FreeBSD 8.0-RC1 on an Atom n330

[Olivier Gautherot]

Hi folks!

For the newbies wishing to set up a cheap machine with reasonable power
consumption, I can suggest the Atom processor.
I bought one recently (the Intel D945GCLF2) and it performs quite well
compared to my previous C3-based VIA board.
I have not got round to try the sound yet and still share the IDE port
between a HD and a DVD drive but the results are really promising.

Note: the first set up requires a bit of fiddling around to get the system
to start: there seems to be something weird with either IDE controller (need
to disable the SMART mode) or the graphics memory (yes, it is shared with
the system) but, all in all, it's a decent investment for a small server.

I'll drop a line if something goes wrong but currently it's running happily
5 compiles in parallel...

Cheers
--
Olivier Gautherot
olivier at gautherot.net