diff --git a/handbook/hw.sgml b/handbook/hw.sgml index b7527e758e..c6411ee933 100644 --- a/handbook/hw.sgml +++ b/handbook/hw.sgml @@ -1,325 +1,303 @@ - + PC Hardware compatibility

Issues of hardware compatibility are among the most troublesome in the computer industry today and FreeBSD is by no means immune to trouble. In this respect, FreeBSD's advantage of being able to run on inexpensive commodity PC hardware is also its liability when it comes to support for the amazing variety of components on the market. While it would be impossible to provide a exhaustive listing of hardware that FreeBSD supports, this section serves as a catalog of the device drivers included with FreeBSD and the hardware each drivers supports. Where possible and appropriate, notes about specific products are included. As FreeBSD is a volunteer project without a funded testing department, we depend on you, the user, for much of the information contained in this catalog. If you have direct experience of hardware that does or does not work with FreeBSD, please let us know by sending email to doc@freebsd.org. Questions about supported hardware should be directed to the &a.questions (see for more information). When submitting information or asking a question, please remember to specify exactly what version of FreeBSD you are using and include as many details of your hardware as possible. FreeBSD on Laptop computers

Because laptop computers operate under a unique set of constraints, they often behave differently or require more specialized knowledge than their desktop and deskside PC siblings. This section attempts to list the most useful (and current) laptop specific information on the net. Tatsumi Hosokawa's page.

and the BSD Nomads have created a complete subsystem for dealing with PCCARD (PCMCIA) peripherals, from modems to ethernet cards to SCSI adaptors. Much of this work is now part of FreeBSD , though more up-to-date experimental code snapshots may be found on this page. Here is report on using FreeBSD with his . FreeBSD on the

Nick tells us about life with what he deems to be the ideal laptop for FreeBSD. Sample Configurations

The following list of sample hardware configurations by no means constitutes an endorsement of a given hardware vendor or product by The FreeBSD Project. This information is provided only as a public service and merely catalogs some of the experiences that various individuals have had with different hardware combinations. Your mileage may vary. Slippery when wet. Beware of dog. - FreeBSD on Laptop computers - -

Because laptop computers operate under a unique set of constraints, - they often behave differently or require more specialized knowledge - than their desktop and deskside PC siblings. This section attempts to - list the most useful (and current) laptop specific information on the - net. - - page. - - FreeBSD on the - - FreeBSD on the - - Jordan's Picks

I have had fairly good luck building workstation and server configurations with the following components. I cannot guarantee that you will too, nor that any of the companies here will remain "best buys" forever. I will try, when I can, to keep this list up-to-date but cannot obviously guarantee that it will be at any given time. Motherboards

The motherboard appears to be a good choice for mid-to-high range Pentium server and workstation systems. If you are really looking for performance, be also sure to get the . I feel that it is worth the extra cost. If you are looking for a 486 class motherboard, you might also investigate ASUS's offering. NOTE: The Intel chipset based motherboards do not offer memory parity logic, making it almost impossible to detect when a memory error has occurred. Those wishing to build highly fault-tolerant systems may therefore want to wait for Intel's newest generation of motherboards based on the Orion chipset or investigate ASUS's SiS chipset based motherboard, the . I have no personal experience with this motherboard and have heard mixed reports - some say it is a fine MB, others say that it is measurably slower than the Triton. The only undisputed advantage it offers is being available now. Disk Controllers

This one is a bit trickier, and while I used to recommend the controllers unilaterally for everything from ISA to PCI, now I tend to lean towards the 1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940 for PCI. Disk drives

In this particular game of Russian roulette, I will make few specific recommendations except to say "SCSI over IDE whenever you can afford it." Even in small desktop configurations, SCSI often makes more sense since it allows you to easily migrate drives from server to desktop as falling drive prices make it economical to do so. If you have more than one machine to administer then think of it not simply as storage, think of it as a food chain!

I do not currently see SCSI WIDE drives as a necessary expense unless you are putting together an NFS or NEWS server that will be doing a lot of multiuser disk I/O. CDROM drives

My SCSI preferences extend to SCSI CDROM drives as well, and the XM-3501B (now released in a caddy-less model called the XM-5401B) drive has always performed well for me. Generally speaking, most SCSI CDROM drives I have seen have been of pretty solid construction (probably because they do not occupy the lower end of the market, due to their higher price) and you probably will not go wrong with an HP or NEC SCSI CDROM drive either. Tape drives

I've had pretty good luck with both from and drives from .

For backup purposes, I would have to give the higher recommendation to the Exabyte due to the more robust nature (and higher storage capacity) of 8mm tape. Video Cards

If you can also afford to buy a commercial X server for US$99 from then I can heartily recommend the card. If free X servers are more to your liking, you certainly cannot go wrong with one of cards - their S3 Vision 868 and 968 based cards (the 9FX series) are pretty fast cards as well, and are supported by 's S3 server. Monitors

I have had very good luck with the , as have I with the Viewsonic offering in the same (trinitron) tube. For larger than 17", all I can recommend at the time of this writing is to not spend any less than U.S. $2,500 for a 21" monitor if that is what you really need. There are good monitors available in the >=20" range and there are also cheap monitors in the >=20" range. Unfortunately, none are both cheap and good! Networking

I can recommend the Ultra 16 controller for any ISA application and the SMC EtherPower or Compex ENET32 cards for any serious PCI based networking. Both of the PCI cards are based around DEC's DC21041 Ethernet controller chip and other cards using it, such as the Zynx ZX342 or DEC DE435, will generally work as well. Serial

If you are looking for high-speed serial networking solutions, then makes the series, with drivers now in FreeBSD-current. also manufactures a board with T1/E1 capabilities, using software they provide.

Multiport card options are somewhat more numerous, though it has to be said that FreeBSD's support for 's products is probably the tightest, primarily as a result of that company's committment to making sure that we are adequately supplied with evaluation boards and technical specs. I have heard that the Cyclom-16Ye offers the best price/performance, though I have not checked the prices lately. Other multiport cards I have heard good things about are the BOCA and AST cards, and apparently offers an unofficial driver for their cards at location. Audio

I currently use the Ultrasound MAX due to its high sound quality and full-duplex audio capabilities (dual DMA channels). Support for Windows NT and OS/2 is fairly anemic, however, so I am not sure that I can recommend it as an all-around card for a machine that will be running both FreeBSD and NT or OS/2. In such a scenario, I might recommend the AWE32 instead. Video

For video capture, there is really only once choice - the card. FreeBSD also supports the older video spigot card from Creative Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find and the Meteor is a more current generation frame-grabber with a higher-speed PCI interface. I use one for broadcasting video on the MBONE and it works quite well! Core/Processing Motherboards, busses, and chipsets * ISA * EISA * VLB PCI

Contributed by &a.rgrimes;.25 April 1995.

Of the Intel PCI chip sets, the following list describes various types of known-brokenness and the degree of breakage, listed from worst to best.

Mercury: Cache coherency problems, especially if there are ISA bus masters behind the ISA to PCI bridge chip. Hardware flaw, only known work around is to turn the cache off. Saturn-I (ie, 82424ZX at rev 0, 1 or 2): Write back cache coherency problems. Hardware flaw, only known work around is to set the external cache to write-through mode. Upgrade to Saturn-II. Saturn-II (ie, 82424ZX at rev 3 or 4): Works fine, but many MB manufactures leave out the external dirty bit SRAM needed for write back operation. Work arounds are either run it in write through mode, or get the dirty bit SRAM installed. (I have these for the ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G rev 1.6 and later boards). Neptune: Can not run more than 2 bus master devices. Admitted Intel design flaw. Workarounds include do not run more than 2 bus masters, special hardware design to replace the PCI bus arbiter (appears on Intel Altair board and several other Intel server group MB's). And of course Intel's official answer, move to the Triton chip set, we ``fixed it there''. Triton: No known cache coherency or bus master problems, chip set does not implement parity checking. Workaround for parity issue. Wait for Triton-II. Triton-II: Unknown, not yet shipping.

* CPUs/FPUs * Memory * BIOS Input/Output Devices * Video cards * Sound cards Serial ports and multiport cards &uart; &sio; * Parallel ports * Modems * Network cards * Keyboards * Mice * Other Storage Devices &esdi; &scsi; * Disk/tape controllers * SCSI * IDE * Floppy * Hard drives * Tape drives * CD-ROM drives * Other * Other * PCMCIA