Toshiba A-205 S5880 laptop compatibility

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 667, Issue 4, Message: 10
On Wed, 15 Mar 2017 15:20:54 -0700 Michael Sierchio <kudzu at tenebras.com> wrote:
 > On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 2:48 PM, <phnxcs_rep at lycos.com> wrote:

 > > I have an older Toshiba laptop and a (store bought) copy of FreeBSD 3.4
 > > and wonder if these two would play well together. The software is dated
 > > January 2000 and I bought the laptop new in November 2008.
 > >
 > >
 > Wrong question - that version is likely too old for your hardware. For the
 > love of all that is holy and good in the universe, use a
 > currently-supported version. 3.4 was EOL in 1999!

Definitely!  FreeBSD 10 should run fine on this machine.  And I tend to 
disagree with one part of Polytropon's otherwise fine assessment; this 
should have no trouble at all on recent FreeBSD, I wouldn't bother with 
FreeSBIE.  Seems FreeBSD 7.0 was out around when this machine was new:

ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/amd64

Here's one good page I found of its specs:

http://gadgetaz.com/Laptop/Toshiba_Satellite_A205-S5880--2339

 > https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.3/FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img.xz

On the OP's summary I was going to suggest the i386 version instead ..

 > > Toshiba Satellite A-205 S5880
 > > Intel Pentium Dual 1.86 GHz CPU (T2390)
 > > 3 GB RAM
 > > 32 Bit
 > > 184 GB HD (NTFS)
 > > CD/DVD

.. but you're right, Michael; the T2390 is 64 bit, dual core, non-HT.

http://ark.intel.com/products/35153/Intel-Pentium-Processor-T2390-1M-Cache-1_86-GHz-533-MHz-FSB

That aspect was rather confusing on the Toshiba website, because they 
shipped it with only 32-bit Vista and were being generally ambivalent 
about 64-bit for it.

To the OP: I wouldn't download the .xz version unless you already have 
an xz decompresor.  The plain memstick.ing is only ~760MB.

In fact, as it has a DVD reader/burner, I'd tend to suggest the DVD 
version, which includes installing basic packages for xorg and KDE, to 
get you started with a graphical environment, eg the above URL or at:

ftp://ftp2.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.3/

and chose the -memstick.ing or FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso

I expect you could use its existing Vista to burn a DVD for it?

According to the Toshiba specs PDF, it also has 'Atheros 802.11b/g 
wireless-LAN', which has a pretty good chance of working with 10.3.

The best (and nowadays pretty cheap) upgrade you could do would be to 
replace the 1GB RAM in one slot with another 2GB chip, for 4GB RAM.

cheers, Ian