[rescue] PS/2 9595

[vance at neurotica.com]

On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Steve Sandau wrote:

> So, I finally got around to playing with the IBM 9595 I have here. It's
> only a 486, but Sridhar and a few others convinced me to look at it's
> interesting points.

I have one that I've upgraded to an AMD K6-2.  Works just fine.  Had to
replace the processor daughter card with a Type-IV 90MHz Pentium one, then
used an interposer.

> I have configured the MCA cards. (Mostly. Seems to choke once in a while
> on the DE 210 NIC.) I am hoping to make it a token ring/ethernet router
> among other things. (I was going to do this with a 6611 router, but the
> software will apparently not let me configure the built-in ethernet on
> it... Another story...)

Do you want a different NIC?  I have some spare 10Mbps ones I could let go
for shipping.

> I wanted to load NetBSD on it. I wanted something lightweight and
> useful. (I recently installed NetBSD on a 75MHz laptop over ethernet.
> Slick.) Evidently NetBSD doesn't support the IBM SCSI adapter with cache
> in this box. Booting with floppies I end up in the install, but with no
> disk to install on. Bummer.
>
> Struck out with the other two BSDs, too; one didn't support MCA at all.
>
> Finally I loaded Linux on it. MCA support works fine; SCSI works well
> for CDROM and disk.

I helped out with that SCSI driver.  8-)

> Now I can't seem to get the DE 210 module to load. I even fed it the
> ioport, irq and so on. Then I read the source and discovered that
> anything but ioport on the command line is ignored and it goes with the
> MCA configuration information.
>
> SO... Any tips on NetBSD support for the IBM SCSI adapter with cache, or
> tips/suggestions on compiling/loading the Linux module??

NetBSD support for the IBM INT13H SCSI adapters is currently being written
(by Jaromir Dolecek).  If you want a disk driver that works *right now*,
go on ebay and get yourself an Adaptec 1640K.  You could get an IBM
ESDI/A, but it's kinda slow by modern standards, and big disks are hard to
find.

> Pretty fast box for a 486; I think it is worth playing with...

It's also quite upgradeable.  Processor on the daughtercard, and all.

Peace...  Sridhar