Does the OS drive hardware purchases or vice versa? Do I go
out and buy 8 Way suns because they run Solaris or do I accept
Solaris cause it makes those systems run.

The contrary is true - people avoid certain hardware because
of the OS it runs, but I'd think a "marginal" OS like BSD
would be hardpressed to draw the hundreds of thousands of
sales needed.  Recall that NeXT sold 50,000 boxes and only
spent some huge number of millions of dollars to do it.

I *know* I avoid certain hardware whose vendors are not cooperative
with Open Source, but at best I can affect a few hundred sales.
In other areas, there's not too much practical choice.  Sun has
been terrible re: open source.  They recalled Princeton's loaner
of an E4000 when they learned of David Miller's use of it to port
Linux.  They offer "Open Architecture" like SPARC, but require NDAs
to get enough information to port an OS.  But they are a leading
vendor for beefy SMP Unix machines.

Quoting Richard Rauch (rkr@olib.org):
> Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-help/2003/08/09/0006.html
> 
> (This should probably have gone to -advocacy, not -help, IMHO.  This seems to
> be about advocating the systems, not about help with using them.)
> 
> I agree with Aaron's general sentiment.
> 
> What I think *would* be cool is if some geeky types would design hardware
> with open specs, etc.  (Yes, there are some.  The PC Weasel, I think,
> is one.  (^&)
> 
> Something as minor as putting ethernet chipset labeling on boxes
> would be a nice plus.  Documenting custom protocols might be a little
> more challenging, since in-house docs may not be suitable for direct
> publication, but...  (Of course, this is thinking more towards
> consumer-grade systems, which is where I confess I make my purchases.
> This would affect usability for more or less unwashed masses such as
> myself, but may not be so helpful for people running large sites
> and/or "big iron"...)