Hello,
I have finally gotten around to testing this setup. I must say that I am disappointed verily!
The first issue is that it wouldn't install from the CD. I could the CD to boot and run the installation, but when it went to copy the packages, it panicked. I resolved this by installing over http (the first time I did this - it was fun!
). I think the issue was that the CD and the card were on the same IDE cable - and I read that that could cause some issues.
Then, unpacking pkgsrc took over 7 hours (that's when I went to sleep for the night). When I left it, it was only up to misc. Compiling took a very long time - it reminded me of when I was using the GENERIC kernel on my dual-core system.
See here.
It is also very sluggish when trying to multi-task.
This may be a little unfair. The card I used was an Ultra II - 9MB/s write, 10MB/s read. I also don't think it supports UDMA. I used it because I got it on the cheap during a sale.
I am thinking of giving it another shot with an Extreme III card. The new ones are rated at 30MB/s (I hope this isn't just in the software for Windows
). Does anyone know if the Extreme III from SanDisk is capable of UDMA (anything special to get it going - or is it just there), and if it makes use of SLC?