From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Mon,  7 Feb 1994 16:42:31 -0500
From: Vijay Gill vijay@gl.umbc.edu
Subject: No subject
Topicbox-Message-UUID: fff9d65a-eac7-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19940207214231.2BU-DLZjZpj3cJ4mfx3dVJQa7gz-cEcCtX70vo4TZIc@z>


The purpose of this list is to maintain a database of hardware that is
known to work with plan 9.  This should make life easier for those
people contemplating the purchase of new hardware.  Most of this list
is taken directly from what Forsyth sent me.  Please do not deluge him
with mail, reply to me and I'll try to set up a mechanism to distribute
this stuff.

 The list is starting out for the most selfish of reasons, since I am
in the market for some hardware to run plan 9, I thought it would be a
good idea to find out what to get.  This list will concentrate mostly
on the 386/486 clone hardware.  While the 386/486 machines are looked
upon with derision, they provide the cheapest hardware to run plan 9.
However, most of the hardware is only tested with, and comes with
drivers for, DOS and Windows, and thus may not work with plan 9.  This
list details the stuff that works with plan 9.

BeginBlurb:  
Plan 9 on a Mac.  No more futzing around. 
I could deal with plan 9 on a Powerbook 180.
End Blurb.

Contributors:

Most of this hardware list comes from forsyth@minster.york.ac.uk who
has done yeoman work to contributing to this list.  Actually, come to
think of it, his is about the only contribution ;)

Here is the list of hardware that will work with plan 9.  Other
hardware may work with plan 9, but this list will only list stuff that
is known to work or stuff that I need confirmation on.

-----------------------------------------------------
Bus:
	ISA
	VESA
	EISA (may work with ISA Cards, need confirmation)
-----------------------------------------------------
CPU:
	Intel
	AMD - To be tested by Forsyth
	Cyrix - Ditto
	IBM SLC - Ditto
------------------------------------------------------
Video Cards:

This is the trickiest part.  SVGA cards all have different ways of
configuring and operating high-resolution modes (higher than 640x480
VGA).

	ET4000 SVGA cards work.
	S3 911 cards work
	Paradise cards (reportedly) work.
	Diamond Stealth Pro cards work, with some changes
		to devvga.c and lib/vga.  This is from
		Gary Chapel.

------------------------------------------------------
Ethernet cards:

	WD
	SMC
	NE2000 clones (Reset port address it uses
		       might not work on some clones)
	3Com 3C509 Etherlink III (need to get some fixes
		       to use the driver under very heavy
		       loads)
	3Com 3C503 -- Avoid this one


------------------------------------------------------------
Hard Disk Controllers:

	Ultrastor 14F SCSI (driver is available by ftp)
	Adaptec 1542B/Buslogic 542B (driver is available,
		but hasn't been used very much)
	Forsyth has added the driver for the Ultrastor 14F.
	He has used it on both cpu and terminal machines,
	and also on the file server, running Fujitsu 2624FA
	disks, Seagate 3283N and Sun CDROM drives.

	Standard IDE controllers should work.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Memory:

	8-16 megs should be adequate.  More is better.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Modems:

	High speed modems will work but the kernel does not take
	advantage of the FIFO's in the 16550 UARTS.  Forsyth can
	supply the diffs and the appropriate changes that will work
	for `hayes', which work fine upto 38400.
	
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diskettes:

	Stick with 3.5" 1.44 meg or 5.25".  Plan 9 does not
	work too well with 2.88 meg 3.5".

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disks:

The pc system on the distribution (Jan 1993 version) supports
IDE disks.  The IDE driver has a bug in it that causes it to fail
on very old Seagate 42 Meg drives (fixed by Forsyth).  Modern IDE
drives work just fine.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the list as it stands.  If you have plan 9 running on
different hardware, please send me details.

War stories welcomed, to go into the war stories list. I presently
have Forsyth's war story. More input welcomed.  I will be looking at
putting this stuff up for anon ftp when I have sufficient volume.  If
there is sufficient interest, I'll post up the war stories that I
have.

--
Vijay Gill                         |The (paying) customer is always right.
wrath@cs.umbc.edu                  |                  - Piercarlo Grandi
vijay@gl.umbc.edu                  | Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get
These are my opinions only.        | sucked into jet engines.