> 
> Before this gets out of hand....
> 

> After having spent the last couple of weeks evaluating FreeBSD
> vs. NetBSD for a project I am starting, I can't help but be frustrated
> by the following findings.
> 

> 2. NetBSD has a very hard time running on anything but well behaved
>    hardware. My experience with IDE and the floppy driver during this
>    evaluation are testimony to that.
> 
> 3. FreeBSD *will* run on this less than perfect hardware.
> 

Um, there's a solution to this. Hint: it's the same solution that
is given when somebody asks if hardware "X" is supported.

> 
> It's my concern that the attitude that "the PC sucks" prevents
> things like bounce buffers and other useful features from being
> included in this very clean source tree.
> 

Actually, from watching the commit messages, I get the impression that
cgd has a new design for MI bounce buffers up his sleeve. I feel like
he is just getting the bus support in place before the bounce buffers
are put in, because a reasonably clean bounce buffer design (MI) requires
something that NetBSD lacked, say, 6 months ago.

Here is the question: Are VME and Zorro busses going to be made MI?
Or at least have the drivers for these boards in the MI space like
isa?

I ask because 
1) You can get VME boards that are not "Sun" boards, and not "Motorola"
boards. For example, the 6u R4000 boxes. Drivers for generic VME hardware
would be cool.

2) MI Zorro? Yep. What happens during the summer when the PPC cards come
out for the Amiga 3000 and 4000 models? Or next year when the "Power"
Amiga models come out? Nasty kludges to share drivers? Ick.

Feel free to correct me on details that I screwed up.

XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Sophomore CSC/CPE     kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu 
XCOMM North Carolina State University      kevinneal@bix.com
XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------