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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!belfast.dcd.wa.gov.au!belfast.dcd.wa.gov.au!not-for-mail From: juliane@belfast.dcd.wa.gov.au (Julian Elischer) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: [Q] Lap tops and 386BSD/NetBSD/FreeBSD? Date: 9 Sep 1993 17:02:50 +0800 Organization: Dept of Community Development, Perth, Australia Lines: 136 Distribution: world Message-ID: <26mrfq$kqa@belfast.dcd.wa.gov.au> References: <1993Sep6.185901.5568@cs.cornell.edu> <D> <1993Sep7.080841.890@gmd.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: belfast.dcd.wa.gov.au Keywords: hardware compatibility In article <1993Sep7.080841.890@gmd.de> veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit) writes: |In article <1993Sep6.185901.5568@cs.cornell.edu>, chase@pine.ece.utexas.edu writes: ||> I expect this is a real frequently asked, and possibly outright dumb question, ||> but I'll ask it anyway (couldn't find any info in the recently posted FAQ). ||> ||> What is the relationship between 386BSD (and it's derivatives) and lap tops? ||> Any advice or information would be appreciated, and if this not a subject that ||> has already been beaten to death, I'd be happy to post a summary of the results. ||> ||> Questions which come immediately to mind are: ||> 1) will 386BSD run at all on lap tops? | |Probably depends on your laptop, as well as the question "will *BSD run at all |on my desktop/tower?" highly depends on the hardware. |I have a Highscreen 486DX2-50 laptop with 4MB and 170MB disk and Cirrus-GD610 |display controller. 386bsd out of the box booted without problems. | I have a Texas Instrumets TI 4000 DX2/50 8MB/200MB It was (is still sometimes) my main 386bsd machine. This is the same machine that Bill Jolitz uses, so 0.2 (?) will definitly work with this machine 8-) There is only one catch.. the "Advances OS power saving" mode must be turned off for 386bsd to be able to read the floppy.. this caused me endless confusion until bill cornered one of the designers and managed to get this info out of them.. ||> 2) how is the performance? in particular, what effect does a paging ||> multitasking operating system have on battery life? | |With 4MB several files in the BSD source tree as well as some files |in the XFree86 source tree compiled "endless", but this effect is known |from desktops with 4MB as well. The overall performance is not much |worse than on my 486 tower. with 8MB it's great.. kernel compiles in about 13 minutes (slow disk and 8mb ram.. ok) |During compile of Xfree86 or kernel or source, the disk is of course |heavily engaged, and the effect is significant for the battery life |(about 45min-1h to total fail, compared to pure DOS, low usage, powersave mode, |with 1,5-2,5h). | The TI can last 3hours in unix with the disk syncing all teh time. Bill runs it without 'update' running and just remembers to sync manually.. remember, it can't suffer from a power outage, so as long as you sync every now and then, and reboot does a sync (which it does) then you are reasonably safe.. doing that you might be able to get 4 hours out of it.. Under batteries it runs in 'slow' mode (n MHz where n is < 25 (it's a dx2)) it appears to be half speed. (You can FORCE it to run at full speed from the bios menu if you want but it gets warm so you know it's chewing up the batteries). Under DOS with power saving I've seen it last 6 hours (possibly 7..(I was not sure of when I left it on)) but that's with the screen shut down and the drive stopped. 386bsd doesn't get frightenned by the drive powering down, it just waits for it to spin up again.. (about 1 second). (something for those working with the wd driver to NOT BREAK!) One thing that BUGS THE HELL OUT OF ME is that vi (elvis) KEEPS WRITING BACK TO DISK! so the disk is always being kept alive, even for a 3 hour edit session (with everything in ram). also, In bright sunlight there is no need for the backlighting, but there is no way of turning it off. !!! ||> 3) is there a prayer of running X on a lap top? |This laptop has a mono display, and is VGA compatible. You can run |(or with 4MB say "creep") the xserver in 640x480, but it is not much |fun. I use it in text mode usually. I use the syscons console driver and use 4 virtual consoles The cirrus logic VGA chipset isn't supported byt XFree86 directly, so I can't run colour (on a nexternal monitor) but I can run 640x480 mono on the LCD, and 800 x 600 mono on the external. unfortunatly no-one has worked out how to get the trackball going yet, so a mouse on com1 is needed. 8MB is a little tight for a lot of X though it's ok. (windows will run it 1024x768 nterleved on external) (and I'm told the new models do better). | ||> ||> And of course the obvious, "So what would you recommend?". |You can run *BSD on a laptop, but test it first with a boot disk in a |shop (some wellknown brands are rumoured to have incompatible |hardware, as they already had in desktops). Use the most powerful |hardware available (486DX2, not [34]86SX!, much disk, much RAM, color if |possible or affordable). Buy a second or third battery pack. |If you want to compile, RAM is important. Often the VGA cards |have 256K only, so X11 runs in 640x480 only which is not |recommended for longer work. go for ram and disk.. as always with unix. I highly recommend the TI travelmate 4000 (any model) just be aware of the problem with the power saving and the floppy. I have the ethernet adapter...ne2000 compatible. I also have the internal 14.4kb modem.. works GREAT for both SLIP and PPP and has no problems with uucp and tip/cu it has a 16550. unfortunatly the com port has a 16450 only. (?) | ||> ||> I don't speak DOS (unless I have to) or MacOS, but I need a lap top. ||> I could go with a Sun laptop, but they seem somewhat pricey. I have a small DOS partition that I mount using pcfs, I use it only for the FAX package that came with the modem. (it's a class 1 fax and they are a bit of a problem under unix) All up (in March in the USA) it cost ne about $4700 for: carry case 8MB ram 200MB disk 14400 modem ethernet adapter spare charger spare battery pack and DISCHARGER. dx2/50 laptop (and windows (hidden in it's 25MB partition)) I believe the price has since reduced.. and there are of course cheaper models. The warrantee is worldwide, and I've needed it here in Australia (the ram died) julian