From: grog@lemis.uucp (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.xenix.sco
Subject: Re: Need SCO XENIX and PC Hardware help
Date: 16 Dec 92 18:47:43 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.xenix.sco
Organization: LEMIS, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany

In article <1992Dec12.233700@aminet.uucp> barrett%aminet@nuconvex.com writes:
>I recently bought a complete XENIX V2.3.2 kit from a friend. This is the
>386AT kit, but I currently have a 286AT, so I'm planning to
>upgrade my system and have some questions.
>
>1. When the documentation says that SCSI is supported on the 386GT kit
>   (and not on the 386AT kit I assume), does this simply mean that
>   such hardware will not be usable under XENIX, or that XENIX won't
>   work on such a setup in general? Does XENIX ignore unsupported
>   and/or unrecognized hardware?

You can be pretty sure that it won't be usable, but that it won't
interfere with Xenix.

>2. Will this kit work "as is" on a 486 system? Which ones? I have
>   no idea how "transparent" a 486 is to a XENIX 386 kernal.

Well, sort of. I've just upgraded my 2.3.2 system from a 386 to a 486,
and it works. However, I have some real strange problem with the WD8003
Ethernet card - it won't work under Xenix below an address of 0xe0000,
neither on a 386 nor on a 486. I suspect some problem with the IDE
controller, maybe related to DMA transfer widths. If anybody out there
has seen this, I'd be grateful for any info. 

What does this have to do with 386/486? The 386 had I/O memory up to
0xeffff, the (Opti) chipset on the 486 uses 0xe0000 to 0xeffff to
shadow BIOS RAM, even if you disable it. I can't work out how to solve
this one.

>3. The documentation is dated 1990, so it doesn't list a lot of computers.
>   Does anyone have a "master" list? Will it work on a Gateway?

Probably. 

>4. Although it's not listed as supported functionality in the "AT" kit,
>   are there methods to allow me to access SCSI tape and CD drives anyway?

I'd guess not.

>5. Will it work on an IDE drive? Will it boot? All that's mentioned is ST506
>   and ESIA.

See above. I haven't had any problems at all with an IDE drive (it
looks just the same as ST506 to the driver), but I suspect that's
what's screwing up my Ethernet.

>6. Will it work with Super VGA cards (in VGA mode I assume)? Which ones?

By definition.

>I guess I'm basically asking for configuration help in running this older
>package on more modern equipment. My end-goal is to buy a 25-66mhz 386/486
>system with 300+meg disk, SCSI tape and CD, ethernet, and be able to
>run SCO XENIX, MS-DOS/Windows, and Windows-NT.

On the whole, I got the machine up and running quite quickly, with the
exception of Ethernet. A question, however: why do you want to do
this? If you're buying that kind of machine, you're going to cripple
it with Xenix. I only use it because a customer wants me to do some
development work on it, and he refuses to upgrade to something
sensible. If you want a reliable OS, try something like BSD/386 from
BSDI (1-800-800-4BSD). This is not to be confused with Bill Jolitz'
386BSD: it's a complete UNIX system, requires no compilation to
install, and works on most hardware, including all you have mentioned.

Another point: there's a special (and sleepy) newsgroup for Xenix,
comp.unix.xenix.sco. I'm following up there.-- 
Greg Lehey                       | Tel: +49-6637-1488              
LEMIS                            | Fax: +49-6637-1489
Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit