Toshiba A-205 S5880 laptop compatibility

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 16 Mar 2017 21:20:13 +1100 (EST), Ian Smith wrote:
> In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 667, Issue 4, Message: 10
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2017 15:20:54 -0700 Michael Sierchio <kudzu at tenebras.com> wrote:
>  > On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 2:48 PM, <phnxcs_rep at lycos.com> wrote:
> 
>  > > I have an older Toshiba laptop and a (store bought) copy of FreeBSD 3.4
>  > > and wonder if these two would play well together. The software is dated
>  > > January 2000 and I bought the laptop new in November 2008.
>  > >
>  > >
>  > Wrong question - that version is likely too old for your hardware. For the
>  > love of all that is holy and good in the universe, use a
>  > currently-supported version. 3.4 was EOL in 1999!
> 
> Definitely!  FreeBSD 10 should run fine on this machine.  And I tend to 
> disagree with one part of Polytropon's otherwise fine assessment; this 
> should have no trouble at all on recent FreeBSD, I wouldn't bother with 
> FreeSBIE.

I just suggested FreeSBIE as a means of checking _before_
installing with an OS version "of _that_ time"; it comes
with GUI and sound and graphics and applications and what
not, so its testing results are broader than what you can
do with a FreeBSD 10 installation CD and "dmesg". :-)

Otherwise, FreeBSD 10 is a good suggestion of what to run
on the OS level. I have a similarly equipped Lenovo R61i
that even runs Chromium and Firefox without much problems,
so I'd even say _that_ kind of software will run fine, too.
I didn't want to use Gnome or KDE on that particular machine,
so I cannot suggest if those desktop environments will perform
sufficiently well...



> On the OP's summary I was going to suggest the i386 version instead ..
> 
>  > > Toshiba Satellite A-205 S5880
>  > > Intel Pentium Dual 1.86 GHz CPU (T2390)
>  > > 3 GB RAM
>  > > 32 Bit
>  > > 184 GB HD (NTFS)
>  > > CD/DVD
> 
> .. but you're right, Michael; the T2390 is 64 bit, dual core, non-HT.

Both i386 and amd64 will work. Maybe i386 will run a little bit
more performant, but amd64 will enable you to benefit from RAM
expansion 4+ GB.



> The best (and nowadays pretty cheap) upgrade you could do would be to 
> replace the 1GB RAM in one slot with another 2GB chip, for 4GB RAM.

A good suggestion. And keep an eye on the memory usage, you'll
be surprised that it doesn't get exhausted as quickly as one
would assume. But there is _never_ anything wrong with having
"more RAM than needed"; i386 will only waste a small percentage
if you install 4 GB (as a certain part of the RAM is consumed
for the GPU component anyway, I assume), so "no regret" pre-
programmed. ;-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...