From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 23:42:25 -0400 From: jim mckie jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com Subject: Plan 9 for dual Pentium machine... Topicbox-Message-UUID: 42828102-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Message-ID: <19960408034225.uKpZSUIOiT3JCSahb0MzQLqfNQAXyTB2FCw06nLN8X4@z> In porting Brazil to a dual Pentium system I basically threw away all the PC device drivers and started from scratch as I was unsure how many of them were MP-safe (I know I wrote some which weren't). I've been writing drivers on an as-needed basis and currently the only drivers are for Buslogic SCSI controllers, the AMD79C970 ethernet controller, the 3COM EtherLinkIII and Fast Etherlink controllers and the UARTs; these drivers bear little resemblance to those distributed. Note there is no VGA (or mouse) driver, not necessary for a CPU server. Much of the initialisation, memory management and interrupt handling code was completely rewritten too, some of it had to be but some of it just needed going over again, it had been a long time. The code could be back-ported to Plan 9 but there's no incentive here to do so. However, I intend to fix-up the fileserver kernel sometime to incorporate all the fixes found since the distribution was cut and that may be a good candidate for back-porting the MP code to. Regarding hardware, I've used an ASUS PCI/E-P54NP4D, a Gigabyte GA-586ID and a Tyan Tempest S1462 (there are details on these boards in the FAQ). If you can wait there will be a new generation of boards shipping in the next few weeks based on the Triton-II chipset which promises much better memory and I/O bandwidth than those above which are all based on the older but more stable Neptune chipset. The older boards are probably listed above in order of decreasing preference. --jim ------ forwarded message follows ------ >>From cse.psu.edu!9fans-outgoing-owner Sat Apr 6 04:44:18 EST 1996 Received: from colossus.cse.psu.edu by plan9; Sat Apr 6 04:44:18 EST 1996 Received: by colossus.cse.psu.edu id <78657>; Sat, 6 Apr 1996 04:31:57 -0500 Received: from skat.usc.edu ([128.125.253.131]) by colossus.cse.psu.edu with SMTP id <78596>; Sat, 6 Apr 1996 04:31:41 -0500 Received: (from taweil@localhost) by skat.usc.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3/usc) id BAA25317; Sat, 6 Apr 1996 01:31:28 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 04:31:28 -0500 Message-Id: <199604060931.BAA25317@skat.usc.edu> From: Ta-Wei Li To: 9fans Subject: Plan 9 for dual Pentium machine... Sender: cse.psu.edu!owner-9fans Precedence: bulk Reply-To: cse.psu.edu!9fans Hi, A while ago I asked a question about the availablility of Plan 9 for dual Pentium system and I got a reply saying that a dual Pentium has been done for Brazil but there was no plan for such port of Plan 9. I'd like to know if this is still true. I am planning on getting a new machine to set up a CPU server and if Plan 9 is available for dual Pentium machine, I'd like to know which motherboard it supports. Thanks. -- Ta-Wei Li