*BSD News Article 48658


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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Hardware Status
Date: 15 Aug 1995 01:02:42 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <40orni$6os@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <DDAL0I.D75@seas.ucla.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com

jerijian@cloudburst.seas.ucla.edu (Arthur D. Jerijian) wrote:
] 	Where can I get status on current hardware support and support in
] the works?  In particular, I need to know when the PS/2 mouse driver will
] no longer conflict with the video console (I find this very strange and
] discouraging in an otherwise wonderful OS).  I also need to know if IDE
] ATAPI CD-ROMs will be supported anytime soon.

The PS/2 mouse driver conflicts because if you try and do anything
with it without a PS/2 mouse port on board, you hang.

The Problem being that it uses the second channel on the keyboard
controller, and not all systems support it.  Without a reasonable
way to probe for existance, this is going to contiune to be an
issue.

Admittedly, you probably want to resolve this with a protocol at
the user level, making the user go through an effort to get the
thing enabled (and therefore potentially crashing their keyboard).

I think the only argument you could have with the current
implementation in this respect is that it's too much work to
crash your keyboard if you don't have a PS/2 mouse.  8-).


                                        Terry Lambert
                                        terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.