Hardware Database (WAS Re: RH recommends using Windows? plus a Question!)

[Maxwell Kanat-Alexander]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 07:31, Sean Millichamp wrote:
> However, from a user's standpoint they are much more likely to be
> looking at brand names and models.  I think it is very important that if
> there is no way to conclusively determine a brandname/model from the
> hardware systematically then there should be a spot for the user to
> enter the brand and model as the product is sold and marketed.

	Now this is an interesting point, here. Ideally, we'd be able to
determine what we'd need from dmidecode and lspci. However, take the
example of my M-Audio Delta 44 (a soundcard with notorious ALSA
OSS-emulation problems). lspci reports it as an ICE Ensemble 1712
[Envy24] which is correct if you want the chipset. However, the level of
support for different Envy24 cards is actually different.

	So here's what we do:

	Allow users to enter the specific name of their hardware. When they do
this, they are presented with a drop-down box containing the other
entries that users have put in for this PCI id, and an "Other" to put in
their own. It's an optional entry. This keeps the data integrity fairly
high while allowing us to collect the relevant information.

	-M