Netbooks & BSD

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010, Gary Kline wrote:
 > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 02:26:36PM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
 > > > Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:15:46 -0700
 > > > From: Gary Kline <kline at thought.org>
[..]
 > > > 	The thing about the memsticks is that on my tower cases, you
 > > > 	have to get down and crawl around and find the jack...  Is there
 > > > 	such a thing as a USB "extender" cable, say, a meter or two long?  
 > > 
 > > Sure. My SmartCard token is plugged into one on my desk. Not knowing
 > > where you are I an only suggest Radio Shack or, if there is one near you,
 > > Frys. You can easily order one on-line for a LARGE number of
 > > vendors. Just remember that the maximum length of 5 meters.
 > > 
 > > I see prices for brand-name cables at about $8.
 > 
 > 
 > 	Oustanding; thanks for the datapoint.  There is a Frys a few
 > 	miles from me, but I usually buy online.  Five meters ... hm,
 > 	that would almost reach to the kitchen table:-)

I've seen recommendations of not exceeding 2m for USB 2.0, for video 
cams anyway, so suggest using a cable only as long as you need.

 > 	My wife and daughter bought some of the memsticks last spring
 > 	to bup a DOS/Win and for daughter's MacBook: xfer files to and
 > 	from school.  Since it's a lot cheaper than buying an optical
 > 	drive, the flash memory is the way to go.

I recall paying nearly AU$100 for my first 1GB stick some years ago, but 
recently picked up two 'Kingston DataTraveller G2' brand 8GB sticks (on 
sale, superceded model) for $30 each.  There are reports of troubles - 
eg for booting FreeBSD - with some of the cheaper no-name brands, and 
for example Soekris recommend only SanDisk flash, so don't scrimp.

If only using it to boot/install/fixit FreeBSD, there's currently no 
point buying larger than a 1GB stick; any more will be wasted, as so far 
sysinstall can only use 'dangerously dedicated' sticks (da0a rather than 
da0sXa), presumably because it detects sliced da devices as 'real' SCSI 
disks, but I'm really hoping to work around that someday, somehow :)

I want to be able to boot from a properly sliced stick with a normal 
boot0 menu to be able to install or run fixit for eg 8.1-R (amd64 or 
i386) of a full -RELEASE a la DVD with packages, a small R/W slice for 
saving dmesg output etc of a tested machine _and_ a small DOS-formatted 
slice (s1) to exchange stuff with windows/mac users, on the one stick.

But the latter is probably better another topic, for another time ..

cheers, Ian