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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!agate!nemesis.its.berkeley.edu!bob From: bob@nemesis.its.berkeley.edu (bob prohaska) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: AMD 386sx with 4 megs; can it be done? Date: 30 Nov 1996 03:38:58 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 36 Message-ID: <57oa8i$nbs@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: nemesis.its.berkeley.edu Summary: Can Freebsd 2.1.6 be installed on 4 Meg AMD 386sx? Keywords: AMD 386sx 4Meg X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Hi all, Out of what can best be described as perversity (though some might vote for masochism) I'm trying to stuff some recent release of FreeBSD onto a 4 meg 386sx with an AMD CPU. The disks are 41 meg Seagate and 34 meg Quantum MFM antiques. For the moment I'm using 2.1.6 boot4.flp The secondary display screen (alt-F2) shows many complaints of "out of swap space", and reports killing the install process. Curiously, the install program seems to mind not a bit. Trouble only becomes apparent when the FTP install fails. For the moment I suspect the ethernet card (WD8013 with what looks like factory handwired patches) is faulty. First of all, is FreeBSD known to work on AMD 386sx systems with 4 megs of RAM? If affirmative, the second question: Is there some way using the fixit disk to get a kernel onto the root disk? Partitioning seems successful, and the files copied to the root device prior to attempting ftp seem to arrive intact. I'd really like to see if the thing will boot before investing in an ethernet card. Alas, it's not obvious how to copy a kernel when cp is on one floppy and the kernel is on another 8-( The floppy kernel always boots without trouble, but that does not give assurance the hard disk will do the same. thanks for reading bob