How low can you go?

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: How low can you go?
started by: JohnD

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 15 2006,03:42

Hi folks,

I just finished installing DSL Linux on my tired IBM Thinkpad 365 XD. I have the following system: Pentium II 119 Mhz CPU, 21 MB memory, VGA 80x25, 813 MB HD. That's a pretty minimal system and Windows 98 was choking it to death. The Thinkpad was ready for the trash bin, but now she is cruising along beautifully with DSL Linux. Using the LiveCD it really was too slow, but once I dumped windows and installed DSL the speed became fine again. I don't intend to load down the laptop with much more than what DSL has to keep the load light, and hopefully she'll give me a few more years of service. THANKS for a great program! Anybody working any lower like 486 or 386 machines? I'd love to know just how far we can get this puppy going!

Posted by John on Jan. 15 2006,03:53

Hey John, you may want to check this out:
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/486.html >

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 16 2006,17:58

That is really amazing!

Posted by Crustyrusty on Jan. 20 2006,03:09

Got DSL running on an NEC Versa 6050MH with a Pentium 150MMX and 48MB (it even runs the wireless card), and a Packard Bell Pentium 60 with 32MB. Sweet. I'm working on fixing a 486 DX-4 with 16 MB and seeing how it runs there.

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 20 2006,03:51

Man, is that cool, or what! Keep us posted as to what happens with the 486, I'd love to know. This program can save tons of old but still useful machines!

Posted by Crustyrusty on Jan. 25 2006,01:38

Oh well, this is what I get for messing with 10 year old hardware. All kinds of hardware death happening, especially when she went from 16 to 8MB in one fell swoop. I might get curious to see if I can get her going on 8MB but I doubt it. I forgot how much I hated to work on AT boxes back in the day....

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 25 2006,02:18

My AT box looked like a mess when I finished up with it, holes cut in the back for new motherboards, stuff like that. I went from the original AT 286 to a 386 and then a 486 motherboard before it got passed on. I had a lot of fun with it. For some reason I just could not get DSL Linux onto the hard drive of the Pentium 600, but was able to load in Red Hat Linux with a dual boot system OK. I use DSL on a floppy boot and CD ROM if I want to try it there, although it installed fine on my laptop.

It's fun to experiment, my daughter said my study is beginning to look like the Bat Cave!

Posted by Crustyrusty on Jan. 25 2006,04:53

Yeah my house looks like a flea market right now. I have 5 boxes in various stages of assembly here. 4 of them belong to my kids and were all networked. Then came the divorce and the ex is hardware impaired, so now I have them all here for repair. Sigh....

I got rid of my 286 and 386 machines a long time ago. My ex father in law has an old Tandy XT laying around. I wonder...? :cool:

Posted by davide on Jan. 25 2006,09:45

JohnD wrote

Quote

I don't intend to load down the laptop with much more than what DSL has to keep the load light, and hopefully she'll give me a few more years of service.

well John, DSl isnt'l like winblows (tyhe more programs you put in, the more you mess up your OS and slow the HW). you can have all software you want as a .dsl or .uci (better for old hw) and load them whenever you need them. or keep them loaded at startup, if you want to. there are many ways to store them, but the essence of the story is that you can store them without worrying about the system to mess up. cheer up!

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 25 2006,15:32

Thanks guys,

It really is amazing how much there is in the packages. I am VERY impressed on how these LINUX packages check out your hardware and correctly find everything in your computer. Frankly, the only reason I am hanging onto Windblows is that there are a few programs that I use extensively that are only available in Windows format. Should that change, I would have no problem in replacing Windows entirely. I got into Red Hat Linux by getting a book from my local library that had the Red Hat disks included so that I could install it. It's an old version, so I plan to replace it with the latest version of Red Hat Fedora Core. DSL is still my favorite for a great looking tight package that has an amazing amout of power.:D

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 25 2006,18:29

The lowest I have gone, RAM-wise, is 12MB of RAM and that's with the super-low-ram-cheatcode-list that is posted in the Cheatcodes section of the wiki.

Posted by neutral_insomniac on Jan. 26 2006,05:26

I have successfully installed dsl (with graphics) in full-install mode on a Versa 486 50MHz laptop with 20MB of ram and a 500MB hard drive. I use it for nethack, text-based web browsing, and I even managed to get Xephem up and running on it. It only takes about five minutes to boot completely and about the same amount of time to install (not download) apt-get packages. The thing is a beast! Way to go DSL!!!

Posted by _pathos on Jan. 26 2006,08:15

I've got a 100mhz 22mg toshiba satellite sitting right next to me. Works fine but a little slow. I never used the base option tho.

Posted by JohnD on Jan. 26 2006,13:50

Wow,

I think that 486 with 22 megs of ram REALLY shows us how DSL can bring alive computers long thought to be unusagle any longer. People could pull them out of the basement or garage, pop in DSL and even donate them somewhere. Amazing.:D

Posted by GuillaumeH on Jan. 26 2006,15:49

I know how low DSL can _not_ go, because I've tried it after a HD install on a 486 laptop with 4 MB RAM and it could not boot because it could not spawn the tty... then i've tried it in a qemu with 8 MB of ram and it booted in it (after a hard drive install done with more ram).

Posted by homero on Feb. 10 2006,22:44

I've just tried everything to get DSL installed on my old IBM 486 computer with 16Mb of RAM and 524Mb HDD, and I'm starting to think that, though I've almost finished, maybe I'll quit.

My PC doesn't have CD Drive so I copied the image of Knoppix via LL3 from my P4 PC to the IBM, I did create the Floppy Boot Image too, but this one refuses to boot, so I installed the Hard Disk in my P4 PC as Master and booted to DSL from my DVD, ran a failsafe boot and I used the Apps > Tools > Install to Hard Disk option and installed the LILO 22.5.7.2 Bot Menu.

When the system asked me to reboot, I turned off my PC and installed the HDD onto my IBM PC, tried to boot (just ENTER) but I got these 4 last lines:

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block -major -22, errno = 2
VFS: Cannot open root device "1601" or 16:01
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 16:01

Well, I have reinstalled DSL to the IBM's HDD on my P4 PC twice, one with Grub and the last with LILO.

LILO booted, but no matter what cheatcode I used, the DSL always halt on the same place.

The longest boot command line was:

dsl 1 vga=normal noatapicd noideraid nosound noapic acp=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce noddc fromhd=/dev/hda1 mem=16M expert failsafe lowram

As you can see, I just put all the meat on the grill.

I have tried every combination of commands and it's useless.

I noticed that I cannot use "expert" or "failsafe" command alone I have to write "dsl" first but this override the command and try to boot as normal.

Anyway, I'm a Linux newbie (on any flavor), but what I read on the last 4 lines make me think first in a memory frame problem (maybe) or with the HDD partition.

How can I partition the HDD before install the DSL inside DSL?

What I did was:

I booted with my Windows ME Disk 1 (in order to have CD drive access)
I used the Partition Magic 4 to delete the original Win98SE -FAT32- partition and made a Linux Ext2 Partition of 396Mb and a Linux Swap Partition of 128Mb
Then I booted with DSL in Failsafe mode and installed DSL to the HDD (When the install process ask me the target partition it didn't accept me "hda2" or "hda1" I have to write "hdc1". What do you think on that?)

By the way, I have made other 2 Live CD's. One with Knoppix and the other with Puppy Linux (which I couldn't configure to work with my DSL modem, which I did quickly with DSL and Knoppix)

Any idea?

Posted by JohnD on Feb. 11 2006,02:59

I'm sorry, I wish I could help you, but I am lost on what you are trying to do without a CD ROM drive. Do you have any friends with a CD ROM drive laying around that you could try using to install DSL? I really think that without that drive you are climbing up too steep a mountain.:(

Posted by homero on Feb. 13 2006,22:16

You have to consider that this IBM doesn't boot from a CD-ROM (BIOS options: FDD, HDD or Network). Even if it can (using a boot floppy), what difference it makes? The system it's already on the HDD, the first boot of DSL was on the IBM machine, so why do I need the CD for?

Posted by skaos on Feb. 14 2006,10:54

You can partition the disk from DSL with: cfdisk /dev/hdc (or /dev/hda)
I don't think you need a 128 MB swap partition, it should be ok with 64 (or maybe even 32).
You could try to boot with this: dsl root=/dev/hdc1 ro
BTW, /dev/hdc is the secondary master and when you put it into the ibm it will most likely be primary master (dev/hda) which may explain the error message.

Posted by JohnD on Feb. 14 2006,14:46

Why a CD??? Hmmmm. I thought had replied to this, but don't see my reply, so here goes again. In my case, I had an IBM laptop that could not boot from the CD ROM either. It was also not a R/W drive. I ordered the CD ROM from DSL and booted up with the boot up floppy. I used the CD ROM to install DSL to the HD, which was cleaned of everything. No room for a dual boot setup on a HD only 800 megs in size. DSL, I think, is designed to work as a program from the CD ROM, or be installed from the CD ROM. I think just putting files on the HD may not result in a proper install. That's only my guess. For me, the install to the HD from the CD ROM disk went fine and it works.

Good luck.:)

Posted by K.Mandla on Feb. 14 2006,17:39

That's awesome! I was proud of my Presario 1020, but that beats it hands down. Now I gotta scope out a new 486DX. ...

Posted by davidA on Feb. 14 2006,18:11

I am using a P166 Laptop with 96 Mb of RAM. This is my main machine nowadays, as my old 500Mhz iMac (running Ubuntu) is in need of repairs.

I have an old Compaq in my storage room. It's a 486 I think, with 4Mb of RAM. I will drag it out one of these days, and install DSL, and see if I can get it working (on the net)

Currently it is running Windows 3.1. This was the first machine that I used on the net and was in use before they had graphics on the web. I am betting that it will still work though

Posted by homero on Feb. 14 2006,19:05

Quote (skaos @ Feb. 14 2006,05:54)

I've tried your advice but the LILO 22.5.7.2 Boot menu says:

No such image. [Tab] shows a list.

But when I hit the [Tab] key nothing happens.

Any idea?

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 15 2006,05:06

1)

If you yank the hard drive and connect it to a newer computer, you need to make sure that the hard drive is configured as the same IDE location as it was in your original computer.

So if the drive was set up as the PRIMARY MASTER IDE DRIVE in your old computer, you need to set it up as the PRIMARY MASTER IDE DRIVE in your new computer before you do the install.

2) In general, partitioning programs only modify the partition table. They do not actually FORMAT your newly created partitions. Partition Magic may be the exception, but I don't own it so I don't know for sure.

Usually, in Linux you would make your partitions with a program called cfdisk. For a primary master drive, in a terminal window or in textmode you type:

sudo su
cfdisk /dev/hda

and then make your partitions and write the new table. Say for example, you create a Linux partition (to be EXT2) at location #2 and a Linux swap partition at location #3.
To format them, you type:

mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hda2
mkswap /dev/hda3
swapon

and then you can do the full HD installation to /dev/hda2