Subject: Exercises in patience -- NetBSD/i386 1.5 on a 4Meg 386DX/25
To: NetBSD/i386 Mailing List <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Brian Chase <bdc@world.std.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/01/2001 18:36:01
Only enough, this actually is in the process of installing now... with
some notable caveats.  I'm used to working with small memory VAXen, so
this actually isn't too bad.

I used the boot-small.fs install disk.  Sysinst fell over on it's butt
when encountering only about 630KB of available memory after the kernel
loaded.  And after manually labeling the disk and a `swapctl -a /dev/wd0b'
things had half a chance of working.

From there I created the filesystems on my modest 500MB drive, and I NFS
mounted the binary sets for 1.5.  At first I tried the pipeline, `gzip -dc
/mnt2/.../sets/base.tgz | tar xvpf - ' which ran, though very slowly.
Not wanting to wait on it, I ended up decompressing the tarballs on the
NFS server and now the install seems to be going at a nice leisurely
though steady pace.

The box is an old Compaq Deskpro 386/25M, 4Megs RAM, w/ EISA bus.  The
fact it's EISA is what attracted me to this lump o' junk, so I plunked
down my $15.00 at Goodwill for the box.  Probably too much for such a
system, but it runs.  Now, if I can only find a memory expansion board
that'll work in this creature.  Being Compaq, it of course takes some
proprietary board that fits into a special memory expansion slot.

Until I find such a memory board, the box will serve as an excercise in
extreme NetBSD computing.

-brian.