Hi, (third edit, I really ramble too much) 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: >> >> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 8:40 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> I've had worse pains. I normally prefer to have each OS on its own >>> drive, but that wasn't an option here. >> >> 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 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! > 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. > 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. >>> The old box this was done on was a gift from a friend who had >>> upgraded, and it's basically a testbed to see what performance I can >>> wring out of ancient hardware *without* spending money on it. >> >> 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. ;-) >> 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). > 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. ;-) > 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. > 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 th 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). > I've used GPartEd to examine the partition, and all looks well. It's > FAT32, with the boot and LBA flagd 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. (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'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). >> 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 >> 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. B ut 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. 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