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Date:      Tue, 8 Oct 1996 15:21:27 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
To:        d b dews <d.b.dews@camel.com>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: 30 day Installment Plan
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSI.3.94.961008111702.2048A-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu>
In-Reply-To: <32595FA8.220A@camel.com>

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On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, d b dews wrote:

> This marks my thirtieth day attempting a successful install of BSD and
> here's a couple lessons learned for other newbies:

Ack. :-/

> 1. Don't try using an old machine to save money. BSD don't like old
> hardware.

Certain old hardware.  :-)

> 2. Don't try using fips.exe to create a BSD partition on an existing
> DOS/NT disk on a new machine to save money. The install gobbles up the
> boot sector and you'll have to fdisk it out, reformat, and re-do all the
> DOS and NT stuff.

Huh?  That's not right, unless your partition table was corrupted OR you
didn't have any free slots on the table.  I don't know just what NT does,
if it really musses up FAT disks or not.

> Finally, after I forewent it all and got BSD installed (on a new machine
> by itself), it says my 3com 3c5098 network card has a 10Base2 adapter
> for the lo0 (gets the ep0 right as a 10BaseT) so that $1800 adapter and
> the $400/month dedicated ISDN line are just overpriced night lights.

This is a case where you need to use the -link2 option on ifconfig to
point FreeBSD in the right direction.  Although it should autodetect it if
there is something plugged into the 10baseT slot.  

> Windows NT marched out without a hitch on the same machine. I even have
> a DOS tcp-ip stack (with packet driver) that runs beautifully on it.

Well, those are operating systems that know what to expect.  FreeBSD
expects perfection, which is completely unobtainable on the PC
architecture.  No one follows standards.

> But from what I can tell this BSD will be incredible when and if I can
> get by all these little problems.

I think I've got them all nailed for you.  FIPS, well, if it doesn't work,
it doesn't work.  I've found it's better to bite the bullet and buy the
disk, that way you don't have to mess up your existing FS and makes
setting up the disk easier (just tell the installer to use the whole
disk).

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major





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