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From: 6600sirt@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Mike O'Brien)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: i486 with Netware 386
Message-ID: <9057@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 91 19:51:03 GMT
References: <91042.192216ALG106@psuvm.psu.edu>
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From article <91042.192216ALG106@psuvm.psu.edu>, by ALG106@psuvm.psu.edu:
> The company I work for was thinking of getting a new fileserver -
> we currently have a 33MHz 386.  We were thinking of a 33MHz 486 EISA
> bus machine.  However, someone told us that the i486 has a bug in it
> that shows up only when running Netware.
> 
> First of all, is this true?  If so, are there plans to fix it?
> 
> Any suggestions you may have on a new fileserver would be helpful -
> we were thinking of getting 2 1Gig drives (fault tolerance).
>

There were bugs in the early versions of both the i386 chip and the
i486 chip that affected Netware.  Netware checks for bugs in your
CPU whenever you boot it.  However, these bugs were fixed a long time
ago, so if you buy a new 486 now, you will have no problem.

Note that Netware 386 actually contains optimizations for a 486, so
there is quite a large difference in speed between Netware 386 on a
386 and on a 486.  Our Logix 486/25 file server gets a speed rating
(from the Netware 386 SPEED command) of 686!

Finally, if you plan to use more than 16 MB of memory on your server,
make sure you get an EISA machine as opposed to an ISA one.  Otherwise
Netware will not recognize the extra memory.

Mike O'Brien
6600sirt@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu