Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-help/2004/01/07/0003.html

[Warning: This is rambling somewhat off the topic of emulation.
 I'm not a fan of migrating threads to diffeent lists, but this
 message is really more in line with netbsd-users than netbsd-help.]

First, Henry: Back in December, you sent me an off-list comment to which
I replied.  Your comment included some remark about blotting out emails from
IPs above 200.0.0.0.  (My ISP's block is 206.46.126.? I believe, from which
they carved a small static IP block for me.)  Everyone's got to make their
own decisions about spam policy, but killing off 1/5th of the IP addresses
is a bit harsh.  (^&  Anyway, if you never got my reply, sorry.  Best not
to go off-list with me unless you revise your spam-blocking policy.


Re. this thread:

bochs looks okay, but runs terribly slow.  I was able to run DOS, and with
some patience I was able to run the NetBSD installer for -current (but it
did not produce a bootable system).  The -current was a Sept. ISO.  I gave
up trying Knoppix 3.1 (but after checking on a real system, I now believe
that I didn't wait *nearly* long enough for Knoppix to initialize itself).
I may, or may not, have been able to install BillOS if I had waited long
enough.  But that thing takes an hour to install on physical hardware.

My MonopolySoft options were the 1995 and 1998 editions.  Because this system
is being set up to aid in collaborative software development with a brother
(who is committed to his MonopolySoft system due to large marketshare and
(now) entrenched experience, it seems desirable to go with the latest that
I can).  (No, *I* won't be doing much under MonopolySoft, but it will
help if we have a common ground.)

His software also has a current performance penalty that may make even
a PIII at 350MHz unusable.  In addition, the PIII has a nice fxp ethernet
on the motherboard.  Over here, I do not have a bounty of nice ethernet
cards, so giving up a "good" one on a motherboard for a MonopolySoft
box seems bad.  Then if I found that the PIII wasn't enough anyway, I'd
have to spend more time swapping around hardware to get the Athlon in
place (and that would likely be a 3-way swap to put the PIII back to
where it is now).


Except for MozillaFirebird (which is very sluggish on the 266MHz 32MB PII),
a piece of software I didn't consciously consider, the PII is doing its task
nearly as well as the Athlon used to do it.  My homedir feels a *little*
more sluggish coming off of the PII, but not much.

As a bonus, because space was tight in the PII (only 4 PCI slots), I pulled
the Maxtor IDE/ATA controller.  (The story behind why that was in the Athlon
is not terribly interesting, but it wound up lodged in there.  (^&)  Now,
it's free.  And the AMD64's motherboard does not have driver support for
DMA on the IDE---so I'm thinking that I can put the IDE card in the AMD64.

End result: hermes.olib.org (formerly the Athlon, now the PII) is doing
most things as well as before.  pcyclopes.olib.org (domain is a bit
misleading; he's only on my private LAN and not directly on the Internet)
is doing much better with the Athlon.  ("cyclopes" in keeping with the
naming scheme, and "p" prefix is my simplistic convention for aliases
on the Private LAN.)  And then, Socrates, the AMD64 box, may get a big
boost in hard disk handling if I drop the IDE/ATA controller in it.  (For
now, the controller is back in a static-free bag in a box in my closet.)

Also, hermes.olib.org runs 24/7 as a network fileserver and primary DNS.
pcyclopes runs only when I need BillOS, which is infrequent.  I'm sure
that an Athlon chews up more electrons than a PII.  (^&  It runs cooler
and quieter than the Athlon box.

I'm pretty pleased with everything but MozillaFirebird.  And if I could
get that to run correctly on the AMD64, I would be uncondtionally happy
about the swap.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/