ISC 3.2/harddisk & floppy problems

[Randy Suess]

In article <113 at odiehh.hanse.de> marzusch at odiehh.hanse.de writes:
>   b) Michael told me this problem disappeared when he installed the ET4000 in
>      an 8 bit slot; however this doesn't help much since Thomas Roell's
>      X11 server requires a 16 bit path to the VGA controller

	Not true.  Any software couldn't care less if a VGA card is in
	the 8 bit or 16 bit slot.  And you will not notice any differance
	in which slot it is in.  The VGA spec is an 8 bit one.  The 16
	bit nonsense has to do with the on-board ROM, which is not used
	by any software that wants performance.  Under DOS, Windows bypasses
	the bios and goes directly to the (8 bit) hardware, as does
	X11.  You run into more problems using the 16 bit mode than it
	is worth because of the AT bus's problem with a 16 bit memory
	access grabbing a whole 256k chunk of memory.  Any 8 bit memory
	addressing in this space (such as an ethernet card) loses.

-- 
Randy Suess
randy at chinet.chi.il.us