Subject: What will let me know if my personal computer unit is ready 4 linux

From: "ca" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 97 02:33:08 PDT

Hello!
Hi, folks. I like to tell you that i am proud seeing all the helping hands
bringing the #Spirit of
a GNU Generation# to our beloved ARM machines. Since the early days in 1986
when the
powerfull RISC based machine, still in the same place today, more then 10
years later, it was
my hope to find a UNIX ported that remained affordable after all
devolopment and software
engineering, etc. that is needed for running that breed of OS.

Eventhough i am glad to finally found one that prossibly could bring new
live to Archi, it made
me sad it took so long, and I am not able to share the enthusiastic
programmers spirit, -cause 
i do now nothing about coding. Please could one answer me? tehse are my
questions:

1. How can everybody (especially me, cause sometimes I manage to find out
what is needed 
  to turn on a computer. Not much, uuuh?) help suppport FS-Projects that
hande UNIX ports
  free for all using Acorn AR"M based HW?

2. Is there a set of Images (fitting my low density floppy drive) for
chcking out if the A440/4	    (nearly upgraded to A5000 features) can
perform the boot process and initialize the install     procedure for any
of the freely available flavours of uni*_os for that machine.

3. Could it be that there is a similar machine already up and running unix?
Ok. Not the acorn
commercial version as long as it will not become public domain.

4. What versions are currently ported (best if known that it can be used
with the A440): FreeBSD,
    NetBSD, Linux, Minix, etc.?

5. What adress and filenames are for minimum trial run needed\(I think
DD-Disks hold 600 to 720k
    max. but the last one is only supported with add-on drivers) if there
is a set of boot disks for this
    task.

Yes! You guessed right: I want to see for myself. Is there a chance to run
a unix on my machine
and will it be fast enough (yet ARM3 equipped) to allow reliable work at
accurate speed.
Help me,if you can ,pleae+