From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Aug 4 19:23:14 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA16481 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 19:23:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from paprika.michvhf.com (paprika.michvhf.com [209.57.60.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id TAA16413 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 19:22:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from vev@paprika.michvhf.com) Received: (qmail 2654 invoked by uid 1000); 5 Aug 1998 02:22:36 -0000 Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.3 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 22:22:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Vince Vielhaber To: Chris Hill Subject: RE: Install *actually* friendly Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 04-Aug-98 Chris Hill wrote: > I was going to post this anyway, but the recent message from Steve > Roskowski (and its followups) has goaded me into action. Actually I've also considered commenting but until now haven't bothered. [snip] > 4. Since FreeBSD runs on PC hardware, I would have thought the default > configuration would be set up to deal with all the "normal" devices one > might expect to find on a PC. Although I don't anticipate using the floppy > drive much if at all, still, it *is* there. I would have liked not to have > had to manually edit my /etc/fstab just to be able to use my floppy drive. I'm not concerned as much about the floppy as I am about the beginning of this one. The problem I had was that the ATAPI CD wasn't found when it came time to do the actual install. How did I get to sysinstall? I booted from the damn CD! Going thru the mail archives and tearing into the machine I found that the CD was set up as a slave on wdc1 and there was no slave on wdc0 and no master on wdc1. Someone else mentioned that it was an illegal IDE configuration. Here's the problem with that statement: PC's are being shipped that way! The particular machine that happened to me on was an Intel, not a machine built by Joe Blow's 'Puter Parts. I'd already installed FreeBSD on a number of systems and it's my preferred Unix so I was a bit more persistant than the typical user. Right now that machine has the hard disk and CD on wdc0 and FreeBSD *still* doesn't even see wdc1 (even tho there's nothing on it). The controllers are built onto the motherboard. The average computer user that may want to experiment with unix or that may be tired of the M$ buggy operating systems, or both, may borrow a FreeBSD CD from a friend or someone else (don't worry, I'm on the subscription plan) and be totally turned off by the lack of hardware recognition when in fact it should have no trouble recognising the hardware. From there they either give up or try linux. If people aren't using FreeBSD, folks like RealPlayer and Adobe aren't going to make native FreeBSD versions no matter how easy it is. RealPlayer's support staff told me the reason they haven't released anything for FreeBSD beyond 3.0 is that there's no demand for it. How many people have left FreeBSD and gone back to windoze or over to linux because the other versions of these packages won't run under FreeBSD? How many people have we lost to improper hardware detection (legal or not)? I don't wanna see FreeBSD turn into another OS/2; more stable than the 'other' operating system but dying because the 'other' os in more widespread use for whatever reason. Chris' point above about the floppy and one of the responses I've seen since then are a good example of what I'm typing about. Why should the poor user be made to suffer 'cuze it's assumed (either right or wrong) that most people disable the floppy in BIOS? At the very extreme, ASK THE USER don't decide for him/her! Vince. -- ========================================================================== Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com flame-mail: /dev/null # include TEAM-OS2 Online Searchable Campground Listings http://www.camping-usa.com "There is no outfit less entitled to lecture me about bloat than the federal government" -- Tony Snow ========================================================================== To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message