Thanks everyone for the responses. I'm looking forward
to setting up my "free" Pentium 166. I have a Toshiba
laptop which is a 166 with only 32 megs of ram, and
NetBSD installed without an issue. I have used the
"binary packages" CD and a USB Flash drive to install
other software onto the laptop. I only have it running
in CLI mode, but I use it at my LUG meetings to take
notes and to do other writing. It works great, and
NetBSD on this machine is wonderful. I haven't tried
to set up X because of only having 32 megs of ram, and
I haven't taken the time to figure out how to manually
configure the x.configuration file, because I don't
know how to find out the Horiz and Vert scan rates on
an old LCD like that, and other options that I'm not
sure of.

I appreciated the simplified explaination of why you
can't install NetBSD on serial terminals. I thought
they might have been like a Linksys WRT-54G which has
a firmware in ROM that is easy to flash and get it
doing all sorts of different things. Even with that,
if I wanted to use it as a webserver the storage of
the files would be difficult with only 16megs of ROM
space that would have to hold the files and the OS. I
didn't know if there were WinTerm serial terminals
that used Compact Flash or SD cards so that I would
simply have to format and install NetBSD on a Flash
disk and it would then run like a regular computer
once booted up. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

I learned something new today, which is not hard when
computers are not your job, but just your hobby. I do
plan to use a KVM switch to hook up the NetBSD "web
server" and my Linux Work desktop to the same LCD and
keyboard and mouse, so it will be low power,
especially when I have the LCD off most of the time.
My 166 only has one fan as well on the Power Supply,
but it runs all the time, so I don't think I will get
the 20watts you get with your 486, but that is cool.

mowestusa

--- Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 04:44:53PM -0700, mowestusa
> wrote:
>  
> > However, I think, I just going to go with an old
> > Pentium 166 with 128megs of RAM, and install
> Netbsd on
> > that for the same purpose. It won't be as power
> > saving, but it will do the job, and give me
> something
> > that I can use to practice using Netbsd to offer a
> > number of server functions that will face out to
> the
> > web. It was free so it is already cheaper than the
> $50
> > I would have willingly spent on something else.
> 
> My IBM 486 with 32 MB ram and one drive runs at 20
> watts (as measured by
> my inverter's panel when I was off the grid).  It
> will do anything
> except run a big browser or edit photos.  Add an LCD
> screen and you
> should stay low power.  The only fan is on the PSU
> and it only runs as
> required.
> 
> Doug.
> 
> 



       
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