Re: Looking for suggestions for small, low power machine

["bifferos '" <bifferos%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Manuel Bouyer 
<bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost> wrote:
>> The Bifferboard BIOS is able to boot Multiboot binaries from flash, so
>> the later versions of NetBSD should sort-of work, however at the same
>> time you need to go back to earlier versions of NetBSD to allow a boot
>> on such 'old' hardware (no APIC, no cpuid etc...).  I was trying to
>> unravel this last year, but eventually gave up.  I presume this would
>> be a lot easier for someone who's worked on the x86 port, perhaps
>> whoever took out the 386 support in the first place (I've no idea if
>> that decision was made explicitly, and can be reversed).
>>
>> I can provide discounted hardware to anyone wanting to work on this.
>
> i'm not sure it's worth it. there are now vortex86 chips much faster
> than this one, with the same power requirements.

I had to hunt to find somewhere I could buy a Vortex86 board, but when I
did I found it for $188, so you're comparing a $56 board with a $188 one?

About power requirements, which Vortex Board consumes 1W? It seems
the Vortex86DX CPU itself consumes 2W, so I don't see how the
entire system can consume ~1W.

Anyhow, if nobody wants to work on it it's no big deal.  There's virtually
no commercial value in supporting *BSD on this hardware as all the OEMs
are using Linux, I was only looking into this as a hobby thing, only
two people have asked about *BSD in the last two years (I think one of
those was about FreeBSD)!

best regards,
Biff.