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FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:17 pm
by Bas
From a conservation perspective I'm trying to boot ancient x86 operating systems on the ao486. FreeBSD is one of them, but none of the really old ones from the 1.x and 2.x series work. Where to even begin debugging this?
Re: FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:31 am
by cursedverses
Does those versions of BSD need an FPU to run? I suspect the answer will be yes (even the Amiga's *nixes demanded one)
If that's the case, I suspect you'll be short on luck - AO486 doesn't implement an FPU, at least at this time.
Re: FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2021 4:21 pm
by Bas
These old versions should run on a bare 386. Slowly, but they should run. The FPU requirement came with the 3.x branch if I'm not mistaken.
Re: FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:58 pm
by Zacpod
May be the IDE implementation - that seems to be why OS/2 doesn't boot.
Re: FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2021 8:30 pm
by Bas
That should mean it could run off a floppy. Less than ideal of course but I'm going to look into building a custom stripped-down kernel with the bare minimum of hardware support and see what MiSTer makes of that. Now to test if I can compile FreeBSD 3.0 for i386 directly from a jail on my 13.0-RC2 laptop.
Re: FreeBSD not booting
Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2021 2:23 am
by Zacpod
Oh... That's an interesting idea! I may do the same with OS/2. Maybe with a boot floppy I'll be able to get a driver to work.
I mean a lot of the reason I got the MiSTer was for retro gaming, and Amiga, and C64, but damn I also really am nostalgic for OS/2.