On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 02:51:09PM +0800, Karim Forsthofer wrote:
> I would like to know which NetBSD version I should install
> on a very old notebook?
> It has a 486 processor, 4MB of RAM and 170MB diskspace.

I put 1.4.2 on a Toshiba V486 DynaBook many years ago.  It still works
well as a serial console for a couple of Sun IPCs.  I have a kernel
built for it to use a network card, but usually I boot it with a
seriously stripped down kernel.

The hdd was 124MB, and I partitioned it: 29MB for /usr, 24MB for <swap>,
and 70MB for /usr.

I installed base, comp, etc, kern, misc, and text using floppies.  I
used the split sets provided by NetBSD.org (many thanks), and with
just a few calculations, I was able to fit everything on 23 floppies.

The only trick was to get the hdd partitioned so that I could use
the swap.  I believe you will have to mount the swap in order to
even unpack the compressed binaries, i.e., do "swapctl -a /dev/wd0b"
before using tar.

-- 
henry nelson
  day job << http://yuba.kcn.ne.jp/pmp/nelson/neken.html