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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!serval.net.wsu.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!oracle.pnl.gov!osi-east2.es.net!lll-winken.llnl.gov!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!hudson.lm.com!news.galt.com!alex From: alex@phred.org (alex wetmore) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Newbie question... Date: 29 Jan 1995 22:16:31 GMT Organization: Phred Networking Lines: 49 Message-ID: <3gh43v$i4q@dagny.galt.com> References: <3gh0sp$npd@ocean.CAM.ORG> NNTP-Posting-Host: phred.ws.cc.cmu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Duane Hay (duane@CAM.ORG) wrote: : I'm interested in running a free Unix on a PC. I need to know the : minimum hardware requirements for a full implementation of FreeBSD. I : will be purchasing a new PC just for this OS, so I need to know the least : I should buy. If there is a FAQ that lists minimum req's please point me : in that direction, if not, a reply here will be sufficient. Thanks in : advance. Not sure of any FAQ. Anyway, it really depends on what you want to do with the machine. For a standalone machine without X and not much development work (ie, something that just sits and runs email, etc) you should be able to get away with a 386/33, 4 megs of ram, 120 megs of disk, mono display and video. If you want to do development it doesn't make sense to get less then a 486dx2/50 or 486dx2/66 (I use a 486sx/25 and can't say I'm disappointed with the performance, but the extra $100 to get a dx2/66 would certainly be worth it). You'll also want 8 megs for development. The same rules hold for doing X stuff. Here a math coprocessor actually makes a pretty big speed boost (for doing stuff like drawing circles, scaling fonts, etc). If you're doing development under X you'll probably want 12 or 16 megs of ram, but 8 will work (most people I know with 8 want to upgrade their memory). You'll want more disk (at least 340 or so). For X you should get an accelerated video card. I've had good luck with ATI Mach32 based cards and S3 based cards. Spend the extra $20 or so to get localbus, its worth it. My machine is: 486sx/25 16 megs of ram 128k cache 1gig SCSI disk 250meg IDE disk S3-911 ISA based video card (this is a very old card). 15" CTX 1560 monitor (great monitor for the price, but they don't make it anymore. i haven't seen the newer CTXs so I can't recomend them. some of their stuff is great, some of it is awful). The main things that I would like to upgrade are the CPU (a 486dx2/66 is probably what I'll get) and the cache (bringing it up to 256k). More memory would be nice, but I mostly want it for NT work, not BSD. I don't really need more disk space (I use ~700 megs for BSD and ~700 megs for NT. Currently I have >100 megs of space free for both systems, and have a pretty good application set in /usr/local under BSD). alex