*BSD News Article 84106


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
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From: Con Sultant <jkane@execpc.com>
Subject: VLB IDE/floppy/2S/P card recommendation
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Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 23:40:29 GMT
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I have a Promise Tech. VLB card with ide, floppy, game, serial, and
parallel ports.  I have had to tweak it in the past to get it to work
with FreeBSD.  I have also heard many horror stories from others with
these cards.  I have tried to defend it, since I was able to get it to
work when I had problems with it.

Well, Now I added an ISA card with 2 more serial ports, and 2 parallel
ports, and another useless game port.  I need the second Parallel port,
and will need the serial in the near future.  I was able to get the
serial ports to work after a little customizing of the kernel.  I played
with the parallel ports until two hours had gone by with no luck.  The
kernel would recognize the port, and if I booted to DOS, both printers
worked just fine.  Any time I  sent a job to the new parallel port,
FreeBSD paniced and rebooted the machine.  It would then reboot upon
starting the printd every time!  I finally figured out what was
happening, and got it to start long enough to remove the job from the
queue.  I played around with the kernel parameters and the hardware
addresses trying to find a combo that worked.  None of the combos seemed
to work.

I still need that second port, so I am thinking about trying a new VLB
card.  Anybody have a good CHEAP recommendation?

-- 
Jeff Kane                                      mailto:jkane@execpc.com 
Sysop - Home Brew University BBS   Brew City Campus       414-238-9074
Genealogy Search:  Brickner, Kane, Kimbro, LaClaire, Snyder|Snider,
                   Seecs|Seetch|Sich, and Thorton.
  Visit my homepage for more ...          http://www.execpc.com/~jkane