Hi there !
> Many of the small details, such as how many serial ports, parallel
> ports, floppy, etc have essentially been voted on. The major issues
> however must now be resolved. Below is a list of topics that must
> be resolved before we can start to create schematics:
>
> * Peripheral controller
> Should we use the IDT 79R3730, or design our own?
I would say, developing our own peripheral controller takes
time and is perhaps a not very reliable solution. I prefer
the use of the IDT chip.
> Should we use a IDT 79R3041 CPU as an I/O controller?
I doubt that an extra I/O CPU improves speed that much. We will
have some extra overhead due to the communication, no matter
what protocol and what hardware is between the two CPUs.
> * Should we have an ISA bus or a simpler bus?
> ISA is more practical, but a new simple 8-bit bus is
> cheaper and free of the ISA IBM-ness.
Designing our own bus might of course have advantages over that
brain-dead ISA bus. But what hardware will be available for that
bus ? Who will design it ?
I prefer the ISA bus, dumb as it is. All the non-standard
hardware, like dsp cards, eprom programmers and so on are
available. It's just a question of some generic ISA drivers
to support that stuff.
> * Should we have SCSI?
> SCSI for this board will probably be much cheaper and
> probably faster than something like Adaptec.
I agree. SCSI is definitly a must.
> * Should we have video?
> Video is looking to be the most expensive option on
> the whole board, but some say its essential.
It looks like it *is* essential for most of us. We should
have on-board video.
> * Should we have ethernet?
Yes, for the same reason as we should have SCSI on board.
On-board ethernet is much cheaper than *every* ethernet ISA card.
> Other issues such as keyboard, RTC, NVRAM, serial, parallel, floppy
> disk drives, ISDN, SNA, T1 and the Coke machine interface are not that
> important until these issues are resolved. Please address yourselves
> to these issues so that we can come to a decision in the next week or
> so.
I agree, with one exception I have forgotten myself when
writing my "downgraded spec sheet": Floppy is *important*.
Imagine someone buys a mips-board and adds a disk and
a monitor (what most people will do). How to install Linux
if there's no floppy ? He can't use the tape because there
is none. He can't use the serial I/O's because there's
nothing to download from.
Any idea ?
Andy
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