From owner-freebsd-small Wed May 2 21:27:25 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5D4937B422 for ; Wed, 2 May 2001 21:27:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id A1DCF6ACB8; Thu, 3 May 2001 13:57:19 +0930 (CST) Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 13:57:19 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: User Ipt Ian Patrick Thomas Cc: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Subject: Re: IBM Laptop 4MB RAM 486 CPU Message-ID: <20010503135719.U72846@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <200105030422.AAA01174@scarlet.my.domain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200105030422.AAA01174@scarlet.my.domain>; from ipthomas_77@yahoo.com on Thu, May 03, 2001 at 12:22:54AM -0400 Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thursday, 3 May 2001 at 0:22:54 -0400, User Ipt Ian Patrick Thomas wrote: > Operating System: FreeBSD > X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] > MIME-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > I have an old IBM thinkpad with about 4MB of RAM(actually it says 3096KB > on bootup) with a 486 CPU that I would like to use with PicoBSD. It has two > serial ports and a monitor port with a floppy drive and a HardDrive with > about 120 MB. Unfortunately there is no PCMCIA slots for a NIC. I have come > close to getting NetBSD on this laptop but have failed right at the end. I > figured that I should try a BSD that is made for small spaces. The FAQ > suggests 8MB but claims 4MB has been done. I figure if I can get a swap > space on their early in the install I should be set because the HD is plenty > big enough. I have had a version of Linux(small linux I think) on this > laptop and it worked, but I would rather have a BSD(I'm more comfortable with > it). I this even possible or should I go and find another 4MB of RAM(this > thing maxes out at 8MB and the RAM is very hard to find)? You're probably out of luck. PicoBSD certainly won't work; it stores data in a RAMdisk which is by default 4 MB. That's in addition to normal system memory, so you don't have a hope there. Current versions of FreeBSD may or may not run in 8 MB; they certainly won't run in 4. Your best bet is to get an old version (for example 2.2.8, the last FreeBSD-2 version). This should function in 4 MB, but don't expect a ball of fire. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message