On 26 Jun 2006, at 20:44, Ёбомнд wrote:

> I've been trying to install NetBSD 1.5.3 onto a 486-DX 50MHZ/8MB
> ROM/162MB  HDD laptop. I failed several times because there a few bad
> blocks on the  hard disk. Is there any method to mark up these bad
> blocks so that the installation  would not try to write files on the
> bad blocks? Thanks !

Depends how localised the bad sectors are and if drive is on its way 
out with number of bad sectors increasing.
 
One of my netbsd 1.5.x was a 486dx33 and other was a 486dlc40. Both 
8MB ram and HDD were 240MB and 450MB with one of them having bad 
sectors. As this was a non remapping type of hdd where sectors were 
at fixed locations on surface it was possible to juggle the netbsd 
partitions so that none of them contained any bad sectors. I left out 
cylinders either side of the bad sectors and had also run several 
surface scans on the disk to ensure the number of bad sectors wasn't 
increasing. These pcs were used as firewalls and both gave about 
three years service (just rebooting after updates) before a power cut 
and spikes on supply took out one of power supplies and possibly m/b 
whilst other seemed ok but wasn't put back in service.

I think you will find that 8 MB of ram and lack of hd space will 
restrict you to text mode only.

David