--- Andy Ball <ball@cyberspace.org> wrote:
> I have been helping out some non-profit
> organisations who
> sometimes can't afford the luxury of new machines.
> It can be
> tricky deciding whether to invesst time & effort in
> older
> gear, but there are literally dumpsters full of old
> Pentium
> and 486 based machines that thanks to NetBSD/i386
> can be put
> to good use.

This is the best case to make when someone asks "Why
would you want to port NetBSD to THAT?

Take a look at the Dreamcast for example. They are
becoming cheap, and there are millions of them out
there. If you have a boot server and a CD that people
can use, you could take these things and make them
into worstations/learning tools for next to nothing.
You can use a TV for the monitor, which is cheaper
than a real monitor by an order of magnitude (again,
because there are millions of them out there).

I envison a third world country investing in such
commodity items, building computer labs based on them
(with NetBSD at the core) and educating a whole new
wave of programmers/computer literate people. Sound
unlikely? The possibility exists. Look at all of these
devices around us that are destined for the dumpster,
yet are able to run NetBSD just fine. And what do we
NEED 2.4 ghz processors for? Certainly not anything
productive these days... Well, for the most part
anyway.

Andy

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free
http://sbc.yahoo.com