Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2001 13:25:06 -0400 From: Matthew Hagerty <mhagerty@voyager.net> To: "Brad Morgan" <B-Morgan@concentric.net>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD on an old 486 Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010804132343.02887388@pop.voyager.net> In-Reply-To: <NABBJOOEOFODEALNMJAJKEAPEDAA.B-Morgan@concentric.net> References: <200108032018.f73KInm25455@ptavv.es.net>
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At 09:23 PM 8/3/2001 -0600, Brad Morgan wrote: >I have an old 486 that I'd like to use for something. > >It has a 75MHz CPU(DX4), 32MB of memory, 540MB Hard Drive, 56Kb Modem, >EtherLink III ISA (3c509/3c509b), and a SoundBlaster PnP card with an >IDE (ATAPI) 8x CDROM. I'm running FreeBSD-4.3 on a Compaq 486/75 laptop with 32Meg of RAM. I have also installed on other 486 machines in the past without problem. In your case, is the CD-ROM connected through the SoundBlaster? >I'm having a hard time getting the CDROM configured. The SoundBlaster >PnP card apparently "loses its mind" when powered-down so it must be >configured (and I have a Creative-supplied DOS device driver that does >that). Is there an equivilent piece of code in FreeBSD? If you can't set the SB to fixed IRQs, or if it keeps losing its config, you can do one of two things. 1. The easiest, get rid of it. 2. Find out what it defaults to and use those settings. Sometimes this means moving around the other IRQs for your serial ports and such, but if the SB can't be changed and the other cards can, then work around the SB card. >The closest I've come is to boot DOS and the CTRL-ALT-DEL and boot the >kern.flp image and change the second IDE parameters to the IO address >and IRQ assigned by DOS. I get some boot messages that appear to be >from the CDROM drive, but when I get to the point in the installation >procedure where I choose Install from CDROM, it complains that there's >no CDROM to be found. Sounds like you're taking the right steps, but if the CD-ROM can't be found then something must still be configured incorrectly. Have you thought about doing an FTP install? Use the NIC card, it goes pretty quick if you have a cable modem or fast DSL. You can also do an FTP install from another computer that has a working CD-ROM and running an FTP server. I do this all the time, but I have more than 1 FreeBSD box. I think Windows has an FTP server too, no? One other option that makes FreeBSD *really* great is that you can take the hard disk and shove it into a newer computer (one with a normal working IDE CD-ROM) and do the install. Then drop the hard disk back into your 486. Works GREAT (step aside Microsoft!) You can then get all your hardware working and make your custom kernel config file, then put the hard disk back into a faster machine to do the kernel compile (so it takes only minutes instead of hours.) This assumes you have more than one computer and that you are willing to open up your computers (some people are not.) I have more parts and computers strewn all over the place that doing this type of hard disk swapping is no problem for me. >Should this problem be solved, what version of FreeBSD would you suggest >I install given the smallish size of the hard drive? Since one of my >possible uses for this box is as a firewall, PicoBSD might be a >possibility, but since that's based on old versions of FreeBSD, >installing one of these older versions of FreeBSD might be the right >thing to do, but I can't seem to find anything old enough. > >Regards, > >Brad Morgan Run 4.3. Do a custom install and select the "Kernel Developer (full binaries and docs, kernel sources only)" install and say no to the ports question (you can get them from the CD of FTP any time.) Unless you want to run X or something, then you will need a bigger hard drive. I'm running a 4.3 install on a 540MB disk. Once you make a custom kernel you can removed the source tree to get a little more space if you need it. Matthew To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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