To: 386users@TWG.COM Subject: 80386 mailing list, vol 4 #16 Date: 8 Mar 89 02:21:18 EST (Wed) From: "Wm E. Davidsen" 80386 User's mailing list vol 4 #16 Mar 8, 1989 In this issue: 80386 test software Re: Inboard 386 question [ 2 msgs ] Re: 386SX Drop in Board [ 2 msgs ] zenith and scsi MicroEMACS on 386 and SCO Xenix Z-386 and ST-4096 The addresses for the list are now: 386users@TWG.COM - for contributions to the list or ...!uunet!TWG.COM!386users 386users-request@TWG.COM - for administrivia or ...!uunet!TWG.COM!386users-request P L E A S E N O T E If you want to get on or off the list, or change your address, please mail to the 386users-request address, or the message will be delayed by having to hand forward it (for your convenience, not mine). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: steinmetz!uunet!physics.rice.edu!zielke Subject: 80386 test software Date: 2 Mar 89 00:20:00 CST In response to the bugs in early 80386 chips, is there a set of test programs to check if the processor is up to spec without looking under the hood and trying to remember a lot of numbers and codes. What I would like is a piece of software which would at minimum provide a pass/fail for all known bugs... Thanks in advance... David M. Zielke =============================================================================== ARPA==> Zielke@Physics.Rice.Edu * Zielke@128.42.9.23 * After Three Days MaBell==> 713-527-8101 ext. 4018 work * Without Programming 713-666-2982 home * Life Becomes US Snail==> David M. Zielke * Meaningless 7490 Brompton #110 * Houston, Tx 77025 * -The Tao of Programming =============================================================================== ------------------------------ From: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: Inboard 386 question Date: 2 Mar 89 01:18:45 GMT As quoted from <216100083@trsvax> by johnm@trsvax.UUCP: +--------------- | If you have an Inboard 386 in a Tandy 1200 or IBM PC (or any machine of | the old 4.77Mhz family) you can answer me a question. How much of a | speedup could I expect from installing one? Obviously the hard disk will | still be the same old turtle but the cpu should scream. Is it at least | a factor of 5 overall (say for a compile)? +--------------- Norton's SI jumped from 1.0 to 13.7 on my ITT XTRA. I don't know about overall performance, since I got the card for use with Windows, which throws its own curves at the speed equation. And I don't have a C compiler to test with, anyway. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@ NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser ------------------------------ From: barry@dgbt.uucp (Barry Mclarnon) Subject: Re: Inboard 386 question Date: 27 Feb 89 15:30:11 GMT >From article <216100083@trsvax>, by johnm@trsvax.UUCP: > > If you have an Inboard 386 in a Tandy 1200 or IBM PC (or any machine of > the old 4.77Mhz family) you can answer me a question. How much of a > speedup could I expect from installing one? Obviously the hard disk will > still be the same old turtle but the cpu should scream. Is it at least > a factor of 5 overall (say for a compile)? I don't have any benchmark results handy, but a factor of 5 improvement for a compile should be a _very_ conservative expectation, and a factor of 10 is probably closer to the mark. Use of ramdisks, and/or the extended memory cache software supplied with the board, will help a lot with those slow disk accesses too. For what it's worth, the Inboard gets a 16.6 computing index from the Norton 4.0 SI. And the best news of all is that the price of the board and its piggyback memory boards has recently come down - you can now pick up an Inboard for <$600, and the 2 Meg daughterboard populated to 1 Meg for <$350. -- Barry McLarnon Communications Research Center Ottawa, ON Canada UUCP: ...utzoo!bnr-vpa!bnr-rsc!dgbt!barry INTERNET: barry@dgbt.crc.dnd.ca Compu$erve: 71470,3651 Packet radio: VE3JF @ VE3JF ------------------------------ From: jim@belltec.UUCP (Mr. Jim's Own Logon) Subject: Re: 386SX Drop in Board Date: 1 Mar 89 15:52:49 GMT In article <96@opus.ATT.COM>, cab@opus.ATT.COM (C. Anthony) writes: > I posted a message about 3 weeks ago asking for leads on > 386SX Drop in boards, to replace thet '286 processor in an AT. > > So far the only manufacturer I've heard of working on such a product > is Cumulus Corp. I don't have their address or number, (and can't > find the PC magazine containing it. If some kind soul will send it to > me, I'll follow up. > There are basically three problems with designing and then selling such a product. The first: limitations to what it can do. Because of the floating point changes on the 386SX it is completely incompatible with the 80287 (although at one time Intel did try to come up with a circuit that would allow the two to work together). And the cost of the 387SX is high enough to avoid adding it in for all cases. The second: varying timing requirements for PC compatibles. Since there never was a specification for any timing on the original IBM PC, and since not all vendors actually meet all the published timings for the 286 in their designs (probably less than 1/3 actually meet all worst case timings), the 386SX design is extremely difficult to make work in more than half of the PCs on the market. RAM timing problems mostly, but interrupts, DMA, and (the most varying) the bus slot timing. Making it work for just a few of the machines out there is a difficult thing to justify, and even more difficult to support. The third: customer support. The magnitude of problems that you will encounter is astronomical. One portion of the calls will be from people that can't get the board to work in their BigBomb AT compatible, and they want $200 worth of support time for a board that cost $150. A bigger problem is someone who buys the 386SX card and then installs 32 bit UNIX on it. And it doesn't work just quite right. The UNIX vendor will instantly pass the blame to the 386SX adaptor. You now have to try and support all of the code that this guy is going to run on his new processor. You also have to answer the problems of "this DOS program used to run, and now it gets errors when I run it on the 386SX, why is that?". Anyway, there are more problems if you really want to know about them: mechanical constraints to the adaptor, PGA vs. PLCC 286s, power requirements, noise from the 286 machine, FCC issues. Not simple problems. Several companies which announced products have already pulled them back. You may never see them on the open market. Being sold to large companies trying to upgrade several hundred identical 286 machines, well, thats a different story. -Jim Wall Bell Technologies, Inc. ------------------------------ From: mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) Subject: Re: 386SX Drop in Board Date: 1 Mar 89 18:37:32 GMT Cumulus is at 216-464-2211. They've slipped some and are now saying "final testing now, shipping early to mid March." They're supposed to call me when that happens; I'll post my experiences when I get one. -- Mark McWiggins UUCP: uunet!intek01!mark DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong. INTERNET: intek01!mark@uunet.uu.net (206) 455-9935 ------------------------------ From: "V70A::HUNTRESS" Subject: zenith and scsi Date: 3 Mar 89 11:47:00 EST Hi Everyone, I have just spent a few days trying to get a Zenith 386 to talk to a WD7000-ASC SCSI controller (a.k.a. the Colombia Data Products WD7000-FASST controller with the BIOS ROM). I was getting parity errors every once in a while, very intermittent. After a lot of hacking and a lot of frustrating phone calls to Western Digital tech support, they admitted that the 7000 does not work in the zenith 386 machine due to a DMA timing conflict. The suggested solution is to use a different 386 (caveat emptor!). I hope this saves someone some time/money. Gary Huntress HUNTRESS@NUSC.ARPA #include P.S. The WD7000 is alive and well and living comfortably in a Proteus 386. ------------------------------ From: MAJ David McGuffey Subject: MicroEMACS on 386 and SCO Xenix Date: Sat, 4 Mar 89 17:25 EST I'm attempting to configure MicroEMACS 3.9 for a Zenith-386 running SCO Xenix 2.3.1 (basically System V). The Zenith has an AT style keyboard and using the "describe-key" command of MicroEMACS, I obtain the FN values listed below. I would like to bind the commands to the function keys as listed below. However, after executing this startup file, I end up with a hodge-podge of bindings. Is there something I'm leaving out? Anyone ever configure MicroEMACS for an AT style unix box before? ; .emacsrc Modified for Z-386 and SCO Xenix 386 ; by Dave McGuffey 4 March 1989 ; ; EMACS.RC: Standard micro Startup program ; for MicroEMACS 3.9 ; (C)opyright 1987 by Daniel M Lawrence ; Last Update: 07/11/87 ; set $discmd FALSE write-message "[Setting up....]" ; ; some MessDOS stuff deleted ; ; ***** Rebind the Function key group ; ; Arrow Keys ; bind-to-key backward-character FND ;left arrow bind-to-key forward-character FNC ;right arrow bind-to-key previous-line FNA ;up arrow bind-to-key next-line FNB ;down arrow ; ; Insert/Delete/Home/End/Page_up/Page_down ; bind-to-key beginning-of-file FNH ;home bind-to-key end-of-file FNF ;end bind-to-key previous-page FNI ;page up bind-to-key next-page FNG ;page down bind-to-key insert-file FNL ;insert ; ; Function Keys ; bind-to-key set-mark FNM ;f1 bind-to-key yank FNN ;f2 bind-to-key kill-paragraph FNO ;f3 bind-to-key view-file FNP ;f4 bind-to-key next-buffer FNQ ;f5 bind-to-key search-forward FNR ;f6 bind-to-key query-replace-string FNS ;f7 bind-to-key split-current-window FNT ;f8 bind-to-key next-window FNU ;f9 bind-to-key scroll-next-down FNV ;f10 bind-to-key pipe-command FNW ;f11 bind-to-key add-global-mode FNX ;f12 ; ; Shift Function Keys ; bind-to-key exchange-point-and-mark FNY ;f1 bind-to-key copy-region FNZ ;f2 bind-to-key kill-region FNa ;f3 bind-to-key save-file FNb ;f4 bind-to-key select-buffer FNc ;f5 bind-to-key search-reverse FNd ;f6 bind-to-key replace-string FNe ;f7 bind-to-key resize-window FNf ;f8 bind-to-key previous-window FNg ;f9 bind-to-key scroll-next-up FNh ;f10 bind-to-key shell-command FNi ;f11 bind-to-key delete-global-mode FNj ;f12 ; ; Control Function Keys ; bind-to-key quick-exit FNk ;f1 bind-to-key help FNl ;f2 bind-to-key delete-buffer FNm ;f3 bind-to-key write-file FNn ;f4 bind-to-key list-buffers FNo ;f5 bind-to-key goto-line FNp ;f6 bind-to-key name-buffer FNq ;f7 bind-to-key delete-window FNr ;f8 bind-to-key fill-paragraph FNs ;f9 bind-to-key clear-and-redraw FNt ;f10 bind-to-key i-shell FNu ;f11 bind-to-key describe-key FNv ;f12 ; ; all of the store-macro stuff deleted ; ; Initialize some things ; set $discmd TRUE ------------------------------ From: MAJ David McGuffey Subject: Z-386 and ST-4096 Date: Sat, 4 Mar 89 17:30 EST A while back someone asked about Zenith 386 machines and larger drives. I'm running one with the Zenith controller, an ST-251 (40 MB), and an ST-4096 (80 MB). When setting it all up, the only limitation that Zenith seemed to admitt to was that no single drive could have over 1024 cylinders. I've run this configuration under SCO Xenix 386 ver. 2.3.1 for about 4 months now with no problems. dcm ------------------------------ End of 80386 M/L ****************