G'day
I've got 2n old powerbooks
3400c/200mhz/2gb hdd/144mb ram , and
5300c/100mhz/1gb hdd/56mb ram

I wanted to start a little (!) project and install BSD on them. I wanted to find out wheather has anyone tried this on similar machines. My limited research led me to think NetBSD might be the way to go, any recommendations?

Also, I don't think I'll be able to get a meaningul use with any xserver's on either of these books!, unless someone has auctually did :-), so a practical set up I thought I could be a using is the base NetBSD installation with Python and Emacs. Emacs should be fine for ftp/telnet/email and lynx.... However, I'd need the use of pcmcia and ethernet. I've got ppppoE at home which is not so good with NetBSD I think....


cheers

LOL, I have good news for you.

Not only is PPPoE good with NetBSD... it is probably best with NetBSD. That is because it does PPPoE in the kernel (basically it just means less moving stuff around in memory so slightly faster). It was for this very reason that I chose NetBSD for my router.

I am not sure of X on that hardware but I don't know why it wouldn't be possible. You should definitly try to get it working and not just resign yourself to never seeing it. I would try it on the faster machine (which is still fairly slow) just to see if it is possible.

You may not want to run it everyday... but it is nice to have around.