Verily did Rob Quinn write:

>  A friend and I are each buying a 486 and misc hardware and we're real
>  worried about wasting our money on something that isn't going to work
>  for NetBSD.
 
>  Is this the correct place to ask questions like ``does brand X device
>  work?''  Is there a better place to ask? Is there an FAQ anywhere
>  where people list devices they have had good/bad luck with?  Are we
>  worrying too much?
 
>  We have the XFree86 list of supported devices.
 
Your XFree86 list will tell you about video cards (and an additional
note to that, avoid Diamond products).

The INSTALL file at your fav NetBSD ftp site (ftp.iastate.edu should be
the fastest for you) lists supported devices.

Here's a general list of things to watch out for with PeeCee's:

Tape drives:  Stay away from CMS and similiar QIC-{40,80} drives and
              pretty much anything that hangs off of the floppy controller.

CD-Roms:  Stay away from proprietary interfaces, such as floppy-controller-
          driven drives, soundcard-driven drives, and {EIDE,IDE} CD-Roms.
          SCSI (and SCSI-II) are your best bet here (as you probably
          already know).

Bios:  Stay away from Phoenix, Mr BIOS, and Award.  AMI bios is good and
       very popular.

MB bus:  VLB        - stay away (it's a hack).
         EISA       - good, but rare and "going away".
         PCI        - "hot and new" but still in the "teething" stage.
               (Might still be worth getting, considering that VLB is nasty.)
         ISA        - in dire need to die, but is still the most popular.
         MCA (PS/2) - nice (IMHO), but it's quite proprietary, and NetBSD
                      isn't ported to it.

Most other things that I haven't pointed out are listed in the above-noted
INSTALL file/dox, such as ethernet cards, brands of SCSI controllers, etc.

These guidelines all point to the phrase "don't buy a Gateway 2000 machine"
in case you haven't noticed.  Gateway seem to have touched into every
"no-no" area that I have wrt i386 machines.  (Mostly because they don't
care for anything but Windoze.)

To correctly answer your question:  Here is probably the best place to
ask compatibility questions.

Hope this helps.

-- Rob
----------------------------------------
Internet: windsor@ksu.ksu.edu      Life: Rob@Manhattan.Kansas.USA.Earth

"Life's a journey, not a destination."  -- Aerosmith (1993), 'Amazing'