Unearthed an ancient laptop recently, intending to add it to the collection
of 'near-transparent' logging bridges available. Keen-eyed dmesg readers
will note the massive 16MB of RAM, and the absence of a floppy device
(though the controller is found) - and a Pentium old enough to need the F00F
workaround!!
Not only no floppy, but no CD drive to hand either, and though unusually
this laptop model has built-in SCSI, it won't boot off SCSI devices.
Installed OpenBSD by taking the hard drive out, putting it in a
USB-to-laptop-drive adaptor on another machine, booting off the OpenBSD
install CD (which detected that adaptor and the disk attached to it just
fine: how lovely!).
First boot when reinstalled went just fine (though if I had a brain I'd have
edited the /etc/fstab to change the mountpoint for / from /dev/sd6a to
/dev/wd0a while it was still in the write-the-install machine - but a swift
'mount -u -w /dev/wd0a /' fixed it up fine for that boot). As the laptop is
very slow processorwise, *much* patience was needed during the sshd
'generating DSA key' stage - took several *minutes*! I did have some memory
of reading what turns out to be FAQ 4.12.3, and I was patient, but not smart
enough to take the steps described there about doing the keygen on a
respectable box and creating a site38.tgz!
Though slow, the machine seems to work just fine in its intended role - it
just captured packets to and from a new box running Kn*ppix (purely to
compare hardware detection results, honest ;-) with two classic 3com 3C589
PCMCIA NICs in its two slots. And the dmesg below comes to you via a Jaz
cartridge written on the laptop in question and read on this other box, so
that 'works' too. No serious stress-testing yet, of course - but a large
thumbs up to OpenBSD putting otherwise-ancient hardware to good network
monitoring use! I'll be doing the 'config -e' dance to disable the unwanted
audio hardware... later... and no, I don't intend running X on this!
Cheers, Stefek
OpenBSD 3.8 (GENERIC) #138: Sat Sep 10 15:41:37 MDT 2005
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: Intel Pentium (P54C) ("GenuineIntel" 586-class) 120 MHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MCE,CX8
cpu0: F00F bug workaround installed
real mem = 16359424 (15976K)
avail mem = 6701056 (6544K)
using 225 buffers containing 921600 bytes (900K) of memory
mainbus0 (root)
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+(c9) BIOS, date 12/23/94, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xea830
apm0 at bios0: Power Management spec V1.1
apm0: AC on, battery charge unknown, estimated 0:00 hours
apm0: flags 30101 dobusy 0 doidle 1
pcibios0 at bios0: rev 2.1 @ 0xe8000/0x6f7
pcibios0: PCI BIOS has 5 Interrupt Routing table entries
pcibios0: PCI Interrupt Router at 000:01:0 ("Opti 82C558 ISA" rev 0x00)
pcibios0: PCI bus #0 is the last bus
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xa000 0xca000/0x800
cpu0 at mainbus0
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Opti 82C557 Host" rev 0x00
pcib0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Opti 82C558 ISA" rev 0x00
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Chips and Technologies 65545" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
pcic3 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 "Cirrus Logic CL-PD6729" rev 0xfe
pcic3 controller 0: <Cirrus PD672X> has sockets A and B
pcmcia0 at pcic3 controller 0 socket 0
ep1 at pcmcia0 function 0 "3Com Corporation, 3C589, TP/BNC LAN Card Ver. 2a"
port 0x400/16, irq 3: address 00:a0:24:ab:fc:a0, utp/aui/bnc (default utp)
pcmcia1 at pcic3 controller 0 socket 1
pcic3: interrupting at irq 4
pcic3: irq 4, polling enabled
pcscp0 at pci0 dev 4 function 0 "AMD 53c974 PCscsi-PCI" rev 0x10: irq 15
pcscp0: AM53C974, 40MHz, SCSI ID 7
pcscp0: SCSI bus reset
scsibus0 at pcscp0: 8 targets
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 6 lun 0: <iomega, jaz 1GB, H.71> SCSI2 0/direct removable
sd0: drive offline
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pms0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pms0 mux 0
wdc0 at isa0 port 0x1f0/8 irq 14
wd0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 0: <IBM-DPRA-21215>
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 1160MB, 2376864 sectors
wd0(wdc0:0:0): using BIOS timings
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
