fast bus speeds

[Dick Dunn]

larry at nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) writes:
> ...arch at hub.cs.jmu.edu (Arch Harris) writes:
> >      What about bus speeds?  I assume UNIX
> > does not care if the bus speed is 10 Mhz or 12 MHz, but do most
> > peripherals work with the higher speed bus rate?  

[Larry gives an example of a particular motherboard and collection of
hardware that works at 12.5 MHz, noting that...
> latest proms from Computone work at 12.5 mhz, the older proms only
> ran at 8 mhz),...

In general, you're OK if the motherboard is designed properly to run at the
higher speed AND all the cards you put in are designed for it as well.
For the motherboard, this just means getting a decent one...I wouldn't go
shoving a higher-speed crystal into an existing motherboard!  For the
cards, check their specs for bus-speed limitations.  Older cards are
likely to have problems; most newer cards are OK.

Note that various motherboards have various ways you can slow down accesses
for cards--for example, a common one is to have additional wait cycles on
8-bit slots on the motherboard.

But no, UNIX itself doesn't care about the bus speed.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.