Your FreeBSD Hardware

[roddierod]

Thanks. I used to lust over these when they first came out, but to costly for me.
Then one showed up on ebay 4 or 5 years ago and I had to get it!

[ephemera]

roddierod,

i am just wondering is it fast? does fbsd run well on it?
is it good enough to use as a "desktop"?
if you could maybe post a photo of it that will be cool.

[Bruco]

My server ain't much:

Athlon XP 1900
768MB of RAM (I think it's PC2100)
HighPoint 454 RAID controller with three 160GB drives in a RAID5
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE #0: Wed Jan 16 04:18:52 UTC 2008
I have a 300GB external USB drive hooked up to it that I rsync my data to with a script once a week.

That's pretty much all the pertinent info, since I don't have X running on it or anything. It's my file/web services server. It does the job quite well. I really like that HighPoint provides FreeBSD drivers (although only through 6.2. They don't work with 7.0, but I was able to make it work with 6.3 by monkeying with the script that came with the driver). I actually bought the card way back when I was running Win2k server on it and it was a nice surprise to see I could switch to BSD and have a readily available driver.

I have an old PIII Compaq laptop running FreeBSD 6.2 and Xfce. It sucks. It heats up to about 200 degrees after running for a while, but I don't enjoy messing with laptop hardware enough to take it apart.

And there's a couple WinXP boxes in the house. I admit it. Please be merciful.

[roddierod]

Originally Posted by ephemera

roddierod,

i am just wondering is it fast? does fbsd run well on it?
is it good enough to use as a "desktop"?
if you could maybe post a photo of it that will be cool.

This is the only picture I have of it online Santiago. This is link is hosted on it. It's the 2 rack space server version.

I haven't found any in the Tower Configuration. But it had Debian installed on it when I got it so I do know that it can run X, but I haven't tried using it as a desktop. I still have the idea of getting a DEC Personal Workstation or a DS10 to run as a desktop.

[DrJ]

Welcome Kzoo!

Originally Posted by Bruco

I have an old PIII Compaq laptop running FreeBSD 6.2 and Xfce. It sucks. It heats up to about 200 degrees after running for a while, but I don't enjoy messing with laptop hardware enough to take it apart.

If my wife's laptop is any indication, renewing the thermal compound on the CPU and cleaning the fans and heat sinks goes a *long* way to cooling laptops down. I was chasing another issue -- a bad power connector -- so I had to go in there anyway. They are not that difficult to work on, actually, but you do have to be a bit careful.

And there's a couple WinXP boxes in the house. I admit it. Please be merciful.

Well, we have six MS boxes, ranging from W2K through Vista-64. That does not include three VMs. Pretty much all of us have MS somewhere.

[18Googol2]

All my machines is laptops

Server:

Dell 6400 running FreeBSD 7.0

CPU: Duo Core T2300
RAM: Dual channel, 2 x 512Mb
HDD1: 60Gb 2.5" Hitachi SATA loaded with system files.
HDD2: 250Gb 2.5" WD SATA loaded with /home
Wireless: 3945ABG
Ethernet: Broadcom 10/100

Workstation:

IBM X40 running FreeBSD 6.3

CPU: Pentium M low voltage 1.2Ghz
RAM: DDR 512M
HDD: 40Gb
Wireless: Atheros B/G
Ethernet: Giganet em0

Testing machine:

IBM X40 (yes X40 again, just bought, Im loving it!)

- Running Winslows and Gentoo.

- I plan to install OpenSolaris, Solaris and Red Hat enterprise in near future.

Identical specs as the previous one

[l2fl2f]

Hello,

my firewall at home:
P1 166 - 64 RAM
freebsd 6.3 (own freebsd livecd)
64 ram
fd0 (configuration)
(no hard drive => no noise, easy to use for my wife too (on-off))
network card: rl0 - tl0

My others machine at home FreeBSD 6.3:
PIII 1.013 - 392 RAM (laptop Toshiba)
PII 450 - 512 RAM (workstation)
P4 - 1 G Ram (workstation)
PII 350 - 128 Ram (samba, cups, test)

My others machine at my work (FreeBSD 6.3):
PII 350 - 392 RAM (xdesktop, mysql, apache, cups, ftp, nfs, vnc)
PII 350 - 200 RAM (dev own freebsd livecd)
PIII 700 - 512 RAM FreeBSD 4.11 (mysql dev)

[BSDKaffee]

Right now, all I have is my laptop. It's a PowerPro J 10:15 from PowerNotebooks.com which is built on a Compal IFL90 barebones laptop. Currently, it is running FreeBSD 7-STABLE (i386).

Mostly everything works fine on it and given the fact that I took a shot in the dark in buying this notebook, I am rather pleased. It was a good price and I didn't have to buy an OS with it. I did have to pull the HDD, though, because they left the jumper in limiting the drive to 1.5 GB/s. No big deal, though...it only took a minute to fix that . I also had to enable AHCI the BIOS. Without it, the ICH8M does not get detected and the HDD will run at UDMA33 .

Things that don't work:

• memory card reader (not detected, tried MemoryStick Pro with no luck)
• fingerprint reader (TouchStrip Fingerprint Sensor) (detected as ugen)
• built-in camera (Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd. USB 2.0 Camera) (detected as ugen, FreeBSD needs a USB video class driver for this to work)

Hardware Notes:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.4 GHz)
RAM: 2 GB dual channel DDR2 /667 (1 GB x 2)
HDD: 160 GB Seagate Momentus @ 7200 rpm (SATA II 3.0 GB/s)
Video: NVidia GeForce 8600M GT w/ 512 MB video memory; widescreen (1440x900) glossy LCD (x11/nvidia-driver)
LAN: Broadcom 5787 Gigabit (bge driver FreeBSD 6.3+)
WLAN: Intel 3945abg (wpi driver FreeBSD 7.0+)
Audio: Realtek ALC268 HD audio codec (snd_hda or audio/oss) - built-in speakers are not bad, but they don't turn off when I plug headphones in. The audio/oss drivers do provide a way to disable the built-in speakers; ossxmix has a checkbox to turn off speakers. I am using snd_hda right now since OSS has been causing lockups with Wine.
ACPI: battery level detected, could not get S3 to work.

[Oliver_H]

Acer 5633 laptop
CPU: Core2Duo@1.66
Memory: 2G
Harddrive: 120G (SATA)
Wireless: Intel 3945 (not used)
Wireless2: Ralink (pc-card)
Graphics: Intel GMA950
Audio: HDA
OS: FreeBSD 7 stable

CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4200
Memory: 3G
Harddrive: 2xSATA (700G)
Wireless: Atheros
Lan: Intel Gigabit Nic
Graphics: nVidia Geforce 7300GT
Chipset: nForce 4
Audio: Creative Labs Audigy 4
OS: FreeBSD 7 stable

CPU: Athlon 64 X2 3600
Memory: 2G
Harddrive: 1xPATA (320G)
Wireless: Atheros
Lan: Intel Gigabit Nic
Graphics: nVidia onboard
Chipset: nForce 4
Audio: HDA
OS: Slackware 12.1

[FBSDin20Steps]

As my local webserver:

FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE #0: Tue May 6 05:46:44 CEST 2008
CPU: AMD Duron(tm) processor (1300.06-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x671 Stepping = 1
Features=0x383f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE, CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE>
AMD Features=0xc0400800<SYSCALL,MMX+,3DNow!+,3DNow!>
real memory = 528416768 (503 MB)
avail memory = 507572224 (484 MB)
acpi0: <VIA694 MSI ACPI> on motherboard
agp0: <VIA 8361 (KLE133) host to PCI bridge> on hostb0
ad0: 29325MB <Maxtor 2F030J0 VAM51JJ0> at ata0-master UDMA100
acd0: DVDR <NU DVDRW DDW-082/B373> at ata1-master UDMA33

as my desktop:

Debian (Ubuntu) on Pentium 4 3GHz with 1 gig of ram and some storage

Greetz

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by BSDKaffee

Things that don't work:

• fingerprint reader (TouchStrip Fingerprint Sensor) (detected as ugen)
• built-in camera (Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd. USB 2.0 Camera) (detected as ugen, FreeBSD needs a USB video class driver for this to work)

This is a little off topic, but both of those might eventually be a working possibility.

First of all, for the TouchStrip, The "fprint" project might support that, you'll need to install "libusb".

http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Main_Page

FreeBSD has a port of fprint but it seems to be an older version, manually compiling it should be fairly strait forward.

Just because devices attach as ugen doesn't mean they're completely useless, libusb has opened up the possibility of simple user land drivers.

As for the camera, not exactly FreeBSD related, OpenBSD -CURRENT has a UVC driver now uvideo(4). (Plus a v4l2 framework, no man page yet.. but, soon. :-))

Perhaps FreeBSD developers will port it eventually?

[Weaseal]

Built this machine a few years ago: AMD Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, 2-120GB HDs running in RAID-1. Currently running 6.2-RELEASE-p2/amd64.

All the machines I have run FreeBSD x86, PowerPC or AMD64 except for my MacBook Pro, my mobile phone (strange but true). My internet router box runs OpenBSD. My toaster runs NetBSD... if I had a toaster.

My primary FreeBSD/amd64 desktop built on the cheap from parts at Sim Lim Square is:

• Samsung 22inch widescreen (damned lifesaver for coding and markup writing IMHO, though I hear lots of programmers hate widescreens)
• Intel Core2 Duo e8400 3GHz
• 4GB HyperX DDR2
• 750GB Samsung (32GB reserved for Draco Linux, dual boot)
• Really cheap pci-e Nvidia card (I'm on my laptop now, can't remember model)
• Huge copper heatsync for coping with Singapore temperature when I don't have their aircon on during the day. It gets HOT in this room!

As Grogan said, no official Nvidia 64bit drivers are a pain, but I guess I don't really need them. SimCity 2000 in Wine is the extent of my gaming.

[FloridaBSD]

IMHO Your better of using CentOS or fedora 9 codenamed (Sulphur), because RHEL coast about 160 usd for a threee year subscription where as, Fedora or CentOS are Free as in Dirt stinking Cheap.

[nimmen]

my home server:
cpu: athlon x2 5600
ram: 2gb pc6400
lan: dual channel onboard 1gbit lan + one additional 100mbit nic
video: gf 6200le
hdd: ata: 3x250gb + 1x120gb + 1x40gb + promise ultra 100 controller (not tx2)(had huge difficulties finding bios upgrade to detect more than 137gb hdd's, and heard some bad things about corrupt data when pci bus load is high, any comments?), soon will get 750gb sata for backup and make 3x250gb raidz, later will add additional 750gb's to make second raidz pool)
monitor: none

[joekiser]

renegade: ibm t41, 1700MHz Pentium M, 2GB ram, 80gb, win xp
theravada: ibm t42p, ati firegl, 1800Mhz pentium M, 2 gb ram, 60 gb, openSUSE 10.3/freebsd 7.0

[enpey]

Mine:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 MBoard
Q6600 CPU
4x1GB Kingston 800MHz RAM
Gigabyte 8600GT card (Useless...unless I am really bored and install games for MS)
FreeBSD 7.0 STABLE

GF's:
Dell Dimension 8400
3.40GHz P4
2GB RAM
FreeBSD 7.0 STABLE

[gkontos]

Four of those at work, mail, dns, web (HP Blades)

Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2216 HE (2400.10-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "AuthenticAMD"  Id = 0x40f12  Stepping = 2
  Features=0x178bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT>
  Features2=0x2001<SSE3,CX16>
  AMD Features=0xea500800<SYSCALL,NX,MMX+,FFXSR,RDTSCP,LM,3DNow!+,3DNow!>
  AMD Features2=0x1f<LAHF,CMP,SVM,ExtAPIC,CR8>
  Cores per package: 2
real memory  = 2145714176 (2046 MB)
avail memory = 2094624768 (1997 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <HP     00000083>
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID:  1
ioapic0 <Version 1.1> irqs 0-15 on motherboard
ioapic1 <Version 1.1> irqs 16-31 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
acpi0: <HP A13> on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 850
acpi_timer0: <32-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x920-0x923 on acpi0
acpi_hpet0: <High Precision Event Timer> iomem 0xfed00000-0xfed003ff on acpi0
Timecounter "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 900
cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
cpu1: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> on acpi0
pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0
pci0: <display, VGA> at device 3.0 (no driver attached)
pci0: <base peripheral> at device 4.0 (no driver attached)
pci0: <base peripheral> at device 4.2 (no driver attached)
uhci0: <UHCI (generic) USB controller> port 0x1800-0x181f irq 21 at device 4.4 on pci0
uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb0: <UHCI (generic) USB controller> on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: (0x103c) UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
pci0: <serial bus> at device 4.6 (no driver attached)
pcib1: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 5.0 on pci0
pci1: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib1
pcib2: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 13.0 on pci1
pci2: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib2
bce0: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706 1000Base-SX (A2)> mem 0xfa000000-0xfbffffff irq 22 at device 3.0 on pci2
miibus0: <MII bus> on bce0
brgphy0: <BCM5706 10/100/1000baseTX/SX PHY> on miibus0
brgphy0:  1000baseSX-FDX, auto
bce0: Ethernet address: 00:1a:4b:d1:dc:aa
bce0: ASIC (0x57060021); Rev (A2); Bus (PCI-X, 64-bit, 100MHz); F/W (0x01090605); Flags( )
bce1: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706 1000Base-SX (A2)> mem 0xf8000000-0xf9ffffff irq 23 at device 4.0 on pci2
miibus1: <MII bus> on bce1
brgphy1: <BCM5706 10/100/1000baseTX/SX PHY> on miibus1
brgphy1:  1000baseSX-FDX, auto
bce1: Ethernet address: 00:1a:4b:d1:ec:06
bce1: ASIC (0x57060021); Rev (A2); Bus (PCI-X, 64-bit, 100MHz); F/W (0x01090605); Flags( )
isab0: <PCI-ISA bridge> at device 6.2 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
ohci0: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> port 0x1c00-0x1cff mem 0xf7ee0000-0xf7ee0fff irq 5 at device 7.0 on pci0
ohci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb1: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support
usb1: SMM does not respond, resetting
usb1: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> on ohci0
usb1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1: (0x1166) OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
ohci1: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> port 0x3000-0x30ff mem 0xf7ed0000-0xf7ed0fff irq 5 at device 7.1 on pci0
ohci1: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb2: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support
usb2: SMM does not respond, resetting
usb2: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> on ohci1
usb2: USB revision 1.0
uhub2: (0x1166) OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub2: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
ehci0: <EHCI (generic) USB 2.0 controller> port 0x3400-0x34ff mem 0xf7ec0000-0xf7ec0fff irq 5 at device 7.2 on pci0
ehci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb3: EHCI version 1.0
usb3: companion controllers, 2 ports each: usb1 usb2
usb3: <EHCI (generic) USB 2.0 controller> on ehci0
usb3: USB revision 2.0
uhub3: (0x1166) EHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub3: 4 ports with 4 removable, self powered
pcib3: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> on acpi0
pci4: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib3
pcib4: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 16 at device 15.0 on pci4
pci5: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib4
pcib5: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 20 at device 16.0 on pci4
pci12: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib5
pcib6: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 19 at device 17.0 on pci4
pci19: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib6
pcib7: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 0.0 on pci19
pci20: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib7
pcib8: <PCI-PCI bridge> at device 4.0 on pci20
pci21: <PCI bus> on pcib8
ciss0: <HP Smart Array E200i> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xfdf80000-0xfdffffff,0xfdf70000-0xfdf77fff irq 19 at device 8.0 on pci20
ciss0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
pcib9: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 18 at device 18.0 on pci4
pci22: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib9
pcib10: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 17 at device 19.0 on pci4
pci25: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib10
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> port 0x60,0x64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
sio0: <Standard PC COM port> port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 flags 0x10 on acpi0
sio0: type 16550A
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: <ISA Option ROMs> at iomem 0xc0000-0xcafff,0xcb000-0xcefff,0xcf000-0xd07ff,0xe6000-0xe7fff on isa0
ata0 at port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 irq 14 on isa0
ata1 at port 0x170-0x177,0x376 irq 15 on isa0
ppc0: parallel port not found.
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
ukbd0: HP Virtual Keyboard, rev 1.10/0.02, addr 2, iclass 3/1
kbd2 at ukbd0
ums0: HP Virtual Keyboard, rev 1.10/0.02, addr 2, iclass 3/1
ums0: X report 0x0002 not supported
device_attach: ums0 attach returned 6
uhub4: HP Virtual Hub, class 9/0, rev 1.10/0.01, addr 3
uhub4: 7 ports with 7 removable, self powered
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
SMP: AP CPU #1 Launched!
da0 at ciss0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <COMPAQ RAID 1  VOLUME OK> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-0 device 
da0: 135.168MB/s transfers
da0: 139979MB (286677120 512 byte sectors: 255H 32S/T 35132C)
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a
bce0: link state changed to UP

One HP ML110G3 at home as a File & Print Server.

[nesca2in1]

Asus x51R
CPU Celeron M520, 1GB RAM, HDD Hitach 120 GB, VGA ATI Xpress 1100, WIFI Atheros 5x , LAN Realtek, Sound C. Realtek
OS: Win XP/FBSD 7.0

[dk_netsvil]

I manage a medium-sized ISP and my employer has granted me a solid hookup by allowing me to colocate the following in the racks:

5 of the following running my load balancers/web cluster:
IBM eServer xSeries model 330 rev 8674
Intel motherboard
2xP3-s 1.266 GHz
2x512MB PC133 RAM
2x18.2 GB SCSI in RAID1

my backup server
ECS 848P-A Motherboard
2x1GB PC133 RAM
P4 2.6 GHz
2x120 GB IDE in RAID1 - Western Digital WD1200JB
2x500 GB SATA in RAID1 - Seagate ST3500641AS
Running FreeBSD6.2

my VOIP server rocking the asterisk
custom 1U
MSI MS-6368
1xCeleron 1.403 GHz
1x256MB PC133 RAM
1x400GB Seagate IDE
Running Debian Etch

and my storage array
custom 4U
Asus NCCH-DL
2x XEON SL7TC 3.0 GHz (32-bit)
2x1GB PC3200
1x52X CD-ROM
2x1TB Samsung SATA in RAID5

at home I've just got a single workstation that I might replace with a PC-DL
Asus P5B-Deluxe
2x1GB DDR-2 800MHz
Intel dual core e6300
2x500 GB SATA
Dual Boots XP Pro and Debian Etch