>   3) The database is both "chip" and "baord" based, and contains a
> table which associates boards with chips.

Yes, having both chip and board names would be very useful.

For board, include devices such as the external boxes with
Firewire and/or USB to PATA/SATA drives, adapter/bridge cables
such as USB-to-Ethernet, USB-to-RS232, SCSI-to-SATA, and so on.

I think I remember reading about cases where a board changes
the chip with changing the name of the board.  The database
should have a provision for alerting users to this.

Something finer grained than "works" vs "doesn't work"
would be useful.  In many cases the answer is something like
"features a, b, and c work fine, d doesn't work at all,
e is a bit flaky, f doesn't work today but is expected to
work soon, g hasn't been tested."

Provisions for multiple chips on a board.  Examples include
combo expansion boards, and mainboards.

Provisions for URLs to manufacturer's web page about the device,
reviews, etc.

> No, it's not NetBSD specific

A master database with info about support on Net/Free/OpenBSD
and Linux would be useful.  Bonus points for OS X, Plan9, etc.