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To: jose@dial.pipex.com (Jose Marques)
cc: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: What does "unsupported" really mean? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 25 Nov 1997 19:00:40 -0000."
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Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:18:51 +1030
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> I'm thinking of buying a laptop to run FreeBSD (yet another disillusioned
> Mac user abandoning ship).  The models I've looked at all have some form of
> "unsupported (at the current time) by FreeBSD" hardware, i.e. CardBUS, XV
> ports, USB ports etc.  Does this mean that I can't use FreeBSD on these
> machines?  Or (hopefully) can I still use FreeBSD but not use the hardware
> in question?

You need to consider whether the hardware is critical to the system's 
operation or not.

For example, this Toshiba 220CDS has a USB port (unsupported) and 
software-selectable PCMCIA/CardBus ports.

USB isn't critical, and I can disable the CardBus stuff, so it works 
really well.

When you're buying a laptop, there are two *critical* things to look at:

 - The pcic type (PCMCIA interface chip).  Toshiba, Dell, NEC, Sharp, 
   and IBM all use parts that are compatible with FreeBSD.  Acer (at 
   least) does not.  YMMV; if at all possible, boot a FreeBSD kernel 
   built with pcic support in order to find out what you're looking at.

 - Video chipset.  The undisputed 'best supported' chipset at the 
   moment is the C&T 655xx family.  If you are willing to buy the
   Accelerated X server then you can look at units using the Cirrus 754x
   and NeoMagic chipsets.  Avoid the rest, as X will not work.

mike


> Ta.
> 
> 
>