Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 11:23:59 -0500 From: Tony Overfield <tony@dell.com> To: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?= ), jak@cetlink.net (John Kelly) Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ISA-PnP w\o BIOS support? Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980508112359.006ef388@bugs.us.dell.com> In-Reply-To: <xzpyawcvjv6.fsf@skejdbrimir.ifi.uio.no> References: <jak@cetlink.net's message of "Fri, 08 May 1998 11:58:22 GMT"> <Your message of "Thu, 07 May 1998 09:58:16 CDT."<3.0.3.32.19980507095816.00689420@bugs.us.dell.com> <3.0.3.32.19980507095816.00689420@bugs.us.dell.com> <199805070251.TAA00511@antipodes.cdrom.com> <3.0.3.32.19980508005947.006ba3b4@bugs.us.dell.com> <3552efbc.258248161@mail.cetlink.net>
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At 05:54 PM 5/8/98 +0200, Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav wrote:
>Allow me to add that it has {long|always} been a point of honor for
>the "FreeBSD crowd" that we can run on practically any PC, from the
>old 386 gathering dust on my shelf¹ to the shiny new 400 MHz PII box
>Steinar told us about which builds world in 46 minutes.
True enough. I have no disagreement with this. If you really cared
about such things, you'd be wanting to have ISA-PnP supported, since
there is a benefit and no drawback to doing so.
>Tony, you might be surprised to find out just how useful a rusty old
>386 can be if you stick a NIC in it and boot PicoBSD from a floppy.
>Add a second NIC and you have a full-featured IP firewall. It may not
>have horsepower for much more than 10 Mbps, but that's all that's
>needed.
Not me. I also know how to put uncompetitive systems to good use. I
have a NetWare386 server running on a 386-16, and *BSD running with
Pentium-66 and Pentium-90 systems. However, I wouldn't dare claim that
those systems are comparable to modern systems. In my opinion, they
are obsolete. They still work and can perform some useful functions,
so perhaps I should use the words "old and slow" instead of obsolete.
Maybe I've got a language problem here. I'm using obsolete to indicate
"uncompetitively slow" to the point that the average user would not use
it. That doesn't mean, as obsolete normally does, that there is NO USE
for such systems. Since you guys are so picky, I think I'll word things
more carefully next time.
-
Tony
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