On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Karim Forsthofer wrote:

> It has a 486 processor, 4MB of RAM and 170MB diskspace. It`s not much, 
> but don`t want to run fancy tools on it or X. The only thing that is 
> important to me is the SDCC compiler (sdcc.sourceforge.net) I hope it 
> will work with this little RAM.

170 MB should be enough space for a stripped down NetBSD. I don't know 
about sdcc though.

Also 4MB of memory is too little. You will need to build a custom kernel 
that is small enough. Maybe it is not possible.

I do use NetBSD 2.0.2 with maybe 16MB or 24MB of memory and maybe 400 MB 
disk space.

> I decided on NetBSD for this prupose because it has a litte ressource usage.
> Now, which version should I get? An older one like 1.4 or the newest?

Old is not supported well. You should probably use 2.0.2.

> On IRC they told me that I even can get current to run on this machine 
> with absolute small installation, it should fit on 100MB. Can anybody 
> confirm that?

Yes, but it may be missing important files you need.

> Of course the notebook has no NIC or CDROM. I have to make floppy sets 
> or an installation over Nullmodemcable. I think floppy will be the way 
> to go.

Floppies are too slow and too unreliable. You could spend a week if you 
attempted 100 floppies. Use floppies to boot installer and use slip over 
your null modem -- that is how I installed mine for a few years until one 
day the pcmcia started working :)

  Jeremy C. Reed

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