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Update my hardware tips to more modern standards.

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Jordan K. Hubbard 1998-03-24 01:00:59 +00:00
parent 08690df241
commit 75dcf7699b
Notes: svn2git 2020-12-08 03:00:23 +00:00 
svn path=/head/; revision=2571
1 changed files with 29 additions and 47 deletions
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handbook/hw.sgml
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@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
<!-- $Id: hw.sgml,v 1.80 1998-03-15 15:10:11 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- $Id: hw.sgml,v 1.81 1998-03-24 01:00:59 jkh Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<!--
@ -64,8 +64,21 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
cannot obviously guarantee that it will be at any given time.
<sect2><heading>Motherboards<label id="hw:mb"></heading>
<p>The <htmlurl url="http://asustek.asus.com.tw/" name="ASUS">
<htmlurl url="http://asustek.asus.com.tw/FTP/ASUS/Info/Spec/pi-p55tp4.txt"
<p>For Pentium Pro (P6) systems, I'm quite fond of the
<htmlurl url="http://www.tyan.com/html/products.html" name="Tyan">
S1668 dual-processor motherboard. It makes a dandy little single
or dual processor system (which is supported in FreeBSD 3.0) and
the price of the Pentium Pro 180/256K chip has fallen to truly
affordable levels. The Pentium Pro remains my favorite processor
solution server systems (Megahertz ratings aren't everything).</p>
<p>For the Pentium II, I'm rather partial to the <htmlurl
url="http://www.asus.com.tw" name="ASUS"> <htmlurl
url="http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Pentiumpro/P2l97-s/index.html" name="P2l97-S"> motherboard with the on-board Adaptec SCSI WIDE
controller.</p>
<p>For Pentium machines, the ASUS <htmlurl
url="http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Pentium/P55tp4/index.html"
name="P55T2P4">
motherboard appears to be a good choice for mid-to-high range Pentium
server and workstation systems. You might also wish to investigate ASUS's
@ -80,41 +93,12 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
or may not be noticeable depending on your application) but buys you
significantly increased fault-tolerance to memory errors.
<p>At the higher end, the Intel/Venus Pro (<ref id="hw:mb:pci"
name="VS440FX">) motherboard appears to work very well with FreeBSD,
as does its accompanying 200MHz P6 (Pentium Pro) CPU. Recent price
drops have dropped P6 systems into a very affordable price bracket,
at least in the United States, and for serious server applications you
may wish to look no further than the Pentium Pro. My personal
`<ref id="makeworld" name="make world">' times dropped from 3 hours and
40 minutes with a P5/166 to 1 hour and 22 minutes when I upgraded to a
P6/200 machine - not a fair comparison, to be sure, but just to note
that in terms of increased productivity, the P6/200 has definitely been
worth the upgrade for me.
NOTE: The Intel motherboards are designed to a different form-factor
and hence require <em>an entirely different PC case</em>, the so-called
"ATX" case design. Consider this fact carefully if you're thinking of
upgrading an existing system - all the commonly available ATX cases
I've seen so far have been in the "midi-tower" class, with limited space
for drives or other internal peripherals available. On the plus side,
most ATX cases appear to be of much higher quality than their typical PC
counterparts.
The only known interoperability problem with the
<ref id="hw:mb:pci" name="440FX"> chipset (also known as ``Natoma'')
is that the Matrox Meteor frame-grabber board will lock up your system
if used in one of these motherboards. Matrox blames Intel, Intel
blames Matrox, all we know is that it definitely doesn't work. That is
the only card I've had any troubles with in my P6 system and the card
works just fine in my older Triton chipset based motherboard.
<sect2><heading>Disk Controllers</heading>
<p>This one is a bit trickier, and while I used to recommend the
<htmlurl url="http://www.buslogic.com" name="Buslogic"> controllers
unilaterally for everything from ISA to PCI, now I tend to lean
towards the <htmlurl url="http://www.adaptec.com" name="Adaptec">
1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940 for PCI.
1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940UW for PCI.
The NCR/Symbios cards for PCI have also worked well for me, though
you need to make sure that your motherboard supports the BIOS-less
@ -161,13 +145,13 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
<p>At the time of this writing, FreeBSD supports 3 types of CDR drives
(though I believe they all ultimately come from Phillips anyway):
The Phillips CDD 522 (Acts like a Plasmon), the PLASMON RF4100 and
the HP 4020i. I myself use the HP 4020i for burning CDROMs (with
the HP 6020i. I myself use the HP 6020i for burning CDROMs (with
2.2-current - it does not work with 2.1.5 or earlier releases of the
SCSI code) and it works very well. See <htmlurl
url="file:/usr/share/examples/worm" name="/usr/share/examples/worm">
on your 2.2 system for example scripts used to created ISO9660
filesystem images (with RockRidge extensions) and burn them onto an
HP4020i CDR.
HP6020i CDR.
<sect2><heading>Tape drives<label id="hw:tape"></heading>
<p>I've had pretty good luck with both
@ -189,7 +173,7 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
<htmlurl url="http://www.matrox.com/mgaweb/brochure.htm"
name="Millenium"> card. Note that support for this card is also
excellent with the <htmlurl url="http://www.xfree86.org/"
name="XFree86"> server, which is now at version 3.3.1.
name="XFree86"> server, which is now at version 3.3.2.
You also certainly can't go wrong with one of
<htmlurl url="http://www.nine.com/" name="Number 9's"> cards -
@ -215,7 +199,7 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
chip and other cards using it, such as the Zynx ZX342 or DEC DE435,
will generally work as well. For 100Mbit networking, either the
SMC SMC9332DST 10/100MB or Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B cards will do
a fine job.
a fine job, the Intel EtherExpress generally getting my vote.
If what you're looking for is, on the other hand, the cheapest possible
solution which will still work reasonably well, then almost any NE2000
@ -243,23 +227,21 @@ Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
cards at <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.stallion.com/drivers/unsupported/freebsd/stalbsd-0.0.4.tar.gz" name="this"> location.
<sect2><heading>Audio<label id="hw:audio"></heading>
<p>I currently use the <htmlurl url="http://www.gravis.com/" name="Gravis">
Ultrasound MAX due to its high sound quality and full-duplex audio
capabilities (dual DMA channels). Support for Windows NT and OS/2 is
fairly anemic, however, so I'm not sure that I can recommend it as an
all-around card for a machine that will be running both FreeBSD and NT
or OS/2. In such a scenario, I might recommend the <htmlurl url="http://www.creaf.com/" name="Creative Labs"> AWE32 instead.
<p>I currently use a <htmlurl url="http://www.creaf.com/" name="Creative Labs"> AWE32 though just about anything from Creative Labs will generally work these days. This is not to say that other types of sound cards don't also work, simply that I have little experience with them (I was a former GUS fan, but Gravis's soundcard situation has been dire for some time).</p>
<sect2><heading>Video<label id="hw:vgrabbers"></heading>
<p>For video capture, there's really only once choice - the
<p>For video capture, there are two good choices - any card
based on the Brooktree BT848 chip, such as the Hauppage or WinTV
boards, will work very nicely with FreeBSD. Another board which works
for me is the
<htmlurl url="http://www.matrox.com/" name="Matrox">
<htmlurl url="http://www.matrox.com/imgweb/meteor.htm" name="Meteor">
card. FreeBSD also supports the older video spigot card from
Creative Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find
and the Meteor is a more current generation frame-grabber with
a higher-speed PCI interface. Note that this card <em>will not work</em>
Creative Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find.
Note that the Meteor frame grabber card <em>will not work</em>
with motherboards based on the 440FX chipset! See the
<ref id="hw:mb" name="motherboard reference"> section for details.
In such cases, it's better to go with a BT848 based board.</p>
<sect><heading>Core/Processing<label id="hw:core"></heading>