PicoBSD diskless embedded 'where to start'

[Bruce R. Montague]

For the archives/record, the following statement in this
thread reflects the notion that PicoBSD is a "distribution",
in this case the remark indicates that it's thought to     
be a distribution based on FreeBSD 4.3:

 "> ... Pico shows ...built on a more modern kernel...
  > ...the 4.3 for Pico, and m0n0 presently uses the 4.9."

No, No, No. PicoBSD is just an alternate means of _building_
any version of FreeBSD. Think of it as a wrapper script 
around a normal kernel build that also crunches up a bunch
of apps into a buffer in a static driver built into the
kernel and uses alternative rc scripts that are about the
minimal required to run diskless. The biggest drawbacks   
to PicoBSD are that it does not support loadable modules
and requires that your apps can be "crunched" toghether,
which due to collision of public symbols may not be the
case. PicoBSD is still very nice to have when you want
to boot one file and get an entire small FreeBSD system    
up. It's still easy to make single floppy "rescue" systems.
Entire compressed PicoBSD systems, apps and all, are small 
enough so that they can be mailed as attachments, for  
instance...

As the first sentence in "man picobsd" says:

 "picobsd is a script which can be used to produce a
 minimal implementation of FreeBSD (historically called
 PicoBSD) which typically fits on one floppy disk, or can
 be downloaded as a single image file ..."
 

 - bruce