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List:       netbsd-port-i386
Subject:    Re: RTFM needed for i386sx laptop
From:       Michael <macallan18 () earthlink ! net>
Date:       2005-04-17 16:45:57
Message-ID: 20050417124557.080bb204 () inishowen
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Hello,

> > } btw. the laptop has 2mb ram only.
> > 
> > Not nearly enough memory. 
> 
> At least for the default installer, which runs out of a ramdisk image.
> 
> With some very careful work, you might be able to get a system to run
> in this little memory, but you'd need some other way of installing -
> probably preparing the image elsewhere and writing it to the disk in
> another machine.

I got NetBSD 1.6.something to work on a 386sx with 4MB ( maybe it were 6MB ) a while \
ago. Didn't use the installer - made up a cut-down installation and a custom kernel \
on another x86 NetBSD box ( with plenty of memory and an Athlon ) and transferred the \
whole thing on about 20 floppies because there was no network, no PCMCIA, no usable \
RS232 ( only these horrible 16540 without buffers that can do 9600bps but no more ). \
After this chore it worked pretty well for a 20MHz box without FPU ( didn't get \
around to build an FPU-less userland )

So - yes, 2MB is barely enough for the kernel alone. To install on a box with serious \
impediments ( slow, small memory, no network and such ) I'd recomment putting the \
disk into another box and prepare it from there ( a USB-to-IDE converter can be very \
useful for stuff like this - just used one to prepare a new disk for my SPARCbook on \
an Ultra 10. Not that the SPARCbook has any of these impediments ( well, it's not \
fast anymore... ) but it still saved me some OBP fiddling, setting up a netboot \
environment and the U10 is definitely faster unpacking tgz files )

have fun
Michael


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