4.x or 5.x for newbie install on laptop?

[Peter Radcliffe]

Timothy Luoma <freebsd at tntluoma.com> probably said:
> Let me confess an ignorance (one of many).  Is "Cardbus" just another name 
> for "PC Card" (which is what I thought those expansion slots in laptops 
> were called)?

There are two types of card which go into those slots.
  16bit (ISA based) PCMCIA cards.
  32bit (PCI based) cardbus cards.

The names get confused, "PC Card" comes into the fray (which can
actually mean either) and confuses things further.

The cutouts/keys on the end of the card are different, to make sure
that you don't manage to put 32bit cards into 16bit only slots (16bit
only comtrollers/slots are quite hard to find these days in my
experience, just very old laptops).

The 16 bit cards have this shape on the sides of the connector;

|  o o o o...o o o o |
 |        ...        |
|  o o o o...o o o o  |

Whereas the 32 bit cards have this shape;

|  o o o o...o o o o |
 |                    |
|  o o o o...o o o o  |

So 16bit cards will go into 32bit controllers but 32bit cards will not
go into 16bit controllers.


The problem is that 32bit cards will not work with FreeBSD 4.x, they
may work with 5.x depending on if there is support for that particular
card or card function.

> In any case, yes it is a "Belkin FireWire CardBus Adapter" that I
> bought from Apple.com to ensure that it would work with my iPod.

Then it won't work with 4.x. I don't know if there is support for
firewire (in particular) cardbus cards in 5.x.

P.

-- 
pir