Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:03:48 -0400
From: Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net>
To: Chris Zach <c...@alembic.crystel.com>, "cctalk@classiccmp.org"
<cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: interesting DEC Pro stuff on eBay
….
➢ That said, you'd think that DMA would make a 1:1 interleave controller much
more feasible. And Bjoren also mentioned Ethernet. The DECNA is not to
horrible without DMA because you can use its on-board memory directly as host
packet buffers, though CT bus based memory is as I recall slower than
motherboard memory. Still, one wonders why they didn't use a correctly
designed Ethernet chip like LANCE, either with local memory or with DMA.
paul
You’d have to ask Bill Duane about that… He found several dynamic problems
with the Intel Ethernet chipset. He was under NDA to them at one time.
I suspect that the Pro team didn’t ask us and just went with that chip for some
other reason. We obviously regretted that in the long run.
Dave.
Sent from Mail for Windows
