Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 21:06:57 -0700 (MST) From: "Chad R. Larson" <chad@DCFinc.com> To: winter@jurai.net (Matthew N. Dodd) Cc: stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FIXED --> Thanks! Re: ep0 eeprom failed to come ready... Message-ID: <200003260406.VAA04621@freeway.dcfinc.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003251939390.50194-100000@sasami.jurai.net> from "Matthew N. Dodd" at "Mar 25, 0 07:43:22 pm"
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
As I recall, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: > I'm pretty close to a solution for the 'ie' driver and the 'ex' > driver already shares the honor of not using implicit kernel > settings to configure cards; if I have my way, very few boards will > have user configurable settings. Driver specific workarounds aren't > going to cut it so we'll have to figure out how to do the above at > some point. This makes me wary. One of the reasons I like UNIX is the assumptions implicit in its organization that the users might actually know what they're doing. Every time Microsoft and the PC industry have tried to remove the responsibility and control from the users (EISA--no jumpers, Plug-n-Pray--no config program), they've generally made things worse. C'mon. How many of you have had a sound card magically decide to move back to its old home, right on top of your new Ethernet NIC? Raise your hands. And how long did it take for you to figure it out? How many boards did you pull, and then re-insert (rebooting each time) to see what makes the NIC run again? How many of you have purchased a shiny new NIC, and then had to go find a DOS machine you could open up so you could find out how the card was configured? I mean, if all that stuff would work as intended, it would be a free ride. But in the real world, it doesn't. The specifications are poorly published, not definitive, and sometimes partially ignored by the manufacturers. And you're left with no way to determine what went wrong, or to fix it if you do figure it out. I liked it best when the boards had jumpers and wouldn't move around in the I/O space unless I told them to. And I didn't have to keep a bootable DOS around somewhere just so I could "configure" the boards. And some stray, random panic or mis-behaved program couldn't scramble your machine's organization. Bah! This, to me, isn't progress. -crl -- Chad R. Larson (CRL15) 602-953-1392 Brother, can you paradigm? chad@dcfinc.com chad@larsons.org larson1@home.net DCF, Inc. - 14623 North 49th Place, Scottsdale, Arizona 85254-2207 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200003260406.VAA04621>