Subject: Re: Slowest NetBSD Machine [Was: sun3 usefulness.... ]
To: Ruschmeyer, John <jruschme@att.com>
From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
List: port-sun3
Date: 03/11/1998 18:22:18
> My gut feeling is that one should also include the bottom of the i386
> line, the 386SX16 which, I assume, is supported by NetBSD. A couple of
> years back, I seem to recall running one under BSD/OS 1.2 and getting
> dhrystones equivalent to the Sun 3/160 that I was supporting at work.

I have a 386sx/16 at home NetBSD 1.3.  It's even slower than it might
seem because the 386 chip is on a daughtercard plugged into a 286
machine.  

The machine has 4Mb of memory, which is all it can take.  NetBSD won't
install in 4Mb of memory these days, so I had to do the installation
on a different machine and move the disk.  (It's amazing how much
trouble I'll go to avoid throwing away old hardware... )

A friend of mine loaned the machine to me many years ago. For some reason
he hasn't asked for it back.  I originally used it to build a NetBSD
0.9 kernel and boot disk for my IBM Thinkpad 750 laptop. NetBSD needed
several patches just to boot on the 750.  Kernel compiles used to
take all night.

Nowadays this machine sits in a corner at my house and performs
miscellaneous tasks like taking the temperature every 15 minutes.  
(See http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/home_temp.html )

Keith