[haiku] Re: BePDF documentation

> > I'm using BeOS R5 on this system
> I didn't think this was possible at all!
> What brand, model, chipset is that?
> How much disk and memory has it got?

Here are the complete specs (bearing in mind it was built
specifically for R5, so support isn't just complete luck!):


Motherboard: DFI Infinity P965-S,
Chipset: Intel P965 (ICH8R southbridge, ITE IT8718F-S super I/O),
CPU: Q6600 SLACR 95W (the latter indicates the bug-fixed edition),
Video: Matrox G550 PCIe x1 (must be installed in a x16 slot).

The only special part out of those is the motherboard; this
particular one (as with almost all DFI boards) has MPS, allowing R5
to use the extra cores. Not all motherboards have that feature in
the BIOS.

Video card needs to be PCIe (no AGP slots) which limits the choices
immensely. Actually it could also be PCI, but all the PCI slots are
taken up with more important devices (sound, network, HDD).
I did have some success with a Radeon X300SE but that only worked in
single-head mode, and only with the "talkback release" binary driver,
not the standard Haiku one. The Radeon X550 was limited to VESA.


Some trickery is required with the other parts:


RAM: 512MB (if it's significantly above that, the RAM limiting
bootloader will be needed at an absolute minimum -- I checked with
1GB, and unmodified R5 wouldn't boot even with a 32MB video card).

HDD: 500GB IDE, attached to an IDE-SCSI bridge, which is then
attached to an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card. The entire 500GB is usable.


The only on-board devices that work are PS/2, USB, Firewire, and to
an extent, SATA (limited to 1MB/sec, 136GB max, and CD-ROMs don't
seem to work at all). The on-board nonstandard IDE controller is
completely unsupported.


But yep, as long as supported cards are installed, R5 works fine on
this system. The only patch I've got installed is cpu_fix, but that
wasn't necessary to get it booted.

I suspect any similar Intel-chipset system should work too, providing
the RAM limit is met and a separate PCI hard disk controller is used.

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