From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu May 7 12:32:44 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA15959 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Thu, 7 May 1998 12:32:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from casparc.ppp.net (mail.ppp.net [194.64.12.35]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA15930 for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 12:32:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ernie!bert.kts.org!hm@ppp.net) Received: from ernie by casparc.ppp.net with uucp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0yXWOh-002Zk4C; Thu, 7 May 98 21:32 MET DST Received: from bert.kts.org(really [194.55.156.2]) by ernie.kts.org via sendmail with smtp id for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 21:02:41 +0200 (CEST) (Smail-3.2.0.91 1997-Jan-14 #3 built 1998-Feb-14) Received: by bert.kts.org via sendmail with stdio id for freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; Thu, 7 May 1998 20:58:51 +0200 (CEST) (Smail-3.2.0.94 1997-Apr-22 #7 built 1997-Jul-4) Message-Id: From: hm@kts.org (Hellmuth Michaelis) Subject: Re: ISA-PnP w\o BIOS support? In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980507095816.00689420@bugs.us.dell.com> from Tony Overfield at "May 7, 98 09:58:16 am" To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 20:58:51 +0200 (CEST) Organization: Kitchen Table Systems Reply-To: hm@kts.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31H (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Tony Overfield wrote: > Mike Smith wrote: > > [...] by taking advantage of the > > fact that most systems *do* have PnP BIOS support. > > Hellmuth Michaelis wrote: > >This assumption is wrong. > > I'd be very surprised if any new system built in the last > three years didn't include PnP BIOS support. This might be correct. But "new system " != "most systems" ! > IMHO, anything > older than that is approaching obsolescence anyway. This assumption is wrong. Currently, many people in medium and large companies get hold of "old" hardware consisting of 486 and and Pentium 90 class machines which are just there because the (Word) users are working on 233 PII machines. And they discover that a (or a cluster of) 486/66 running FreeBSD is much more powerful than a 233 PII running NT. There are loads and loads of 386, 486 and Pentiums <= 100MHz out there which are just fine for running them as routers or gateways or proxies or or or and which do _not_ have a PnP BIOS. hellmuth -- Hellmuth Michaelis hm@kts.org Hamburg, Europe "Those who can, do. Those who can't, talk. And those who can't talk, talk about talking." (B. Shaw) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message