Lo there Alpha'ers...

I was curious...I do know the obvious advantages to a home-grown
kernel...in that it's generally leaner/meaner, since you can leave out the
options/devices that you don't need whereas the GENERIC has pretty much
most stuff turned on by default, but in the install docs, it actually said
that we really shouldn't use the supplied kernels as a regular kernel, but
should instead compile our own...

Why is that? (other than the aforementioned thing, since that's like
telling your grandma that if she'd put in a low-restriction pipe into her
car, that it'd perform better...it may improve it, but it's not necessary
;-)

Also...about how much HD space is required for kernel compiles? I've
currently got my Gig drive partitioned roughly 80% R&U/ 20% swap, but I
don't really need that much swap since I've got 80 MB RAM. Current df:

Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a      805405   488830   276304    63%    /

Basically, that's the entire tarball dist & X sets, plus a fairsampling of
packages and a couple MUDs. Could I comfortably do kernel compiles with
this much room? How about entire world compiles? Does the sup system take
up a lot of room? I usually stay online 24/7, so that wouldn't be a
problem. How long (give or take) would a kernel compile take on an
AlphaStation 200 4/166 Mhz? How about a make world?



Finally...when adding cards to the Alpha, do I need to actually use the
SRM's isaconfig...or is all that useless once NetBSD boots since it probes
everything itself?




Thank you again for your time & patience,
Mike

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