On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 17:04:47 -0600 (CST) 
 Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com> wrote:

 > > Am I to conclude from this that the 'rumors' about Unix/Linux/BSD being 
 > > fast on older Macs and PC's are less than accurate? I had dreams of 
 > > breathing life back into several of these old machines. Is it just a 
 > > bunch of nonsense?
 > 
 > Certainly not. Linux and the BSDs are rightly known for efficiency. The
 > hardware really is just limited (especially those machines whose FPUs or
 > MMUs are being emulated by the kernel). NetBSD won't turn your Mac LC into
 > an SGI o2, but you can run recent software well on them. They make great
 > special-purpose machines (routers/firewalls, mail servers, et c.).

Well.. FPU can be emulated by the kernel.  MMU cannot.  The kernel relies
on having an MMU.  No way around that.  No way to emulate an MMU, really,
either...

In any case, right.  A 16MHz 68020 is still a 16MHz 68020 (I have a
machine like this... I even use it as an X terminal from time to time :-)
It's not a speed demon, but what do you expect?  It's ... geez, 13 or 14
year old technology...

But, you can do a LOT more with NetBSD on one of these old machines
than you can with the `native' OS on the same hardware.

Heck, until very recently, I was using a 25MHz 68040 as my main file
server, mail server, DNS server, *and* workstation.  But, alas, out
of a desire to Go Faster, I put file/mail/DNS service on an Alpha
(an older model... roughly equiv to a P150) and my workstation over
to a SPARC Classic, all running NetBSD, of course :-)

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>