> I have an old Pentium 166 with 32 megs of ram. I would
> like to install NetBSD on this machine, but I'm
> wondering how I would go about adding programs after
> the install.
> 
> I would like things like the following:
> vim, asciidoc, ncftp, bash, php, python, webserver,
> and other text based tools.
> 
> It seems like pkgscr would not be the best without an
> internet connection on the computer. It also would
> take a while to compile on such an old machine.
> 
> So I was wondering about the binary packages that are
> available. Can one download the whole lot and fit them
> on a CD and simple install from there?

You can use the packages CD from the iso directory of the NetBSD ftp site.

As for downloading the whole group, it would fill multiple CD's, most of which would be wasted if you are looking at text-based tools.  You can go to the NetBSD webpage and check out the section on packages (see ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/README.html)  For each package it lists the depencies, which shouldn't be many for text programs (for example, see vim's at ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/editors/vim/README.html).  Make sure you check the depencies themselves to see if they have any other depencies.

 
> Are there other options that I have not considered?
 
Assuming you have another more robust computer with an Internet connection, you can download a free trial version of the VMWare Workstation and create a VMWare version of NetBSD.  Then do the install as you would a regular machine.  Once its installed, you can add packages using pkg_add ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/...... 

Once you've got your VM version all set the way you want your real machine to be, run pkg_info > packages.txt, which will create a list of all the packages you will need in a file named packages.txt.  The get each one from the NetBSD ftp site individually, put on a CD, and you should be good to go.



-- 
Eric <kellybelly@gwi.net>