From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Apr 10 2:18:55 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [204.179.120.85]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E159F37B419 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:18:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp-relay02.mac.com (server-source-si02 [10.13.10.6]) by smtpout.mac.com (8.12.1/8.10.2/1.0) with ESMTP id g3A9Im0R017976 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:18:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from asmtp02.mac.com ([10.13.10.66]) by smtp-relay02.mac.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 relay02 Jun 21 2001 23:53:48) with ESMTP id GUCHVB00.KL6 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:18:47 -0700 Received: from localhost ([207.6.134.194]) by asmtp02.mac.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 asmtp02 Jun 21 2001 23:53:48) with ESMTP id GUCHVB00.945 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:18:47 -0700 Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:18:46 -0700 Subject: Re: How good is USB Support??? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v481) From: Tom Wiebe To: questions@freebsd.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020409172108.0209f230@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.481) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG First off, thanks for all the private and list responses on this question. Early on in my serious FreeBSD experience I'd have to say that the community seems to be of the same high quality as the software. This should be fun! I should have mentioned in my original message that I had read the relevant Hardware.txt and the faq, so I knew already that my specific USB mice and keyboards would be supported. The reason that I was asking was that the FAQ entry for keyboards located at seemed to be a little dicey as to whether or not hot swapping would work OK. From the responses so far, I guess that I'll have to experiment. Worse comes to worse, I've got a half dozen of those darned tiny keyboards that came with the G3's and original iMac's. At least they're small. Tom On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 03:09 PM, Matt Penna wrote: > Tom, > > Rik's response covered the possibility of no keyboard/mouse use > whatsoever [snip] > Other points from your post I wanted to comment on: > > At 04:51 AM 4/9/02 -0700, Tom Wiebe wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I'm about to make the big jump and start replacing our Mac OS 9 servers >> with FreeBSD Boxen. If only apple would release decent server hardware.. >> . > > Incidentally, there are rumors of nice Mac server hardware in the near > future, but this is probably just vocalized wishful thinking passed off > as potential future product announcements. We'll see. > I've heard/dreamt of this for years. My favorite dream involves a "Lego" mac, where you snap firewire hard-drives, extra processors, airport routers etc. together like Lego Bricks. Talk about hot swappable and in a dizzying array of colours to match your server room, of course. I hope that Apple does come out with something good in this realm though. I know a number of Mac Webmasters that have been emboldened enough by OS X to venture out into the world of cheap commodity hardware and *BSD/Linux. Probably not the effect they were looking for. :) >> If not, and I apologize for this rather basic question, are PS/2 >> keyboards/ >> mice hot swappable or would I be risking frying my computer by switching >> them around. I haven't seriously used x86 hardware since before the 386, >> so I'm a tad out of date here. > > PS/2 devices are not hot-swappable; you risk damaging your equipment if > you do this. Very little on the i386 is hot-swappable - serial devices > and parallel devices are about it. (USB and other new technologies > excluded.) > I thought so about this, it seems like this is such basic information on the x86 side of the world that nobody actually mentions it any more. >> Oh, and thanks to Steve Jobs, for showing us Mac guys how cool BSD is! > > MacOS X rules. :) Indeed it does. Especially the wonderful RBrowser (www.rbrowser.com). ftp, ssh, sftp and more right on your desktop. It's like having the Finder on your unix box, without needing X-Windows. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message