what can i do with a 486?

[Oliver Fromme]

deeptech71 at gmail.com wrote:
 > 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

Ypu're out of luck then.  Recent versions of FreeBSD
require floating-point support to be present, which a
486SX doesn't have.  You must have at least a 486DX
processor, I'm afraid.  Or install an old version of
FreeBSD which will emulate FP instructions, but then
you don't have security support anymore, which means
it's probably a bad idea to connect the machine to
the internet, i.e. you shouldn't use it as a router.

 >    8MB of ram

8 MB isn't much.  You won'te be able to run sysinstall
with it, and a standard kernel won't be much fun either.
But it should be OK with a smaller custom kernel.

 >    a PCI-like slot (is it ISA maybe?),

Could be ISA or EISA.  Also, in those days VLB slots
(Vesa Local Bus) had some popularity, which were
basically a 16bit ISA slot plus an extra connector.

 > Does routing need a lot of RAM?

No, routing doesn't need much RAM.  At least, not if
it's only for a small uplink at home.

 > What packet throughput speed can I expect when 
 > it's juggling data between RAM and HDD?

For packet routing, you don't want the HDD to be
involved at all, I'm sure.  :-)

 > 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?

The standard FreeBSD/i386 installation will work on
all supported x86 machines, from a 486DX upwards.

 > A quality hardware router, or a FreeBSD router?

Both have advantages and disadvantages.  Different
people have different opinions on that matter.

Personally I prefer to use a FreeBSD machine as a
router, because I dislike "black boxes".  You never
know what bugs and security issues they might have,
and many vendors are not particularly quick when a
security hole needs to be fixed.  It's not a very
good feeling when you know that exploits are
circulating in the net and your vendor doesn't
provide a new firware for your box.

The FreeBSD security folks are usually very quick
in providing security advisories and patches, and
if you know a bit about C programming, you can even
fix things yourself.  Heck, even the fact that you
_can_ look at the source code if you want is very
big plus for FreeBSD.

Another plus is the packet filtering.  While most
hardware routers also provide some packet filtering
mechanisms, FreeBSD's IPFW and PF are much more
flexible and provide better control of your network
traffic.  And last but not least, you can let the
machine do other things beside routing and filtering
if you need to.  You need to run a name server?
Enable BIND.  An NTP server to synchronise the
time of your machines?  Run ntpd.  How about a
printer spooler?  A VPN gateway?  A small http proxy
that removes ads from web pages?  And so on and on ...

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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