PC-BSD Quick Guide

• Advanced usage
• Internet Connection Sharing (NAT)

Adding Hardware

When you add hardware on PC-BSD, you are faced with one of the following situations:

• Your new hardware works out of the box and you need to install no driver. This happens to all top-end hardware and to quality hardware in general.
• PC-BSD doesn't detect your new hardware or doesn't even start. This happens to some cheap hardware and there's nothing you can do about it, unless you can write device drivers.

As you now know, PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD. The FreeBSD team has created an exhaustive list of compatible hardware. So your best option before buying hardware is having a look at this list, especially if you want to buy some exotic hardware such as the cheapest on-board motherboard of the store or a cheap TV card.

The hardware that works out of the box is as follows:

• Virtually all CPUs
• Virtually all RAM modules
• Virtually all sound boards
• Virtually all monitors
• Virtually all IDE, SATA, SCSI hard disk drives
• Mainstream USB Flash drives
• Mainstream mice and trackballs
• Mainstream keyboards
• Most graphics cards
• Most motherboards

There is some types of hardware that are known not to work; winprinters and winmodems. These are devices built only for MS Windows and rely on custom Windows software to handle much of their basic function. Thus, they are cheaper but will only work on Windows. So beware! If you want to buy hardware and are unsure whether the model you are interested in is compatible with PC-BSD, ask us on our forum first, we will be happy to help.

Now, let's see how you can share your connection to the Internet.

• Advanced usage
• Internet Connection Sharing (NAT)

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