Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:18:10 -0500 From: "Mike Avery" <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com> To: justin <joystick81@hotmail.com>, joystick81@hotmail.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: WHAT IS THIS Message-ID: <199905271728.MAA06417@hostigos.otherwhen.com> In-Reply-To: <374C6F3C.1D0D@hotmail.com>
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On 26 May 99, at 16:01, justin wrote: > FreeBSD does not currently support IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus. I have an > ibm 386dx computer ps/2 would my computer have that I just HATE people who look down their noses at other people and sneer at the computer they are using. But... I'm gonna do it. When I get service calls on older IBM equipment, I shudder. You have to have the right setup disk for that model to do anything. Even move a card to another slot. Finding the setup disk is usually hard - the user lost it, and the IBM web site is a pain. Then you have to add the correct drivers for each card in the system. It's two days lost every time I see one of those. And you can't REALLY bill for the time you spent on it. We haven't gotten into what happens if there's anything really wrong with the equipment. If there is, then you just entered hardware hell. It's all proprietary, it's all wierd, and it's all expensive. IBM changed the case and cabling on their 3.5" floppy disk drives with almost every PS/2 model. So, you probably can't use a drive off another IBM computer, because it won't fit. And you can't use one from the corner store because IBM is sending power through the data ribbon cable. If you try it, you'll short out the power supply, and if you're lucky you'll only lose a data cable. They are reliable beasts, and they are likely to last many more years. But..... even with an efficient operating system, a 386 is slow by today's standards. And it's almost certainly not y2k compatible. In your shoes, I'd crack the box open and see what I could reuse. Certainly the keyboard and monitor. Maybe the hard drive. Use the rest as a doorstop. Then I'd go to the computer store and look at the cost of a case, a clone motherboard and CPU, and go from there. Or - I've seen new 366mhz emachines selling at BestBuy and Office Depot for $399 without a monitor. With 32 megs of ram, a 2 gig hard drive, a sound card, and sorts of software you don't really care about. Look at http://www.e4me.com for more details. I haven't run FreeBSD or Linux on 'em, but they are pretty plain jane machines, so it should work. I just don't see ANY reason to put up with an IBM 386dx today.... Mike ====================================================================== Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (work) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: ACRONYM = Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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