[in conversation with Richard Rauch]

Hello Richard!

  RR> Down with floppy disks!  (^&

Hurrah, I'll second that battle-cry!

  RR> It's hard to offer much commentary without knowing
    > what you expect the system to do for you.

Not a whole bunch, but it will let me familiarise myself
with setting up a BSD box for use from a local terminal and
then hopefully dial-in access.  I don't expect it to run
anything demanding and hopefully it will never have to
contend with more than one (living, breathing) user at any
given time.

  RR> Since the default installed kernel is now up to around
    > /over 4MB, you would have a bit less than 4MB
    > available after booting. That could be servicable, but
    > it could also get real tight real fast.  I would
    > suggest doing one or both of: (a) Arrange to have
    > another machine build a smaller, custom kernel for
    > you. (b) Put in that extra 8MB for a ``16Mb(ish)''
    > system.

I envisaged building a very-much-pared-down kernel for the
box, although building it on that one might be kind of
painful. The carriage is going to cost more than the RAM, so
it's probably worth me forking out for the full 16Mb monty.

  RR> I'm not sure how easy it is to get PLIP going.  I had
    > the impression that it wasn't supported at this time
    > (read: If you want it, you might have to do a little
    > bit of programming).

I'm probably not ready for that just yet.  I guess I'll just
disable the parallel port.

  RR> You should think about how you want to install it,
    > too.  You don't list a CD-ROM drive.  Will you install
    > the OS onto the hard drive in another machine, then
    > transplant the hard drive to the ``new'' computer?

I might borrow a 10Base-T card just long enough to do the
install.  I'd probably have a diskette drive connected for
that too.

  RR> (NetBSD claims to support the Adaptec ISA 150x SCSI
    > controllers...

That's good to hear, I hadn't noticed it buried in amongst
all the other supported gubbins!

  RR> Good luck with your system, in any case.  (Pun not
    > intended.  Honest.)

Thanks! <grin>  I pretty much have to re-case because
although I have two free 5.25" drive bays, they require some
pretty freaky-looking rails.  Perhaps the new machine will
have a more efficient PSU too.  One of the few points in the
386sx favor is that it probably doesn't drink much current
(for a PC).

Regards,
  - Andy Ball.