> I was just in a mood and giving you a poke. Ah, fair enough; I must remember to return the favour sometime. *grin*
> Please try a few of these things before recommending or 'betting' on them. Well, it would have been a bet based on an educated guess. I know what Linux will and won't install on; my first X install was on a 486/66 with 12MB of RAM, and that ran fvwm2 quite happily. I know the Knoppix will boot in 20MB, and I know that on a P133 machine with 40MB of RAM laden down with apache, a CVS server, FTP, mail (POP, IMAP and SMTP), DNS and the job of our fairly complex routing and NATting requirements I can run X with twm or fvwm without it sweating too much. Based on this, I'd guess that Knoppix will be OK with approximately 32MB of RAM (especially with the default framebuffer server!), and one of the light-weight window managers. > There has been an attempt to clarify this on FIDO recently. Linux users > 'testing' Knoppix for minimum installs have existing Linux swap files onboard > and Knoppix will detect this file and use it. Well, last time I tried Knoppix I had half a gig of RAM so I didn't test that, but the time before that I gave it 96MB of RAM and no hard disk (VMware on my laptop when I needed a Linux prompt quickly). As I said, I'll give it a spin in a configuration with a smaller amount of RAM and no swapfile at first. > Knoppix has a way to create a > VM swapfile on a FAT partition but as yet no one has mentioned if this will > execute at the start to aid those with no swap file and not enough memory > or this is 'after the fact' and therefore of little use to those with limited > memory. :-) I'll give that a go as well and let you know. > >BTW, I see machines with 128MB of RAM being junked routinely these days. I > >reckon within a year or so anything less than 256MB will be 'survPC' -- it's > >disgusting, but that's the unstoppable march of Progress for you. > > I guess I should get out more and peek into dumpsters huh? I wonder at times > why people 'see' this and walk away. Well, I don't take anything with me because I've no room for yet another machine (only a couple of years ago I had nine or ten random machines cluttering up a room much larger than I have here in Bristol); the exception would be if I could find anything I could use for work (Unix boxes -- older HP kit, a Sun U5 or SS20, that sort of thing -- that I can stuff in the cupboard next to my Linux box and access from my desk). To be fair, a lot of the things I see being junked are advertised on the second-hand newsgroups here -- "Free to good home or we're taking them down the scrapheap" basically. > When I was told to toss an AT&T 6300 into a dumpster I put it > in my car, got a signed letter saying it was 'salvage', and used > it for 15 years after that. Yep, I've done similar in the past -- an old PS/2 box (Model 50 I think), a pair of Elonex 286es (all three of which have died in the meantime and been junked because nobody wanted them that I could find -- perhaps someone dug them out of the local tip...), and an Amstrad PC1640 in lovely condition (I kept that one because it complements my PC1512 nicely, and because it has integrated Hercules if wanted and I have a lovely amber Herc monitor). Haven't used the 1640 since I last released an update to the GEM Desktop (August 2000 I think) and haven't needed to use an 8086 since then. Shame really. > With recent motherboards having onboard sound, video, etc. I would > guess they are being dumped when these fail and there aren't enough > slots or a way to disable the onboard functions and replace them. In > a sense these are 'junk' but they were junk when they were manufactured > IMO. I agree; my current workstation has integrated audio (thankfully the video is on a AGP card) and network (although that's a good chipset and I've added another card in the meantime quite happily), and if the audio fails I'm not sure if I can add a new card. Certainly couldn't use the integrated speaker off it, as far as I can tell. Again, a shame, but this machine will be good for years to come (dual-processor kit is *very* nice, and it's SCSI throughout too). > We _may_ have alternatives some day to use more efficient hardware if the > bloat and ineffiencies of Intel platforms becomes more obvious to everyone. > I know, overly optimistic, but I can dream? I quite agree; the ever-increasing clock speeds are evidence enough IMO. Unfortunately x86 is pretty much everywhere -- there are areas where the Unix boxes rule (the HP machines and the Sun, the IBM etc.), and some places where Apple have a foothold (graphics etc. use Macs and so the new chips -- G3, G4 I think?). Perhaps when Itanium finally surfaces it'll show 64-bit x86 is a lot more resource-intensive than, say, the UltraSPARC chips, and then we'll find people thinking twice about building Intel-based machines. Regards, Ben A L Jemmett. (http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/) To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
