From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jun 1 21:44:31 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id VAA02271 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 21:44:31 -0700 Received: from cs.weber.edu (cs.weber.edu [137.190.16.16]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id VAA02264 for ; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 21:44:30 -0700 Received: by cs.weber.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1.1) id AA26144; Thu, 1 Jun 95 22:37:45 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Message-Id: <9506020437.AA26144@cs.weber.edu> Subject: Re: FreeBSD on 286? To: dbaker@Concorde-Mail.NeoSoft.COM (Daniel Baker) Date: Thu, 1 Jun 95 22:37:44 MDT Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Daniel Baker" at Jun 1, 95 04:50:04 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4dev PL52] Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > I've got an old 286 box with an 80 meg hard drive.. Is there any change > that I can get FreeBSD running on it? > > I think I can put memory in there, it's only got 640k of memory now.. :-) > heh, I'll add another 8 megs... The MACH VM system requires a PMMU; there are also assumptions in the swap, shared library, mmap, and linker that support this supposition. For the same reason, Motorolla processers prior to the 68030 or the 68020 with companion PMMU chip can't run NetBSD. Similarly, SVR2.3 is the last System V system that will run with the same hardware limitations. I've considered back-porting a simpler VM system, but the work would not be worth the effort (I don't even own anything less than a 486 except real old hardware, and I already have SVR2.3 for my Amiga 1000 with 68010), although it would probably be worthwhile to make memory overcommit switchable in MACH VM, which is similar to solving part of the problems involved. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.