: freebsd7 on older machines

[kenneth hatteland]

------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 
13:39:49 -0700 From: prad <prad at towardsfreedom.com> Subject: freebsd7 on 
older machines To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org Message-ID: 
<20080509133949.53b83c29 at gom.home> Content-Type: text/plain; 
charset=US-ASCII i can't seem to boot the cdrom on older hardware 
(500MHz and down). i read somewhere that the older drives aren't 
supported by the installation cdrom. i want to create a series of 'dumb 
terminals' which can ssh -Y into a faster machine. if necessary i 
suppose i can floppy in and then install via nfs. or i can setup the hd 
on another machine that does support the install cdrom and then transfer 
to the older machine. here are the specific questions: 1. do older 
machines work better with older versions of freebsd? 2. if i dd a hd 
(with freebsd) onto another hd will i have a problem with the mbr and be 
unable to boot? 3. are there any other ideas for install?
-- In friendship, prad

I have with success installed 7.0 on a pentium 133 mhz laptop with 96 
meg ram. compiled X and fluxbox from source. The whole installation took 
a week or so ;) Works like a charm, except firefox is heavy load for 
this ancient piece of machinery. Also use xfce compiled from source on 
old 350 - 450mhz  machines  nicely.
I usually use cdrom boot and then ftp install. On machines with no cd, 
or no working rom drives I  use  floppy  boot versions of FreeBSD and 
then ftp the rest of the install. When wanting to use cdrom boot where I 
have no floppy, or bios doesn`t support cdrom boot (ie no bios upgrade 
to fix it either) I use a floppy tool called "smart boot manager" that 
when booted enables me to continue on most other media of my desire.( 
gives a new boot menu with among others cdrom driver loaded) I suggest 
this option for your convenience......


Kenneth Hatteland, Norway