Problem with Broadcomm NIC - not recognized

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Paul Schmehl
>Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 11:06 AM
>To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: Problem with Broadcomm NIC - not recognized
>
>
>Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
>>>
>>> It's working fine since I installed 6.1.  The odd thing is, 
>I thought 
>>> I needed the bce driver, but the 6.1 install detected the 
>NIC and used 
>>> the bge driver.  That driver is available in 6.0 as well, yet it 
>>> didn't work in that install.
>> 
>> Why is this confusing?  Drivers get updated to cover newer 
>versions of 
>> chips which didn't exist or weren't available to the developer when 
>> originally written.  If you really care then check out the 
>CVS history 
>> for your driver from the FreeBSD site (developer / CVS 
>Repository / web 
>> interface).
>> 
>If I understand what you're saying, you're saying that the driver only 
>gets updated for the latest OS?  That seems a bit absurd to me. 
>Wouldn't the bge driver be the same for every OS version that it's 
>available for?
>

All parts of FreeBSD are constantly being worked on.  It is more correct
to think of FreeBSD as a continuum, with the releases merely as defined
points on the continuum.

A number of people, in fact, run FreeBSD in such a way that every
night a process on their system goes to the master CVS repository, 
and fetches any changes and updates that have been made, then applies
them to their system.

Ted