Mark Johnson wrote:
>
> Why is this so difficult, are the NICs (and sound cards and video cards
> etc...) so proprietary that it becomes a nightmare for the OS programmers to
> keep up? It seems like the periphial should be self-contained and
> self-describing.
>
> You know what would be really cool is if the vendors could actually load the
> 3 or 4 drivers (Linux, Windows, MAC, BeOS, OS2, Solaris) onto the card so
> the kernel programmer would need only to write a mechanism to query the
> periphial for its identity and to instruct it to "install" itself into the
> OS. The OS programmers wouldn't have to keep up with all the different
> vendors NICs or whatever. The "install mechanism" could hopefully be
> standardize so that the periphial vendor didn't have to keep up with all the
> OS crap. It seems like a 1/2 a meg or a meg would be plenty of space to
> keep a all various OS flavors of drivers. It seems like even 4 megs are
> cheap enough these days to supply on board memory.
>
> But anyway I suppose that would significantly increase the cost of the
> periphial because it would require vendors to spend money on the circuitry
> layout and how to actually accomplish the feat.
>
> I guess there's still a lot of mysticism involved with building computers &
> components and the software to run them.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan LaBine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 11:45 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [newbie] Netgear FA310TX card in Mandrake 7.1
>
> Use the "tulip" drivers that come with Mandrake. They work perfectly with
> that exact card. I'm running 3 of them on my lan with no problems
> whatsoever.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Lay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 3:06 PM
> Subject: [newbie] Netgear FA310TX card in Mandrake 7.1
>
> > I'm having trouble installing the drivers for my Netgear FA310TX
> > card. Does anyone have any suggestions?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > dave.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Stop the Iraq Sanctions!
> > www.nonviolence.org/vitw/
> >
> >
I suspect the real answer to your suggestion re all popular opsys
drivers
being on a floppy comes down the the diety called profit. Right now it
seems
the dollar is on the opsys which is making the most sales and the others
are being forgot (ignored) cause there no 'profit' in it.
My experience in recent years shows that at considerable number of
peripheral cards don't even answer to hardware identification queries.
I guess saving 256 bytes of code in a rom is a profitable exercise too..
<Grin>
Cheers
--
ICQ# 89345394 Mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected"
(The UNIX Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972.)
