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Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 19:27:42 +0100
From: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com>
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To: Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Problem with Broadcomm NIC - not recognized
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Paul Schmehl wrote:

> Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
>
>>>
>>> It's working fine since I installed 6.1.  The odd thing is, I 
>>> thought I needed the bce driver, but the 6.1 install detected the 
>>> NIC and used the bge driver.  That driver is available in 6.0 as 
>>> well, yet it didn't work in that install.
>>
>>
>> Why is this confusing?  Drivers get updated to cover newer versions 
>> of chips which didn't exist or weren't available to the developer 
>> when originally written.  If you really care then check out the CVS 
>> history for your driver from the FreeBSD site (developer / CVS 
>> Repository / web interface).
>>
> If I understand what you're saying, you're saying that the driver only 
> gets updated for the latest OS?  That seems a bit absurd to me. 
> Wouldn't the bge driver be the same for every OS version that it's 
> available for?
>
Seems absurd to you; seems perfectly understandable to me.  There is no 
such thing as "the bge driver".  There are numerous revisions of a bge 
driver and each OS version has it's own revision that was current when 
the OS was released.  That's what a new OS version is: updated drivers 
and core utilities.

--Alex