From owner-freebsd-doc Sat Jun 1 17:13:30 1996 Return-Path: owner-doc Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA13772 for doc-outgoing; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 17:13:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pop01.ny.us.ibm.net (pop01.ny.us.ibm.net [165.87.194.251]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id RAA13761 for ; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 17:13:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mail@localhost) by pop01.ny.us.ibm.net (8.6.9/8.6.9) id AAA25556; Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:09:36 GMT Message-Id: <199606020009.AAA25556@pop01.ny.us.ibm.net> From: "Francisco Reyes" To: "Darryl Okahata" Cc: "Andrew V. Stesin" , "FreeBSD doc Mailing list" , "John Fieber" Date: Sat, 01 Jun 96 20:04:25 -0400 Reply-To: "Francisco Reyes" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Francisco Reyes's Registered PMMail 1.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Hardware compatibility list. Second round. Sender: owner-doc@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 01 Jun 1996 14:09:17 -0700, Darryl Okahata wrote: >> For each piece of hardware we could have a checkbox button indicating if it w >> orked or not or we could have another form for incompatible hardware. > Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that any listed hardware >works (which would be the usual case, otherwise people would probably >not be using them with FreeBSD ;-), and, if there are problems, list >them in some comments? With the above checkbox approach, I believe most >entries will have the box checked, making the checkboxes less useful. I had thought of using the checkbox for hardware that didn't work. In that case then it would be mostly unchecked. > I'd say that most people reading the hardware list will be doing so >to see if their *existing* hardware will work, with the people building >a new PC being next. I think you touched in three things with that comment. I believe that people will find it usefull to have hardware that works, hardware that doesnt' work, and what configurations are used for what. For exising users not finding their hardware in the trouble list is not guarantee that it work. If they find in the list of compatible hardware then they may at least give it a try. >It's not very useful as an "accomplishments list" >("See? BinkyCo's new 1000 Gigaflurb system runs FreeBSD and supports a >million users!"); such a list, while useful, is best put elsewhere. As to what a configuration is used for and the number of users it will certainly be usefull. Some people that may try FreeBSD it do it solely because they have heard some frriend became and ISP and is supporting X number of users with FreeBSD. Another case is that someone wants to know if their current hardware will be enough to support 100 newsgroups or 10,000 newsgroups. In that section I was thinking of not having brands just bare hardware sizes (eg 16MB, 1.2Gig SCSI HD). I had in mind having a few of those sample configuration separate from the compatibility list. > Assuming most people reading the hardware list will be doing so to >see if their *existing* hardware will work, it's unlikely that they'll >find their particular combination of hardware listed in the list. There >are just too many commodity part makers out there. Because of this, >having a list of known problem parts or known problem part combinations >would be more useful. For the same reason (too many combinations of hardware) just having what doesn't work is not enough. Should someone believe that their hardware will work because it is not listed in the "incompatible" section? They may not find the exact match of hardware, but at least they may find some. It may be also helpful in troubleshooting to have both. Perhaps the HD and controller are compatible, but the network card isn't. By having the information at least the user may be warned in certain cases of what they can expect if they try to install/use FreeBSD.