On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 7:04 AM, Bernd Blaauw <bbla...@home.nl> wrote: > Op 26-12-2012 5:40, dmccunney schreef: > >> I have an old Fujitsu Lifebook p2110 with an 867mhz Transmeta Crusoe >> CPU and 256MB RAM (of which the Crusoe grabs 16MB off the top for code >> morphing.) > > That morphing and learning the architecture is indeed slow for a while, > possibly forever.
The CPU is quick enough. Transmeta was an early attempt at power saving for mobile devices (and notable because Linus Torvalds worked for them when they were still in stealth mode and no one knew what they were up to.) A faster CPU wouldn't get me much. Limits on the box have more to do with low RAM and slow drive.I/O. I posed around a bit when I got it looking for info, and it apparently got decent reviews when it was new. It came from Fujitsu with original WinXP, and SP2 seems to have been an after the fact addition by the original owner. I suppose that made performance a bit better, given the way Win service packs tend to increase RAM requirements. >> The big issue on the Lifebook is a slow IDE4 HD with an anemic >> transfer rate. IDE4 is a BIOS limitation, so a faster drive isn't an >> option. Big apps just load slow, aside from RAM requirements once up. >> I don't even try to run a current Firefox, as it's really sluggish on >> Linux or Windows. To the extent I browse from the box (seldom), I use >> Midori, Opera, SeaMonkey 1.X, or (if in Windows) occasionally IE (long >> enough to go to a known good site, grab something, and exit.). > > Economically probably not worthwile, but SSDs exist in various forms. > The usual SAS, SATA and PCIe (and mSATA), but also still old IDE in both > desktop (40pin) and laptop versions (44pin). Absolutely not economically worthwhile. I was given the box by a friend who upgraded, and it's mostly a "What can I do to tweak it *without* spending money" exercise. For instance, it is supposedly expandable to 384MB RAM with a 128MB RAM daughter card. You can still get that from MemoryX, but it will cost more than 4GB of DDR3 RAM for a current box. And even if I pull the IDE HD and substitute an SSD, I still have the BIOS limitation, so it's not clear things would be a lot quicker. I lose seek time and rotational latency, but still have the issue of how fast data can get into RAM. .I don't know, and am not spending the money required to find you. > I'm not sure if any NT-family Windows version is just as compatible with > old software as that Win98 is. Likely Linux with Wine comes close as well. Depends on what you're trying to run. I successfully run DOS apps in a console window on 2K. There are a few 32bit windows apps that insist on XP and won't install, but most of what I use does. I haven't had cause to try to run 16bit apps from the Win 3.X days. For the stated use case, I'd install a stripped down version of 98SE if I could get it to work as required. > Bernd ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
