Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 01:22:25 -0700 From: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: My hardware setup (and ME) in detail... Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980614012225.007e6580@mx.serv.net>
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The unofficial fewtch@serv.net FAQ ---------------------------------- For those who were wondering about my setup (which is unusual) and a little about me thrown in just FYI and for ego purposes, here is the information: My "main" (most used) machine is a P200MMX/HX chipset motherboard with 64 megs RAM, running Win95 exclusively and fully equipped with a Tseng ET-6000 based video card, CDROM drive, modem, PCI-based sound card, 2 gig hard drive, Syquest SparQ 1 gig removable, scanner, printer, etc. I have this main PC connected to a second PC (described below) via Ethernet crossover cable (no hub) using 3com 3c503 ISA Ethernet cards, and a switchbox which allows the two machines to share the same monitor, mouse and keyboard. The second machine is a 486-66 (soon to be upgraded to 486-133) with generic Vesa Local Bus motherboard, ATI Mach32 VLB video card, 32 megs RAM and a 2.1 gig hard drive in a triple boot configuration (Win95, Win NT and FreeBSD). Booting is controlled with Boot Manager (made famous by OS/2 and included with the "Partition Magic" drive partitioning program). The first primary partition is boot manager, the second the FreeBSD partition, the third Win95. There is also an extended partition with Windows NT installed on it (when I boot to the Win95 partition, I get a menu letting me select either Win95 on C: or Win NT on D:). Win95 and NT can both access each other since they're both on FAT file systems, the FreeBSD machine can access any of it supposedly. The machine has no CDROM drive, no modem, a sound card unsupported by FreeBSD (Ensoniq Soundscape). I have 1 gig dedicated to FreeBSD, with the rest shared between Windows 95 and Win NT (yes, they both fit fine in 1 gig of space, but not a lot of room for many applications - most of my apps are on my main machine though - the second machine is mostly a testbed for software and OS's). I built both machines myself, from "scratch" (in quotes because "building" a PC doesn't mean building it from electronic components). I installed FreeBSD by downloading it via modem on the primary machine to my Syquest SparQ drive, and copying the entire install tree over to the Win95 partition on the second machine via Ethernet, then choosing "install from a DOS partition" when requested by the FreeBSD sysinstall utility. A tedious process, to say the least, and a real pain when package dependencies arise (better now though that I'm able to FTP to the Win95 machine while in FreeBSD, which makes new package installs much easier using pkg_add). A little about me, too - I've been into computers for 15 years (first computer was a Commodore 64 in 1983), and have owned every kind of Intel machine up to P5 (I've owned 8088's, 286's, 386's, 486's, Pentiums and have used AMD chips as well in some machines). I've never used anything above a P5 (can't really afford a P2II system and don't want to go with AMD K6/K7 as of yet, although that may be coming down the road). I'm working on an Electronics Technician certificate (completed basic and advanced main courses (the "bin" install part of the program) :-) and will be resuming classes in the fall (night classes) - 1 to 2 more years to go, the rest is all details, not basics. I'm currently out of work and on disability payments, which will not go on for more than the next couple more years (I'm basically able to work full time now probably). I'm building a workshop in my garage and plan on starting a very small PC build/repair upgrade business in the near future, with maybe some custom programming on the side. I've been a BASIC programmer since 1983 and have used QuickBASIC 4.5, PowerBASIC, VB3, 4 and 5. I also know some C programming (took a beginning and advanced course but forgot a lot of it.. I guess now is my chance to remember now that I'm running FreeBSD). C++ I took one basic course in and found that I hated the language - it seems to me to be a hack of C, and the syntax and grammar are just too bizarre for me to comprehend. Give me RAD tools and Visual Basic type stuff any day :-) On the BSD side, interpreted or compiled scripts are nice, too, and I look forward to playing with Perl in the future as well as doing some C programming/relearning. I hope that explained things fairly well (if not, just type "man fewtch" the next time you start FreeBSD :-). Questions to fewtch@serv.net directly please (not via the mailing list). Tim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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