Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 16:41:52 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jrclark@felix.iupui.edu (John Clark) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 3Com Support? -- NOT Message-ID: <199605202341.QAA28978@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960519140200.002d7ea8@felix.iupui.edu> from "John Clark" at May 19, 96 01:57:12 pm
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> Might I suggest you have 2 hardware lists: "Works" and "Almost Works." I > know you all want to make it look like FreeBSD supports many hardware > configurations, but you and I both know that that is not true. Actually, which cards work depend on your motherboard not being buggy. Since manufacturers don't publically note when they rev a motherboard, this is going to be a bit hard to do for you. We can, of course, describe the attributes of a "good" motherboard, but without selling you a $300+ hardware card and software, we can't really tell if a given motherboard will or won't have those attributes. If there are only 10 motherboards and 30 cards of known revison we care about, you'll only need to test 40! (factorial -- I'm not exclaiming there) hardware combinations to build your does work/doesn't work list. > I just built a system from scratch, being careful to buy products that were > supported by FreeBSD only to find out that your hardware compatibility list Any hardware for which there are drivers that someone has successfully run the hardware without error, is fully supported hardware. For instance, Promise EIDE controllers are fully supported, even though it's well known that they don't "just plug in" because their INT 13 trapping BIOS is pure evil. > I now need to buy ANOTHER NIC, and I don't know which brand to buy. I know > your hardware compatibility list can not be trusted, so where do I turn? > What am I supposed to do? Ask about your particular hardware. > Does the 3c509 card really work? Yes. Depending on the version of the OS you are running, your PnP settings being off, etc., etc. See the other messages from people running this exact card. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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