Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 12:46:56 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: plukawski@gmail.com Cc: perryh@pluto.rain.com, questions@freebsd.org, herbert langhans <herbert.raimund@gmx.net>, andyjhiscock@yahoo.com, Piotr Lukawski <plukawski@googlemail.com> Subject: Re: freebsd install from floppy Message-ID: <20100306124656.b418d037.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <c1c87c5a1003060324g55a5cfbbo4de8cc87cd244816@mail.gmail.com> References: <c1c87c5a1003030433g43d2bc3ak3cda4822eb4b2cbd@mail.gmail.com> <d7195cff1003032051ub0bc72fi6c91164b26af08b3@mail.gmail.com> <c1c87c5a1003051051v65a39c53jd80b2095ceb7c246@mail.gmail.com> <4b921fbe.rSW1F2xbdHLIg6/X%perryh@pluto.rain.com> <4B92265E.5030109@infracaninophile.co.uk> <c1c87c5a1003060324g55a5cfbbo4de8cc87cd244816@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sat, 6 Mar 2010 12:24:30 +0100, Piotr Lukawski <plukawski@googlemail.com> wrote: > In many situations, especially for and old or non standard equipment > floppies are the best or even the only solution. > [...] > The decision to make floppies obsolete is very bad, because it is still > needed by many people. Sometimes you simply stick with systems that just work, even if they are 10 years old - and older. So a machine with no USB support can likely exist. It gets even more interesting if you need to read and write floppies to keep computer systems alive for a museum (see 5,25" floppies). Sometimes, a floppy is completely sufficient and easy to use, e. g. when transfering some config files to a system without network and USB; the tar utility can be used to directly operate on floppies, which is very useful, and maybe even faster than using USB (device detection, mounting etc.). So when booting via CD, USB or network isn't possible, what are the options? Okay, with FreeBSD, you can extract the hard disk, place it into a different computer and then install the OS there; retransfer the hard disk to the original computer and everything should work from now on. (Special hardware may require additional configuration, but the base system doesn't care on what kind of hardware it is running, basically.) The reason to still use such old systems can be very different, for example "just works" is one of the main reasons. Others may include accurate and reliable working, or less power consumption. (One thing that I could observe over the years: The older hardware is, the longer it works - mostly.) Another reason could be the idea of resisting to buy something new that does the same as the old stuff, an action that costs money and creates electronic waste. I still have such a system which I keep for nostalgia mostly: It introduced me to FreeBSD: A 150MHz P1 with 128 MB SDR-SDRAM, SCSI CD (which I can't boot from), no USB, but Ethernet (which I also can't boot from), and it's in a perfect condition, still usable as a workstation. It does nearly everything my current workstation (P4, 2GHz) can do, and some of the things even faster. I'm sure most of you can't even imagine that. :-) FreeBSD has always impressed me by providing working (!) drivers for older stuff that still works, e. g. SCSI PCI cards, SCSI scanners and PD drives. Most hardware works out of the box, and for very special cases, there are modules or kernel options. And why use FreeBSD? Because it runs faster on the same hardware with every new release. That's something other operating systems can't do. Settings where you update your software, then need to update your hardware, and then still don't feel that anything is faster at all, are known. If floppy images aren't included on the install CD / DVD or via FTP, then at least there should be a simple means to generate them, e. g. "make floppies". I wouldn't like to see floppies disappear for, let's say, the next 10 years, as much as I dislike floppy media per se. By the way, their form factor is superior to CDs and DVDs in every concern! Give the world a rewritable optical media the size of a Minidisc and the world is yours. I don't like the idea that I need a drive with the size of a full-featured computer to use media that dissolves chemically and gets unreadable if touched with the finger on the wrong side. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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