24 Apr
2006
24 Apr
'06
9:39 p.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
They've got an x86 emulator in the BIOS, so you
can use a PC PCI video
card, have on-board IDE and floppy interfaces (the IDE is really slow).
They can netboot from either Tulip-chipset cards, or Intel eepro 100
nics (if you have a new enough firmware). They can also boot off an
NCR/SYM53C875 chipset or Adaptec AHA2940 SCSI card (those are the only
ones I've tried).
With the appropriate video card (and there are several PC video cards
that work) and a Qlogic ISP1040 it'll also run VMS.
Patrick put it mildly - there are no words for the performance of the
CMD640 IDE chipset. You *really* want fast SCSI to make it sing.
Other than the IDE, it's a sweet board.
It should also be able to do a serial console - try
hooking something up
to the first serial port (9600-8-n-1), and see if you get a response.
You can set the console from SMS/ARCBIOS, but IIRC if there's no
keyboard plugged in it'll come up to serial console automagically.
Doc