Do _any_ USB 3.0 cards actually work?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <8021B607-B94B-4A2D-8B0A-A63A88094C9D at gsoft.com.au>, you wrote:

>On 25 May 2014, at 4:13, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> =
>wrote:
>> This is extraoordinarily annoying, as I spend good money to buy this
>> add-in USB 3.0 card in the hopes that it would solve the problems
>> that I previously had with FreeBSD and a different USB 3.0 card,
>> and now it is all useless.
>>=20
>> Does FreeBSD support the "VIA VL800 Chipset" that this add-on card
>> is alleged to contain?
>>=20
>> Does FreeBSD *ever* work with *any* USB 3.0 equipment?  Or is this
>> just a far off dream?
>
>I have 2 USB3 cards, one works and one doesn't, unfortunately I haven't
>been able to determine why as yet.

What is the brand and model number of the one that works?

What is the brand and model number of the one that doesn't?

It would be helpful to know in both cases.

Also, for the one that "works", are you able to connect a device to that,
disconnect it and then reconnect it again and have it work after that?
(I had trouble with this in the past with my other 3.0 card, even when
only using external 2.0 devices, if I am recalling correctly.)

>> P.S.  I know that FreeBSD doesn't have nearly as many people
>> working on it as Linux does, but I didn't really expect it to
>> be quite this far behind in terms of driver support for USB 3.0.
>> I mean how long has USB 3.0 been out now?  Five+ years??
>
>This isn't a helpful thing to say when you're using a volunteer project.

Sorry.  Having invested in two different USB 3.0 PCIe cards and a couple
of external 3.0 enclosures... all of which I had some hope would work,
by now, on FreeBSD... and all of which *do* in fact work entirely well
on Linux, I do hope that perhaps my level of frustration is understandable.

There are about a thousand or so different ethernet chipsets, so I can
well and truly understand why this or that ethernet controller isn't
supported yet.  But how many different USB chipsets are there?  Maybe
like ten, total, including both 3.0 and 2.0?  And aren't all of these
different USB chipsets *supposed* to present one "standard" programatic
interface (to the driver) anyway?

Anyway, ignoring the investment in MONEY I've already made... for naught,
apparently... I've also invested at least a little time in trying to make
this stuff work, and in keeping with the "volunteer" nature of FreeBSD
I *am* willing to try to assist in further testing and debugging, e.g.
of the USB drivers in, e.g. 10.0-STABLE if only someone will instruct
me how how to install that, from scratch, on a fresh empty drive.  I
seriously do not know how to do this.  I've been using FreeBSD for well
over ten+ years and I've always and only used -RELEASE.  The -RELEASE
CDs are obviously quite helpful and make installation so simple that a
cave man could do it.  But at this moment I am sitting here looking at
this directory:

  /pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/amd64/amd64/10.0-STABLE

on one of the FreeBSD mirrors, and I haven't the vaguest idea what to do
with that stuff in order to get it all installed onto an empty drive.

If you or someone else tells me how to do that, then I will be happy to
do so and then see if either of these 3.0 cards I have will work with
that, and if not I'll try to help debug the problem(s).