[1255] in netbsd-help mailing list archive
Re: hardware
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nathan J. Williams)
Mon Jun 8 21:24:59 1998
To: Jonathan A Kane <jakane@MIT.EDU>
Cc: netbsd-help@MIT.EDU
From: "Nathan J. Williams" <nathanw@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 30 May 1998 12:13:42 EDT."
<35703036.41C6@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 21:24:51 EDT
Sorry for the delay. Here are a few answers:
> I am in the process of purchasing a high end PC for my lab (Earth
> Resources Laboratory) and I am not sure which hardware to get. I want
> to install NetBSD/Athena on it. I have visited
> http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/i386/index.html but it is very vague as to
> what is really supported. I want to get a 400 MHz Pentium II, 256 Meg
> RAM, a 9 Gbyte SCSI hard drive, an 8 Meg video card, 32x CD-ROM, a 17"
> monitor, and a 1 Gb Jazz Drive. I don't want to buy this and then
> realize that NetBSD/Athena won't work on it. How can I know for sure
> which top-of-the-line hardware will work?
It's hard to know exactly what will work. The Jaz drive and
SCSI drive will work if the SCSI controller is supported, so you'll
have to know what kind of controller is in the system you're
interested in. A SCSI CD will work; a IDE/ATA CD will work in 1.3 and
later versions of NetBSD. Whether the video card works is determined
by the X-windows software, not NetBSD specifically. We're currently
using XFree86 3.3.1 with the prerelease NetBSD-Athena (see below);
www.xfree86.org should be able to tell you if the video card that you
are interested in is supported. It's possible to use a later version
of XFree86, so don't be discouraged if the card is supported in 3.3.2
but not 3.3.1.
> Also, which version of NetBSD is currently supported by Athena?
> They have just released version 1.3.2 but the MIT help page says that
> only 1.2 is supported.
Picky but necessary distinction: Athena doesn't support
NetBSD. SIPB, which is a student organization, supports NetBSD/Athena.
A 1.2-based release was the last officially released version
of NetBSD-Athena. There is a 1.3-based release in development, and
although it's not quite released yet, it's rather close, and is usable
(it's currently using 1.3.1, though moving to 1.3.2 is imminent).
> One last question. I have RedHat Linux installed on my PC at
> home. I get the impression from SIPB that NetBSD/Athena is recommended
> over RedHat/Athena. What is your opinion on that?
It's a matter of opinion, mostly. The various people in SIPB
who work on or prostletyze for Linux or NetBSD have very different
ways of evaluating the merits of the two operating systems. That said,
the new NetBSD-Athena is much closer than Linux-Athena to the new
Athena software that will be coming to workstations this
summer. NetBSD-Athena is more monolithic than Linux-Athena, and
treats the machine as a full-fledged Athena-style workstation;
whether this is a pro or a con depends on your point of view.
I hope this helps. If you'd like to keep up-to-date on the
releases of NetBSD-Athena, you can add yourself to the netbsd-announce
list, which will get notices of new versions for testing or release.
- Nathan
