Very Computer

Hello all,

Does any of you have any comments on the Intel Saturn chipset for
486 DX/DX2 m.boards (PCI/ISA only with 4x72 simm slots)?
Boards come with NCR scsi built-in + IDE +multi I/O.
Have you had any problems using such a board?
Does the NCR 810 scsi work with no problems?
Which version(s) should I look for? (chipset + bios)

I will need to use it with linux/dos/windows/os2/nt.

Please reply via personal e-mail.

Thanks in advance,
Angelo
--
#include <standard.disclaimer.h>
 Angelo Haritsis, Applied Systems Section
 s-mail: Dpt of Computing,Imperial College, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK

Additionally, is it capable of 2-1-1-1 cache burst reads at 50Mhz?
With what speed cache chips?

Bill

p.s.

Any inexpensive sources of 12ns and 10ns 32kx8 cache chips out there?

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Quote:>Does any of you have any comments on the Intel Saturn chipset for
>486 DX/DX2 m.boards (PCI/ISA only with 4x72 simm slots)?
>Boards come with NCR scsi built-in + IDE +multi I/O.
>Have you had any problems using such a board?
>Does the NCR 810 scsi work with no problems?
>Which version(s) should I look for? (chipset + bios)

One current favorite seems to be the ASUS PCI/I-SP3G motherboard, which
uses what it reportedly the most recent rev of the Saturn chipset.  The
Linux PCI-Howto has a number of positive reports about this board, and
my own experiences with one (a week's worth) are also quite positive.  I
understand that older revs of Saturn (including some used in the older
SP3 ASUS board) were somewhat buggy.  Accept no stale boards!

The SCSI controller works fine with the two Maxtor drives I'm using.  It
had problems with an old Micropolis drive - silently-corrupted data -
but as I'd had very similar problems using this type of drive with fast
Macintosh systems, I tend to blame the drive rather than the controller.

I've got two PCI slots filled (#9 GXE64 1-meg-DRAM video card, and Boca
PCI Ethernet based on an AMD PCI busmaster chip), and two ISA slots
filled (SoundBlaster Pro card, and a PROM-burner controller card).  So
far so good - no IRQ conflicts, no DMA or PCI-busmaster conflicts or
problems, no unexplainable hangs or crashes or data corruption.  Runs
like a bat out of hell, too - FTP'ing a big file from a SparcStation-10
yielded between 820 and 870 kbytes/second, sustained throughput all the
way up through the Linux filesystem and SCSI driver.

I don't have the chip or BIOS rev numbers here at home to tell you,
though... but if you specify the current rev of the ASUS SP3G board you
should be in good shape.  I don't know the burst transfer rates or other
fine details, and I don't recall seeing them mentioned in the ASUS manual.
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: >Does any of you have any comments on the Intel Saturn chipset for
: >486 DX/DX2 m.boards (PCI/ISA only with 4x72 simm slots)?
: >Boards come with NCR scsi built-in + IDE +multi I/O.
: >Have you had any problems using such a board?
: >Does the NCR 810 scsi work with no problems?
: >Which version(s) should I look for? (chipset + bios)
: >
: >I will need to use it with linux/dos/windows/os2/nt.

: Additionally, is it capable of 2-1-1-1 cache burst reads at 50Mhz?
: With what speed cache chips?

: Any inexpensive sources of 12ns and 10ns 32kx8 cache chips out there?

        If any one have info on this I'll like to know too :-)

~~Kitty Hawk__

[ glad to see you got a new gig, Dave... ]

Quote:>problems, no unexplainable hangs or crashes or data corruption.  Runs
>like a bat out of hell, too - FTP'ing a big file from a SparcStation-10
>yielded between 820 and 870 kbytes/second, sustained throughput all the
>way up through the Linux filesystem and SCSI driver.

Good ghod... that's better than half the channel capacity, isn't it?  I
don't suppose you can bench a _pair_ of identical machines, can you?  I'd
purely _love_ to know how much of a hit your taking running Polaris
instead of Linux at the other end...

Cheers,
-- jra
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|> >problems, no unexplainable hangs or crashes or data corruption.  Runs
|> >like a bat out of hell, too - FTP'ing a big file from a SparcStation-10
|> >yielded between 820 and 870 kbytes/second, sustained throughput all the
|> >way up through the Linux filesystem and SCSI driver.
|>
|> Good ghod... that's better than half the channel capacity, isn't it?  I
|> don't suppose you can bench a _pair_ of identical machines, can you?  I'd
|> purely _love_ to know how much of a hit your taking running Polaris
|> instead of Linux at the other end...

Sorry about this but as much as I detest Solaris, the network speed is A1.
Two identical Sparc 5/65s with Solaris 2.3 will sustain 970 to 980 KB/s
with ftp (a 15MB file - my Gnu addons to make Solaris halfway bearable).
This is over a Uni net with a central Powerhub switching subnet packets
and god knows what sort of router spagetti between the 2 machines.

At home I upgraded my 486-33 to an ASUS 486-66 PCI, the old 486 went into the
mailbox machine (the two are networked). This more than doubled the avg.
throughput over the old 386 in there. I now get about 470KB sustained.
Before it hovered around 170KB. Both machines with 1.1.51.

Hope that helps.
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