Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 20:23:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "R. D. Davis" <rdd@smart.net> To: Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net> Cc: Anthony Rubin <arubin@concentric.net>, "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, "Lawrence Cotnam Jr." <larry@pkunk.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Legacy Device Support (Was RE: No help...) Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007221930140.22549-100000@smarty.smart.net> In-Reply-To: <002101bff424$6d0c0ed0$47430ace@hacker>
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On Sat, 22 Jul 2000, Josh Paetzel wrote: > I agree with this wholeheartedly....and I still have to ask the question: > If you have a version of FBSD that supports your hardware, why are you > upgrading to a version that doesn't? Firstly, I'm using relatively new hardware, less than two years old; the motherboard, which I paid a lot more for than the typical generic clone board, is manufactured by Mainboard, which was one of the few boards at the time whose manufacturer guaranteed it to work with FreeBSD. The SCSI controller, an Adaptec 1542B, and one of the tape drives, an Exabyte 8200, are relatively standard - not new, but not junk either. The NE2000 compatible eth So, while this isn't brand new equipment, it's not ancient, still performs more than adequately for my needs. I can see support being dropped for things like video and sound cards, and even ethernet boards, however, dropping support for _tapes_ that were written using older version of the OS seems more than peculiar. Making stored data itself obsolete is not a good thing for the reputation of any operating system, and dropping support for relatively standard tape drives, even if they're not the latest and greatest, doesn't make much sense to me. Ok, I know the saying, "you get what you pay for," so, perhaps anyone who's really serious about the integrity of their data, who also wants to be able to run the latest versions of some pieces of software, and new software, really should consider a commercial OS. If enough people bought a commercial version of BSD, the price could come down, and then users, as customers, could ask for features that they need. As I've stated before, I greatly appreciate the work that's gone into FreeBSD, and am only remarking about one aspect of it - not just because I'm affected, but because others have, and will have, similar problems, that could be avoided if those working on certain aspects of FreeBSD would not be so quick to drop support for hardware, and _written tapes_, that are not exactly ancient. I upgraded because there were no obvious signs or warnings, about problems with compatibility, or about upgrading from 2.2.5 (sorry, I was thinking it was 2.2.4). Interestingly, there's nothing about this lack of compatibility, or a problem with upgrading, which appears on the WWW page where the CDs are sold, and it's also not obvious by looking at the FreeBSD web site. At least something could be mentioned on those web sites as a courtesy to users with older versions who are considering upgrading so as to be able to install new software packages that weren't available for the older versions. Anyway, now I've split my new hard drive so that I can have both 2.2.5 and 4.0 installed on it, and recovered my personal data from a backup. While 4.0 seems rather nice, it still won't work with my Exabyte 8200 8mm drive. I'll test it again with the SureStore 4mm DAT drive - I think the problem with that was a bad tape, as I can't retore from it using 2.2.5 either. Also, the problem with my NE2000 compatible ethernet board not working with 4.0 still exists. If no one is supporting these tape drives, which were formerly supported, and support for other devices is discontinued, could someone please make this obvious on the WWW pages so that people don't waste their money on CDs that are useless to them? While FreeBSD is free, the CD-ROMs are not free, and consumers should be able to avoid being ripped off (sorry if this offends anyone, but that's exactly what happens when one buys a product in good faith and discovers that it's not useable) by being told that they can't (a) upgrade directly to it, (b) that some of their computer hardware won't work with it and (c) that a backup and restore will be required. -- R. D. Davis rdd@perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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