Subject: Via Samuel 2 / mini-ITX
To: None <tech-embed@netbsd.org>
From: James Mansion <james@wgold.demon.co.uk>
List: tech-embed
Date: 10/11/2005 21:59:59
I have some questions relating to mini-ITX - I have a VIA PD board with a
600MHz Samuel 2.

I've been toying with it for home automation tasks, currently with Linux of
various flavours.  And I've also had a play with FreeBSD.

While the system has an old laptop drive in it, it also has an IDE CF
adapter, and I'd like to run it from that, ideally, using the real HD as a
backup and development facility to target the CF.

At the moment, NetBSD 2.0.2 doesn't boot on this system.

So ...

1) Is it fairly certain that 2.1 and 3.0 will boot on this?

2) Is the touch screen driver (I have a small 8" touch screen with USB, not
100% sure of its parentage but I think a driver went into NetBSD) in 2.1 or
just 3.0?  (OK that's vague, I know, but really this is 'how much of the new
stuff that's additional rather than changing makes its way into 2.1')

3) Will the new memory filesystem stuff work with 2.1 or 3.0, or will it
just be for CVS?

4) Does NetBSD support a readonly root 'out of the box' in the way that
FreeBSD does?

5) Does NetBSD have a working union filesystem?

6) Does NetBSD have an equivalent of squashfs?

(Background: I quite like the SLAX approach of unioning squashed filesystems
onto root as a way to build a modular base system)

Cheers
James