On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > (third edit, I really ramble too much)
You aren't alone. > On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:36 AM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:42 AM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> VirtualBox would be easier, but your cpu may not support VT-X, sadly. >>> Without that, some stuff doesn't work, and it can be quite slow. (This >>> laptop lacks it.) >> >> The box has an 867mhz Transmeta CPU, a 40GB IDE4 HD, and a whole 256MB >> of RAM, of which the CPU takes 16MB off the top for code morphing. >> The max RAM is will take is 384MB, and a daughtercard to add the >> additional 128MB would cost more than 8GB or DDR2 RAM for a current >> box. > > Awesome cpu, I remember you mentioning it. Sounds very interesting, so Transmeta was an early entry in the low power for the mobile space sweepstakes. They were mostly notable for the fact that Linus Torvalds worked there when they were still in stealth mode. The Transmeta is X86 compatible, and apparently does use less power. But as other players started efforts to lower power requirements, Transmeta couldn't survive. From my point of view, the main factor is that it grabs 16MB of RAM, and I haven't a lot to begin with. > indeed enjoy that gem. But yeah, 256 MB isn't much (though I was > running XP in 128 MB, barely ... used Opera, not Firefox, primarily > focused on DOS stuff, heheh). I don't blame you for not upgrading, but > indeed stupid Linux distros (and Windows Vista, 7) always want more > more more! The machine came to me with XP SP2, and the donor said it was "slow slow slow" XP SP2 in 256MB? No surprise. It wants 512MB minimum. It shipped from Fujitsu with SP1, I think, and the SP2 was a user upgrade. I went looking for things that would use less RAM, which is why 2K is there. A clean re-install, even after upgrading to SP4, is slow but usable for the limited stuff I need Windows for. >> Low RAM and slow HD = limited performance. A faster HD isn't an >> option, because IDE4 is a BIOS limitation. I use ext4 file systems to >> get the best I/O I can, Smaller apps are better, as load times can be >> significant. Firefox, for example, takes about 45 seconds to >> load/initialize, with a minimal config. (it takes a tenth of that on >> my desktop.) > > Firefox has its own issues, so a lot of that loading is its fault, not > yours, though admittedly lack of RAM has a part. Opera loads about twice as fast. The difference seems to be that FF is a small executable linking to a number of shared libs, while Opera is a big executable linking to one small shared lib, so I get killed by I/O. Opera can load mostly in one continuing read, while FF must do lots of seeks. It's one reason I went ext4. Another issue with the box is that browsing is slow, even with a wired connection using IE 6 in 2K. I'm using the Win drivers all around, but the limitation seems to be on a machine level. To the extent that I browse from it, I use Midori as a decent compromise on size vs function. >> Something like VirtualBox is right out. The machine simply doesn't >> have the horsepower to run it effectively. > > Well, emulation typically takes 10x the time, which is why DOSBox is > slow (and worse on 64-bit!). But hey, if it works (not always), it > works! Slow is better than nothing. At least the packet driver > emulation works in VirtualBox, presumably even without VT-X. I successfully used DOSEmu to run a DOS app or two under Linux, like VDE, but found going native and booting DOS to begin with on the box in question a better bet. >>> Nothing wrong with using old hardware. It doesn't magically stop being >>> useful. But some people didn't get the memo! >> >> The trick is seeing what it will usefully do. > > Depends on your definition of "useful". Some people (rightly, IMHO) > think the original IBM PC 5150 8088 4.77 Mhz is still useful. ;-) There was a chap on the Puppy forums detailing how he got a working Puppy image that would run in *16MB* of RAM. He basically had to strip out everything that *could* be stripped out, then build the image on a bigger machine with more RAM and transplant the drive to the target. He was using it as a dedicated controller doing one thing, so it worked. >>> I'm not sure I see the point of having Ubuntu and Puppy, esp. since >>> some Puppy variants are "mostly" Ubuntu-compatible (like mine). >> >> The first one I installed was Puppy, which I found when I sent looking >> for a distro suitable for older hardware. (I have 4.31 at the >> moment.) It works well enough, but it's quirky, > > I think I used to run that version but ended up upgrading it due to > various unfixable bugs and lacks. But yeah, older Puppy ran in much > less RAM (though it's not too too bad now but presumably too much for > you). The bugs didn't for the most part bite me, but the quirks were a bit much. >> and the "always run as root" model gives me hives. Puppy gets >> away with it because it's an explicitly singe-user system, where >> many of the inherent problems don't bite, but I still don't care for it, >> and don't understand why that design decision was made in the >> first place. A Puppy user laboriously put multi-user support back >> in, but it's specific to an older Puppy version. > > If you're the only one using the computer at home for personal use > (e.g. me), I agree it doesn't matter. I just set a default root > password, never use "rm -rf", enable the firewall, etc. (And I'm way > dumber than you here.) You could also do "alias rm='rm -i' " if really > worried. Other than that, I'm not sure it matters. It's not a nuclear > power plant, is it? So nothing bad will happen. ;-) Once I recalled that MS-DOS and Windows through Vista had the "logged in user is administrator with all powers" model, it got a bit easier to take. But I started using *nix with AT&T System V before Linux was a gleam in Linus's eye, and I've been an admin on multi-user machines where I've spent time locking things down so people *couldn't* become root and step on someone else's toes, so I never became comfortable with the idea. I *prefer* to run as a normal user and use sudo when I must do something that requires root powers. >> I tried Xubuntu, but it was snail slow. Posters on the Ubuntu forums >> suggested too much Gnome had crept in, and thet Ubuntu had a steadily >> increasing idea of what "low end" was. They suggested I install from >> the Minimal CD to get a CLI install, then use apt-get to install the >> parts I wanted. I wanted to redo Puppy, too, so I wiped both >> partitions, redid them as ext4, and installed Puppy 4.31 and Ubuntu >> with XFCE as window manager. Ubuntu installed that way wasn't as >> sprightly as Puppy, but was usable. > > I'm surprised Ubuntu was usable at all, it's targeted at ultra-modern > cpus. It sucks that there is no *reliable* lightweight distro and > that, frankly, nobody cares for old machines anymore. It was roughly the same level of Linux kernel. Stripping out the Gnome stuff helped a *lot*. It wasn't *quite* as sprightly as Puppy, where small size is a priority, but it was quick enough to be usable. >> Ubuntu has package management Puppy only dreams of, and I don't spend >> time chasing dependencies. Since each mounts the other's slice, I can >> access a lot of the stuff installed on the Ubuntu side from Puppy, and >> vice-versa. > > Yeah, Ubuntu has better support, esp. since it's so close to Debian > anyways. This is why Lucid Puppy(s) are meant to be compatible, but > even they aren't very slim anymore (or at least, not as much as I'd > like in RAM footprint). What sort of RAM do they take? >> I've used GPartEd to examine the partition, and all looks well. It's >> FAT32, with the boot and LBA flags set. The file system is fine, and >> I can see it/run stuff from in from 2K. >> >> I made a FreeDOS floppy I can boot from. That sees the FAT32 slice as >> C:, and I used he latest SYS to put the latest (2040) FAT32 kernel in >> place. > > Check some of the SYS.COM options, perhaps it put the wrong boot > sector in there somehow. But honestly, it's probably GRUB being > confused. I wish I could help more, but I can't. Not to worry. > (You know Windows > dudes can remote connect and control your PC to fix stuff. I wish > someone could do that here for you. Surely it can't be THAT hard to > fix this!) I've *been* a Windows dude remoting into user's boxes to fix PCs. What bothers me is mostly that it *used* to work and now doesn't, and I don't know *why*. I did an upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10, which I think may be the root problem. > I'm not very familiar with Gujin, but for some reason I think you > could use GRUB 2 to chainload Gujin which will then magically find > FreeDOS for you. I dunno, but it's worth a look (maybe). I'll look out of curiosity. >>> Presumably it's some tricky setting in GRUB as MBRs and partitions are >>> very arcane. But who knows, maybe you'll get lucky. >> >> I suspect that's what it will come to. As mentioned, I had to fiddle >> to get FreeDOS to boot the first time. I just don't remember what >> fiddle made it work. > > Read this: > > http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2008/12/booting-freedos-with-grub.html Yeah, saw that. Looks like it's Grub 1 specific. In particular title FreeDOS uuid 1abf-24ac makeactive chainloader +1 boot makeactive is not supported in Grub2, boot does nothing, and the syntax using uuid to locate the device is different. >>> Worst case scenario: you could burn a backup CD / DVD with all your >>> files and start from scratch. Better than nothing. Sorry if I can't >>> help more, it's complicated. :-/ >> >> I'd just copy the stuff I wanted to preserve to the Win2K slice from >> Win2K. But I'm not quite frustrated enough to do that yet. > > Computers are so dumb. It shouldn't be this complicated, but > admittedly, you (and I) are going "beyond" average use by > multi-booting. It's rapidly becoming less complicated. But at the cost of faster, more powerful, and more expensive hardware. I knew what I was in for when I first started playing with the old box. ______ Dennis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write once. Port to many. 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