Modems: Unfortunately, no manufacturer has disclosed how their so-called
``Winmodems'' work.  As such, they cannot be supported.  If you ever buy
such a modem, treat it as unsupportable for any OS besides MS-WINDOWS.

(Of course, if sufficient information is released, there may well be
eventual support for the modems under NetBSD.  But, pending that, it's
best to pay a little extra for a real modem (internal or external) and
avoid the so-called ``Winmodems'' if you possibly can.)


Scanners: Some scanners are supported by SANE.  (See the NetBSD package
system for information about SANE.  From the package system, there's a URL
to the SANE project...  The version of SANE available as a NetBSD package
may not be the most recent version of SANE.  Though it is almost certainly
going to be a lot easier to install the NetBSD package for SANE.)

Quite a number of scanners are supported.  The most recent versions of
SANE support some USB scanners, even.  Unfortunately, last I checked, the
version of SANE in our package system did not have USB support in it.

You may also find some other NetBSD packages that deal with scanners.

(The NetBSD package system is a way to install any of about 2000 3rd party
pieces of software.  The 3rd party programs are generally actively
maintained by other people that have nothing to do with NetBSD.  The
package system maintains the set of changes that need to be made to the
3rd party software in order to allow it to run under NetBSD.
Additionally, the package system maintains a dependancy graph so that if
running X requires that you have Y installed, the package system will
ensure that Y is installed as part of the process of installing X.)


Contributions:  Here are some of the things that you might do to
contribute to NetBSD:

You can contribute bug-reports (see the NetBSD homepage at
http://www.NetBSD.org/ and follow the Report or Query a Bug link---you can
directly file a bug-report with the send-pr(1) command, but you should at
least check to see if the bug has already been reported before send-pr'ing
it).  A bug-report has a place to describe work-arounds or patches to deal
with the problem, if you are able to provide such.

You can also try to fix existing (still-open) bug reports.

You can add features or perhaps seek to improve performance for NetBSD.

You can run alpha/beta releases, or even -current, in order to help test
features and changes against more hardware configurations and different
usage patterns.

You can lend/give relatively rare hardware to developers who want to
support the hardware under NetBSD, or provide remote accounts to people
wanting to develop/test software on certain hardware.

You can even try your hand at porting NetBSD to a new platform, if you
have an as-yet-unsupported platform.

You can contribute new packages to the NetBSD package system.

You can donate money to The NetBSD Foundation.

You can help people be aware of NetBSD as an option, and help other users
deal with problems that you know how to solve.

You can contribute to some of the documentation efforts that are ongoing.

You can ask commercial developers of related hardware & software about how
their product works with NetBSD.  (E.g., ask the manufacturers of scanners
if their product can be used by NetBSD systems.  Ask software developers
if their software will be available in a native NetBSD binary form, or if
it is tested to make sure that it runs in NetBSD's OS-emulation system.)

You can base any hardware & software purchases in part on NetBSD
compatibility and support.


Few people can do all of the above.  But most people can do at least some
of the above.  Some require programming ability.  Some require money.
Some require patience.  Some require more subtle things, such as the right
kind of hardware.


Welcome aboard.  (^&


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu