On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:32:32AM -0700, John Nemeth wrote:
> On Oct 26, 10:17am, "Perry E. Metzger" wrote:
> } 
> } It is becoming increasingly difficult maintaining the
> } bootfloppy-{small,tiny} and rescue-tiny boot floppy images.
> } 
> } If we stopped supporting them, would this materially inconvenience
> } anyone? Has anyone here used any of these images recently?  Hardware
> } that needs either of these is now quite old, and it is always possible
> } to build a custom boot floppy if needed.
> 
>      More to the point, if you have to use these floppies, you probably
> won't be able to install NetBSD anyways.  Under 1.6.x, I couldn't run
> sysinst on my old 8MB laptop without having it crash.  Even if I could
> get it installed, a GENERIC kernel was so big that it consumed all
> memory.  I don't completely recall now, but this might have even been
> true for 1.5.x.  I seem to recall being stuck running a really old
> version of NetBSD until I lucked out and found some memory for it on
> eBay.  However, I've since replaced the laptop.  I suspect that if you
> want to run a recent version of NetBSD, you're just going to have to
> have a decent amount of memory.

When sysinst crashes, you can partition the disk and turn on swap. That
usually allows it to finish if you got that far already. And you can use
the install kernel instead of the generic one. Or compile your own with
drivers exactly for the hardware it will run on.

I could install 1.6 on a laptop with 3.8M ram :)

Regards

Michal Suchanek