Re: Old Computers

2015-06-04 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/03/2015 04:48 PM, John Hasler wrote:

Renaud writes:

Which certainly taught you the hard way to draw one (or several)
diagonal pencil or ink lines across the top of your card deck...

Or to number your cards so that you could simply run a scrambled deck
through the card sorter.


That's cheatingyou have to hand sort those things!!


--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-04 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/03/2015 09:55 AM, Mike McClain wrote:

On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 07:04:13PM -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

And I will probably not use these system(s) on line much if any at
all.  So most of the security issues will fixed or not will not
really be a problem in this situation.

I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure
appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy
when I actually have the systems in hand.
--
JM

If you need linux on a 386 that's where I started with DosLinux.
I still have a copy if you're interested. As I recall no Xwindows just
command line.
Mike
--
Why fit in when you can stand out?
 - Dr. Seuss
I may take you up on that, depending on what I end up with. Hopefully, 
I'll have at least one motherboard with a pentium class chipset.  But, 
still, it might be interesting to get even the older ones up, just for 
laughs.






--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-04 Thread Ric Moore

On 06/04/2015 05:44 PM, Jose Martinez wrote:



On 06/03/2015 09:55 AM, Mike McClain wrote:

On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 07:04:13PM -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

And I will probably not use these system(s) on line much if any at
all.  So most of the security issues will fixed or not will not
really be a problem in this situation.

I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure
appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy
when I actually have the systems in hand.
--
JM

If you need linux on a 386 that's where I started with DosLinux.
I still have a copy if you're interested. As I recall no Xwindows just
command line.
Mike
--
Why fit in when you can stand out?
 - Dr. Seuss

I may take you up on that, depending on what I end up with. Hopefully,
I'll have at least one motherboard with a pentium class chipset.  But,
still, it might be interesting to get even the older ones up, just for
laughs.


Just for ducks I installed Caldera to an older machine. It was pitiful 
to watch Netscape Navigator try to update itself. :( Ric




--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome. R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/03/2015 05:30 AM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 19:04 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure
appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy when I
actually have the systems in hand.

You could always try mining Bitcoin:
http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-ibm-1401.html

But I guess none of your systems are quite as old? ;)

Oh, Man, Holerith (It's been so long I'm not sure how to spell it 
anymore)...I learned to type on an IBM keypunch machine punching 80 
column cards full of data for some statistical analysis (wrote the 
analysis proceedures in SPSS, too).  Those were the days:-D



--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Ron
0C7 and 0CB compile errors anyone ?
 
Cheers,
 
Ron.
-- 
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they come to fight you, and then you win.
 -- Gandhi

   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
 


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RE: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Larry Owens


-Original Message-
From: Jose Martinez [mailto:jomartinez...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2015 12:51 PM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Old Computers



On 06/03/2015 05:30 AM, Sven Arvidsson wrote:
 On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 19:04 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
 I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure 
 appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy when 
 I actually have the systems in hand.
 You could always try mining Bitcoin:
 http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-ibm-1401.h
 tml

 But I guess none of your systems are quite as old? ;)

Oh, Man, Holerith (It's been so long I'm not sure how to spell it anymore)...I 
learned to type on an IBM keypunch machine punching 80 column cards full of 
data for some statistical analysis (wrote the analysis proceedures in SPSS, 
too).  Those were the days:-D

And do you remember carrying your punched card deck from the keypunch room to 
the data center--and have someone bump into you and spill the cards on the 
floor?
Larry
--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Bob Proulx
Jose Martinez wrote:
 Marc Shapiro wrote:
  Jose Martinez wrote:
   Yeah, there's nothing like making an antique useful.  I remember the
   days of the PDP-11 running *nixWhat I wouldn't give to come up with
   one of those old things!!
 
  My first programming class, back in 1976 was on a PDP-11.  Those were the
  days.  Bootstrap with physical toggle switches on the box to enter the
  binary code.
 
 Boy do I remember those toggle switches!!!  A few years back, I built a Z-80
 based toy, and that was one of things I wanted t have...Toggle switches and
 lights on the front panel!  Made it work too.

Put that PDP 11 experience to work!  Here is a recent job posting for
a PDP 11 Software Designer for a nuclear power plant.  Some things
never go out of style!  Especially when working at a nuclear power
plant.  Hope they will have 500 years worth of spare parts.

  https://ca.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/28135735
  January 20, 2015
  Job description
  Design of new PDP-11 assembly level software as well as the
  extension of existing automated control systems to accommodate new
  functionality.
  ...

Bob


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/02/2015 11:45 PM, Marc Shapiro wrote:

On 06/02/2015 08:11 PM, Jose Martinez wrote:



On 06/02/2015 10:08 PM, Celejar wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 16:46:17 +0100
Lisi Reisz lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:


On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run
Squeeze. Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)

I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!)
when it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage 
computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

Lisi

  How about Tiny Core Linux

http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req

Needs i486. :-(

Ah, nostalgia. I learned linux using BasicLinux, which is still around,
and will apparently run on a 386:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BasicLinux

I still remember that incredible feeling, some many years ago, when I
put the floppy into a Windows box, rebooted, insmod'd the relevant
ethernet driver module, brought the network up, and had an actual
working networked *nix terminal ;)

Yeah, there's nothing like making an antique useful.  I remember the 
days of the PDP-11 running *nixWhat I wouldn't give to come up 
with one of those old things!!



Lisi

Celejar




My first programming class, back in 1976 was on a PDP-11.  Those were 
the days.  Bootstrap with physical toggle switches on the box to enter 
the binary code.


Marc


Boy do I remember those toggle switches!!!  A few years back, I built a 
Z-80 based toy, and that was one of things I wanted t have...Toggle 
switches and lights on the front panel!  Made it work too.




--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Ron
On Wed, 3 Jun 2015 13:08:44 -0700
Larry Owens ow...@netptc.net wrote:

 And do you remember carrying your punched card deck from the keypunch room to 
 the data center--and have someone bump into you and spill the cards on the 
 floor?

Which certainly taught you the hard way to draw one (or several) diagonal 
pencil or ink lines across the top of your card deck...
 
Cheers,
 
Ron.
-- 
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they come to fight you, and then you win.
 -- Gandhi

   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
 


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Mike McClain
On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 07:04:13PM -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
 And I will probably not use these system(s) on line much if any at
 all.  So most of the security issues will fixed or not will not
 really be a problem in this situation.

 I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure
 appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy
 when I actually have the systems in hand.
 --
 JM

If you need linux on a 386 that's where I started with DosLinux.
I still have a copy if you're interested. As I recall no Xwindows just
command line.
Mike
--
Why fit in when you can stand out?
- Dr. Seuss


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread John Hasler
Renaud writes:
 Which certainly taught you the hard way to draw one (or several)
 diagonal pencil or ink lines across the top of your card deck...

Or to number your cards so that you could simply run a scrambled deck
through the card sorter.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-03 Thread Sven Arvidsson
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 19:04 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
 I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure 
 appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy when I 
 actually have the systems in hand.

You could always try mining Bitcoin:
http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-ibm-1401.html

But I guess none of your systems are quite as old? ;)

-- 
Cheers,
Sven Arvidsson
http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5




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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Rick Thomas

On Jun 1, 2015, at 5:56 PM, Jose Martinez jomartinez...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey guys,
 I'm about to be blessed with several old PC computers.  By old I mean that 
 some of them will not even have CDROM drives on them.  I will probably tear 
 them all down, mix-and-match parts and make the best system(s) I can from 
 those parts.  This is something I've done before, so the technical aspects 
 are not a problem.  I expect to use the resulting system(s) solely for play 
 purposes to experiment with and delve into the depths of the system 
 programming primarily for educational purposes.  If any of you remember 
 Scotty from the original Star Trek series and how he spent his off/vacation 
 time pouring over tech manuals and playing with gadgets, well that's me!
 
 The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems? If not, 
 can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that the processors on 
 at least one of them will be at least i386 or better, so I also expect that 
 jessie will install and run, but that my main problem will be with drivers 
 for the legacy peripherals.
 
 I just can't find it within me to throw out what is, other than being old, a 
 good usable computer system.
 
 I appreciate any information y'all can send my way.

Welcome to the club, Jose!   I do the same sort of thing for old Macintosh 
PowerPC machines.  It’s actually kind of fun… (for certain definitions of “fun” 
 -: )

You may find a distro targeted at so called “embedded” computers that will run 
on your hardware.  Do a Google search for “debian linux embedded x86”.   That 
seems to have some useful pointers.

Top of the list is “emdebian”.  The Emdebian page says:

 Embedded_Debian
 
 Change of status
 As of July 2014, Emdebian Grip stopped receiving updates to the unstable-grip 
 distribution. Updates to the jessie-grip suite stopped some months before 
 that. The last stable release of Emdebian Grip was 3.1 based on Debian 
 GNU/Linux 7.1 Wheezy. 
 There will be no further updates of Emdebian Grip. 
 This information is retained for historical purposes but can be removed when 
 wheezy is finally removed from the Debian mirrors (which will happen at some 
 point before the next stable release after Debian Jessie 8.0).

So you can at least get a version of Wheezy that might work on your hardware.  
Jessie looks to be not in the cards.  I guess porting Systemd to minimal 
hardware was just too hard…  )-:

A little further down the list is Voyage Linux, which is a Debian derivative.  
I’ve used Voyage.  Some of the things they do to make it fit in a very small 
footprint are quite creative!  I learned a lot when I was doing that work.

Good luck, and have lots of fun!

Rick

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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Ron
 I'm about to be blessed with several old PC computers.  By old I mean that 
 some of them will not even have CDROM drives on them.

Dont throw them away before considering that some may be given a second life, 
as dedicated firewall boxes, using  the IPCop or IPFire distributions.
 
Cheers,
 
Ron.
-- 
 Toute institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon,
  et le magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse.
   -- Maximilien Robespierre

   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
 


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Doug



On 06/02/2015 02:01 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 06/02/2015 11:07 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.
Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)


I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!) when
it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)


I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall



Geoworks!! It ought to fly on a 486! Ric




Apparently you have to have DOS to run GeoWorks. I see instructions for 
installing on
DosBox, but that implies that you have a running Linux!Also, something I read 
on one
of the sites I just looked up indicates that the video is going to be kinda 
crude.
I will be interested in seeing if anyone follows up on this!

--doug


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Ric Moore

On 06/02/2015 11:07 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.
Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)


I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!) when
it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)


I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall



Geoworks!! It ought to fly on a 486! Ric



--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome. R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/02/2015 12:41 PM, Gary Dale wrote:

On 02/06/15 12:49 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 17:37:01 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

I was thinking more along the lines of really old Debian releases,
something that would be contemporary with the hardware.
In view of the kernel problem, you are obviously right.  But in 
general, I

would rather use something that is security updated.  So I was trying to
think of other possibilities.

Lisi
On the other hand, the old releases were updated for all the security 
problems known at the time. They may well be immune to newer issues 
introduced after the release became unsupported and there may be few 
people trying attacks that haven't worked on atypical computers in 
over a decade.


And I will probably not use these system(s) on line much if any at all.  
So most of the security issues will fixed or not will not really be a 
problem in this situation.


I see I've sparked a pretty good discussion on the list.  I sure 
appreciate all the advice/information it will come in very handy when I 
actually have the systems in hand.



--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Celejar
On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 16:46:17 +0100
Lisi Reisz lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:
  On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
   On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:
On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
 Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run
 Squeeze. Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)
   
I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!)
when it comes to ram and disk space.
   
But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)
  
   I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
   http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
   http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
  
   Lisi
 
   How about Tiny Core Linux
 
  http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req
 
 Needs i486. :-(

Ah, nostalgia. I learned linux using BasicLinux, which is still around,
and will apparently run on a 386:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BasicLinux

I still remember that incredible feeling, some many years ago, when I
put the floppy into a Windows box, rebooted, insmod'd the relevant
ethernet driver module, brought the network up, and had an actual
working networked *nix terminal ;)

 Lisi

Celejar


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/02/2015 10:08 PM, Celejar wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 16:46:17 +0100
Lisi Reisz lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:


On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run
Squeeze. Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)

I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!)
when it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

Lisi

  How about Tiny Core Linux

http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req

Needs i486. :-(

Ah, nostalgia. I learned linux using BasicLinux, which is still around,
and will apparently run on a 386:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BasicLinux

I still remember that incredible feeling, some many years ago, when I
put the floppy into a Windows box, rebooted, insmod'd the relevant
ethernet driver module, brought the network up, and had an actual
working networked *nix terminal ;)

Yeah, there's nothing like making an antique useful.  I remember the 
days of the PDP-11 running *nixWhat I wouldn't give to come up with 
one of those old things!!



Lisi

Celejar




--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Marc Shapiro

On 06/02/2015 08:11 PM, Jose Martinez wrote:



On 06/02/2015 10:08 PM, Celejar wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 16:46:17 +0100
Lisi Reisz lisi.re...@gmail.com wrote:


On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:

Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run
Squeeze. Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)

I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!)
when it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage 
computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

Lisi

  How about Tiny Core Linux

http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req

Needs i486. :-(

Ah, nostalgia. I learned linux using BasicLinux, which is still around,
and will apparently run on a 386:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BasicLinux

I still remember that incredible feeling, some many years ago, when I
put the floppy into a Windows box, rebooted, insmod'd the relevant
ethernet driver module, brought the network up, and had an actual
working networked *nix terminal ;)

Yeah, there's nothing like making an antique useful.  I remember the 
days of the PDP-11 running *nixWhat I wouldn't give to come up 
with one of those old things!!



Lisi

Celejar




My first programming class, back in 1976 was on a PDP-11.  Those were 
the days.  Bootstrap with physical toggle switches on the box to enter 
the binary code.


Marc


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Sven Arvidsson
On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
 Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.  
 Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)

I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!) when
it comes to ram and disk space.

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)

-- 
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http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5




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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Wilko Fokken
On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 08:32:01AM +0200, Petter Adsen wrote:
 ... 
 Look around and see if you can find a copy of fvwm 1.24r - I ran that
 for years on a 386 with little RAM without any problems. Version 2 is a
 little heavier, but you can compile it yourself and leave out options
 you don't need, like pixmap support for the titlebars etc.
 
 Petter
 
I still use icewm as my favorite window manager (no gnome).

(Though I installed xfce4, too, I hardly ever use that WM,
 since I don't like those tiring mouse operations
 as xfce4 offers but limited key handling.)


Install:
 packages: icewm, icewm-common

Drawback:
you have to edit the config files in /etc/icewm/* to your taste:

 menu
 preferences
 programs
 toolbar

(After this is done, your individual configuration will hardly need
 another touch, if you saved your altered files for system updates.)

To start icewm,
have /etc/xinit/xinitrc execute two commands:

 exec /etc/profile
 exec icewm-session

To limit boot to text mode, 
disable any display manager files: xdm, gdm .. in /etc/init.d,
 
start X via startx


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Lisi Reisz
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:
 On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
  Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.
  Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)

 I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!) when
 it comes to ram and disk space.

 But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

Lisi


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread lostson
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
 On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:
  On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
   Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.
   Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)
 
  I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!) when
  it comes to ram and disk space.
 
  But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)
 
 I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
 http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
 http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
 
 Lisi
 
 
 How about Tiny Core Linux 

http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req

LostSon




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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Lisi Reisz
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:
 On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
  On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:
   On Mon, 2015-06-01 at 21:14 -0500, Jose Martinez wrote:
Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run
Squeeze. Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)
  
   I think even squeeze would be a challenge (maybe a fun one though!)
   when it comes to ram and disk space.
  
   But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)
 
  I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
  http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
  http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
 
  Lisi

  How about Tiny Core Linux

 http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req

Needs i486. :-(

Lisi


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RE: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Arno Schuring

 From: lisi.re...@gmail.com
 Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2015 16:46:17 +0100
 On Tuesday 02 June 2015 16:28:30 lostson wrote:
 On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
 On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:55:51 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

 I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
 http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
 http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

 Lisi

  How about Tiny Core Linux

 http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#req
 
 Needs i486. :-(
 

The Linux kernel itself requires 486, it doesn't build for 386
anymore.

IIRC it's because it uses the CMPXCHG instruction to
implement locking, and that instruction isn't available on 80386.


Regards,
Arno

  

Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Sven Arvidsson
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
  But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)
 
 I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
 http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
 http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

I was thinking more along the lines of really old Debian releases,
something that would be contemporary with the hardware.

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http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5




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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Lisi Reisz
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 17:37:01 Sven Arvidsson wrote:
 On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
   But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)
 
  I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
  http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
  http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

 I was thinking more along the lines of really old Debian releases,
 something that would be contemporary with the hardware.

In view of the kernel problem, you are obviously right.  But in general, I 
would rather use something that is security updated.  So I was trying to 
think of other possibilities.

Lisi


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Gary Dale

On 02/06/15 12:49 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 02 June 2015 17:37:01 Sven Arvidsson wrote:

On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:07 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

But there's always vintage operating systems for vintage computers :)

I thought of DSL.  But it needs an i486. :-(
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

I was thinking more along the lines of really old Debian releases,
something that would be contemporary with the hardware.

In view of the kernel problem, you are obviously right.  But in general, I
would rather use something that is security updated.  So I was trying to
think of other possibilities.

Lisi
On the other hand, the old releases were updated for all the security 
problems known at the time. They may well be immune to newer issues 
introduced after the release became unsupported and there may be few 
people trying attacks that haven't worked on atypical computers in over 
a decade.



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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-02 Thread Petter Adsen
On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 23:39:15 -0400
Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote:

 On 01/06/15 10:10 PM, Martin Read wrote:
  On 02/06/15 01:56, Jose Martinez wrote:
  The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems?
  If not, can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that
  the processors on at least one of them will be at least i386 or
  better, so I also expect that jessie will install and run, but
  that my main problem will be with drivers for the legacy
  peripherals.
 
  https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en says:
 
  However, Debian GNU/Linux jessie will not run on 486 or earlier 
  processors. Despite the architecture name i386, support for
  actual 80386 and 80486 processors (and their clones) was dropped
  with the Sarge (r3.1) and Squeeze (r6.0) releases of Debian,
  respectively. The Intel Pentium and clones, including those without
  an FPU (Floating-Point Unit or math coprocessor), are supported.
  The Intel Quark is not supported, due to hardware errata. 
 
 
 Where you will also find problems is with various distros that 
 supposedly support Pentiums but that require PAE, which is missing
 from a lot of them.
 
 Another huge issue is finding a windowing system that will be 
 lightweight enough to run in the memory older Pentium-based computers 
 are likely to support.

Look around and see if you can find a copy of fvwm 1.24r - I ran that
for years on a 386 with little RAM without any problems. Version 2 is a
little heavier, but you can compile it yourself and leave out options
you don't need, like pixmap support for the titlebars etc.

Petter

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I'm positive.


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-01 Thread Jose Martinez



On 06/01/2015 09:10 PM, Martin Read wrote:

On 02/06/15 01:56, Jose Martinez wrote:

The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems? If
not, can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that the
processors on at least one of them will be at least i386 or better, so I
also expect that jessie will install and run, but that my main problem
will be with drivers for the legacy peripherals.


https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en says:

However, Debian GNU/Linux jessie will not run on 486 or earlier 
processors. Despite the architecture name i386, support for actual 
80386 and 80486 processors (and their clones) was dropped with the 
Sarge (r3.1) and Squeeze (r6.0) releases of Debian, respectively. The 
Intel Pentium and clones, including those without an FPU 
(Floating-Point Unit or math coprocessor), are supported. The Intel 
Quark is not supported, due to hardware errata. 



Hmm, that is a little disappointing.  But, I can probably run Squeeze.  
Nothing like stone knives and bear skins!:-)


--
JM


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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-01 Thread Gary Dale

On 01/06/15 10:10 PM, Martin Read wrote:

On 02/06/15 01:56, Jose Martinez wrote:

The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems? If
not, can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that the
processors on at least one of them will be at least i386 or better, so I
also expect that jessie will install and run, but that my main problem
will be with drivers for the legacy peripherals.


https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en says:

However, Debian GNU/Linux jessie will not run on 486 or earlier 
processors. Despite the architecture name i386, support for actual 
80386 and 80486 processors (and their clones) was dropped with the 
Sarge (r3.1) and Squeeze (r6.0) releases of Debian, respectively. The 
Intel Pentium and clones, including those without an FPU 
(Floating-Point Unit or math coprocessor), are supported. The Intel 
Quark is not supported, due to hardware errata. 



Where you will also find problems is with various distros that 
supposedly support Pentiums but that require PAE, which is missing from 
a lot of them.


Another huge issue is finding a windowing system that will be 
lightweight enough to run in the memory older Pentium-based computers 
are likely to support.


Debian is good starting point but you may want to start with as minimal 
an install as possible and only add things as you need them.



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Re: Old Computers

2015-06-01 Thread Martin Read

On 02/06/15 01:56, Jose Martinez wrote:

The question is, will jessie install and run on these old systems? If
not, can I still get a debian distro that will?  I expect that the
processors on at least one of them will be at least i386 or better, so I
also expect that jessie will install and run, but that my main problem
will be with drivers for the legacy peripherals.


https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en says:

However, Debian GNU/Linux jessie will not run on 486 or earlier 
processors. Despite the architecture name i386, support for actual 
80386 and 80486 processors (and their clones) was dropped with the Sarge 
(r3.1) and Squeeze (r6.0) releases of Debian, respectively. The Intel 
Pentium and clones, including those without an FPU (Floating-Point Unit 
or math coprocessor), are supported. The Intel Quark is not supported, 
due to hardware errata. 



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