"Steven C. Darnold" wrote: > I've been working on a slim 2.2.16 kernel for BL2. > So far I've got it down to 543kb. I'd like to make > it smaller still, so that 486s with 8mb RAM will be > able to run it in a ramdisk. Otherwise, I'm going > to have to up the minimum requirement to 12mb RAM. >
Are there a lot of 8MB 486's out there? On the other hand a lot of 486 mother boards really could not use more than 16MB of RAM, even if it was installed, due to cache size and other limitations. I also have an interest in a kernel which supports notebooks. Such a kernel would have pcmcia and radio networking enabled and would probably not need any NIC's. OTOH many 486 notebooks had SX processors so, math emulation would be desirable. > At the moment the BL2 kernel has the ability to use the full range of > network cards. I may be able to get > a much smaller kernel by eliminating most of those cards. So, I'm going > to do a re-compile with just the six most > popular NICs. Two of those cards will be NE2000 (both PCI and ISA) and > 3c509. I'm not sure of the slackware drivers but there were several versions of the 509. The 509b and I think 509c were different enough to require different drives on some unixes ( I used a lot of SCO in those days). > That leaves four places. So, guys, you tell me which network cards > should go in BL2. I have also hear the SMC cards used a lot, but I never used them. > > Which are the most popular NICs for cable-modems? I don't think this matters much, I got a PCI D-link with mine. Most cards used with cable modems are going to be newer cards, as cable modems didn't really start being widely used until 486s were already pretty old. > Which are the most popular NICs in 486s and low-end Pentiums? I think you've got it. The 509's were very popular as we NE2000 and the many many clones. There are going to be I lot of people using newer sub-$10 cards from many manufacturers. > Note: people with NICs not in BL2 will still be able to use it. They > simply download a new kernel from Slack71 > (the bare.i bzimage has support for all NICs). And, as now, they also > need to download the correct Slack71 module for > their NIC. > > Cheers, > Steven > > To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. > Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. > More info can be found at; > http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html -- Rob Steinmetz To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
