful
to put in devices that also operate as ISA devices, and you don't put in
too much memory (since ISA is limited to 24 bits == 16 Mb), you're OK with
the various V.3.2 systems just as they stand.  There's an obvious speed
penalty for I/O, but you'll be up and running, and the cpu will be running
at full speed.  (A 486 seems to be roughly 2x a comparably-clocked 386.)

Then, you can wait for either (a) V.4 or (b) the particular EISA drivers
you need for V.3.2.  I'm not going to try to guess the time for either of
those to happen (and obviously it will vary with vendor and device)...at
this point, Jerry's request probably applies:

>...To avoid starting a long and probably uninteresting discussion ... I
> would prefer e-mail...

But the point is that there's nothing in V.3.2 that inherently prevents it
from having EISA device drivers.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.



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