Is Future Domain SCSI card any good?

[Bill Vermillion]

I went to a potential client site the other day to install some serial
drivers and talk about what software he needed for a system he had
purchased from his mini/mainframe vendor (the min/mf is a Burroughs
and the Xenix box is an Acer).

This was my second attempt.  The first time I tried to install SCO
Xenix and found that the Future Domain controller requires a kernel to
be built on the machine after installing a 506/Esdi drive, and gen'ing
a bootable SCSI kernel and then removing that drive and replacing with
the SCSI controller/drive.  Since the people who sold this to him
didn't install the Xenix, I tried by building a kernel on an AT
machine and had problems.

The machine is then taken back to the dealer who installs the Xenix
but not the serial drivers for a digiboard and returns the machine.
I tried to build a new kernel, and got sector not found errors from
the system, and had a non-bootable kernel.  I booted with the old
kernel and it started to come up, then error after error during the
time it tries to run rc.d.

The hard drive is a Miniscribe and the controller is the Future Domain
860.  The computer is an Acer 386 box with 5 megs of memory.

Since I normally don't work around clone type machines I have a
general question.   Is this combination, which appears to have been
bought with low dollar in mind, a viable system.  My gut reaction says
the Future Domain controller and Miniscribe SCSI are the heart of the
problem.   I did a badtrack to force a read/write and force the SCSI
to remap bad tracks, and it took 1.5 hours to complete.  It seems to
creep compared to others I have seen.

Any/all comments would be appreciated, by posting or mail, whichever
you feel is more appropriate.  For mail use the address in the sig.

Thanks

-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill
                      : bill at bilver.UUCP