Oliver Fromme wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Can you install FreeBSD on a 486 machine?
Yes, certainly. You shouldn't expect it to be lightning
fast, though, of course. But it will be perfectly fine
for a number of uses. For example, I used to have a 486
as my printer spooler, TFTP boot server and BBS (with an
analogue modem) for years. It is also sufficient e.g. as
a router and firewall for a modem uplink.
I have a router that has some glitches, so I wanted to try out how an old
FreeBSD system handles the routing. And I could also benefit from the fact
that it's software... routing, VPN, network limiting/equalizing, anything i
want :]
So.. couple of days ago I've picked up a 486 box from someone's trashcan.
Seems to work. Some details:
an old board of some kind (intel)
i486SX 33MHz processor
plug for HDD, 1 for floppies, 1 for ? (havent seen anything like this)
floppy drive
some HDD (500MB?), has DOS + windows 3.1 on it, can boot fine
8MB of ram
a PCI-like slot (is it ISA maybe?),
some card inserted, probably a slot expander (1 slot -> 3 slots)
lots of dust
Second: Usually such old machines only support PIO
modes for disk access, i.e. it's _slow_ and puts a
burden on the already slow processor. In other words:
You don't want to run things on the machine that require
heavy disk access. (Unless, of course, you happen to
have a 486 mainboard with PCI slots so you could plug
in a DMA-capable disk controller.)
And finally, such old hardware usually has a very limited
amount of physical memory (RAM). Paging or swapping to
disk isn't exactly desirable either (see the remark about
PIO modes above). Therefore two things are recommended:
First, plug in as much RAM as the board can handle (you
can get old SIMM modules on eBay), and second, compile a
reduced kernel that contains only the things that you
really need. Manual tuning of various parameters (e.g.
maxusers) instead of relying on automatic settings might
also be worth a try. Use "-Os -fno-strict-aliasing"
as your CFLAGS and COPTFLAGS for compiling to reduce
code size. If you need to compile things on the 486
itself, do not use the default "-pipe" option. There
are more things you can do to save memory; a quick search
on Google or freebsd.rambler.ru should give some results.
Does routing need a lot of RAM? What packet throughput speed can I expect when
it's juggling data between RAM and HDD?
Another note: To install the machine with sysinstall (i.e.
from a standard installation CD), a minimum amount of RAM
is required (I think 24 or 32 MB); the Handbook doesn't
seem to be up-to-date on this matter). If you don't have
that much RAM, you either need to prepare a special CD
for installation without sysinstall, or temporarily put
your hard disk in another machine with more RAM for
installation. Once the system is installed, it will run
with less RAM (the above mentioned requirement only applies
to the sysinstall program).
Good idea. Thanx! I'll try that.
But doesn't FreeBSD configure things for specific hardware when installed on
one computer? And does it work if install on a new generation 386?
By the way, I replaced my 486 with newer hardware only for
the reason of energy efficiency, because a 486 isn't really
energy-saving. My new machine (a VIA EPIA board with C3
processor) doesn't only use less power, it's also a lot
faster, supports DMA for disks and has more RAM, saving me
significant amounts of time and troubles. Unless you have
some historical interest in that 486 machine, I recommend
you replace it with something better, too.
I've asked some friends about old hardware, nothing. I don't want to spend
money on buying a new board, yet. However, I may decide to do so (maybe some
used 386s). What's better&cheaper? A quality hardware router, or a FreeBSD router?
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