Ideal machines to run DSL on?Forum: User Feedback Topic: Ideal machines to run DSL on? started by: Emission Posted by Emission on Feb. 19 2006,05:42
I've noticed that through personal testing that you cant go really slow (Im talking 233 MHz Tillamook Pentium I, It runs but it feels slow). I mean, even the windows xp installed on that thing runs faster, which is odd. Im running from a regular hdd install (Non-Frugal). Should I try anything else? Like a frugal install? Live-CD Running isnt exactly fun, lol. Im going to try running to the ram (I have 160MB installed, im pretty covered lol). Post your ideas on ideal machines/setups to run DSL on, because I might buy a DSL-Specific machine in the near future (like a VIA Eden or something).
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 19 2006,08:15
Dude... How much ram are you running...I have a P166mhz with 96mb and it runs great. I had a frugal install until I messed it up, and now it is a standard install. It still runs great, although I think the frugal ran a little quicker. Dude, I am doing things I could never do in Windows 2000 or NT on this system. Are you sure XP even runs on that 233mhz. XP is a total resource hog. DSL isn't... DSL is by far the best OS version of Linux because of the low resources. DSL is better than PuppyLinux or FeatherLinux... I have tried both of those and DSL is by far better. I am a true DSL fan now and will be contributing to them. If you are running slow, you need more ram. Bring it to 96 to 128, I bet you will love it then. Hell, XP can't hardly do anything without at least 128 to 256mb... Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 19 2006,20:13
Try turning DMA on for your hard drive.Either boot up with command: dsl dma or type: sudo su hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda from a terminal window. This assumes that your hard drive is located at devicename hda Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 20 2006,19:21
P.S. If you have 160Megs of RAM then try the toram option on in the menu.lst of the /boot/grub menuYah the firefox on a 233Mhz will cause it to spike out processor usage while its bringing it up...thats just because FireFox takes 15-16Megs of RAM to fire up.. Try the dillo..it will pop right up, it may not have all the bells and whistles of FireFox..but man its fast! Brian AwPhuch Posted by Sharkscott on Feb. 21 2006,19:44
I have a P-III 450mhz, 512mg-RAM 12g-HD and with DSL on it, it runs CIRCLES around my AMD-1600, 512mg machine that runs SuSE 10.And my AMD machine is at least 30% faster then it was the day I bought it with XP on it, 6 years ago. I have booted it on HP's, Dell's, Gateway's and about 5 or 6 no-name's that had from K-6 to P-I chips in them and as little as 64mg of RAM. DSL is the..(almost cursed)..Bomb. :-) Posted by Dorei on Feb. 22 2006,17:41
I got a PII Deschutes 333 that I over clocked to 416.5 MHZ and 512 KB L2 Cache, 220 MB ram and it just flies along, I never knew that this comp could be so fast.
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 22 2006,19:27
Isn't a great feeling to know that you can have a more powerful OS than stupid Windoze and it will run great on a system that is 7 years older than these current systems?It really is amazing... I think my P166mhz was built by Compaq in 1995 and the thing is running so good. I swear that I am so happy I never threw it away. Posted by ubl on Feb. 23 2006,01:41
I got a 486DX with 32 mb ram running with a frugal install!
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 23 2006,14:44
That is just awesome. I wish now I would have kept my old 486 100mhz with 64mb, I bet it would have done well.I ought to hit up and couple of garage sales around here and see if someone has one they will sale me.... Posted by zubalove on Feb. 23 2006,16:01
I'm running DSL on a Fujitsu Lifebook w/ 166 meg MMX and 80 megs of ram. It does just what I need it to. I use the OpenOffice 2.0 uci and Opera 8.5 uci. I run gaim. Also, it has no problems seeing my netgear 401 wireless card (except DSL 2.0, that gave me a headache).All in all, an EXCELLENT OS for older machines. I think the only thing that really needs attention is documentation. All the pdfs and guides should get consolidated to one place, and updated to relect the current builds. Posted by NewDude on Feb. 23 2006,21:36
zubalove,Want version of DSL is working good with your wireless netgear 401 card? I am curious. My dad is giving(I am actually buying it for $100) me his old Tobshiba latop P233, it had 96mb and a 4gb hd in it, DVD/CD-ROM and floopy. It has a D-Link PCMIA wireless card, I know DSL supports a few D-LINK but I was curious if version 2.2b is harder to setup with wireless than 2.1 or older. I want to get the version that will be the easiest to setup for me. If that means going all the way back to DSL 1.5 then I will. Do you know? Posted by Crustyrusty on Feb. 27 2006,00:44
As I mentioned in another topic, I have DSL running functionally on a P-60 with 32MB, and a P-150 laptop with 48MB (frugal install.) Right now I am typing this on a P-166 MMX with 128 MB and it's smokin'.
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 27 2006,03:44
P60 Huh??? That was the very first pentium class created... I don't think intel made a lot of them. P60 was the first intel machine I ever got at work. It was an huge tower... I remember, my boss at the time came to me and told me he wanted me to turn in my 486 for a pentium. The 486 was a 66mhz and the pentium was a 60, but the pentium was faster because of the bus for faster. That is cool... Posted by Crustyrusty on Feb. 27 2006,04:16
Yeah I found this Packard Bell machine on an auction pallet. The whole pallet went for a buck and had a bunch of office supplies on it. I never went with the early Pentiums myself, I usually used Cyrix and AMD.Too bad I don't still have my 386DX-33, that was the first box I built by myself. I'd love to see if it would run DSL. Posted by NewDude on Feb. 27 2006,04:53
THat is interesting... I never got into using INTEL chips until about 3 years ago. You are like me, I was a Cyrix and AMD guy for 6 years. My first Cyrix chip for a 166 (I think), but it ran hot, I think Cyrix over clocked their CPU's if I remember rightly. My first AMD system was a K6 233. I bought a mother board and a AMD 166mhz chip about a month ago at a garage sale. The guy sold it to me for $1. I don't have a case for it or even a power supply. I am hopeing to run across one soon so I can run DSL on it to. Not to change the subject but: I have a question. I am stuck right now with my PIII and my wireless card. Saturday DSL was seeing my wireless card, when I tried to use NDISWrapper, it connected to my wireless network, but crashed soon after. But now, I am sitting here messing with it again and DSL doesn't see my card at all. It used to see it as wlan0, now nothing. I can't even try to config it or mess with it because it doesn't see it anymore. I haven't taken apart the system or anything since Saturday when it was seeing it. I know the card is seated correctly. Do you know anything I can do to get DSL at least to see this card again so I can continue messing with it where I left off? Thanks... Posted by zubalove on Feb. 27 2006,15:13
DSL 1.4 recognized my Netgear 401 MA card with no trouble. DSL2.0 wouldn't at all. Now 2.2 works more often than not. Sometime I have to use NDISWrapper to get the thing to recognize the network. I can't think of a reason why it would drop after the fact. I have noticed that my laptop has range issues that others don't seem to. Not sure if that could be related to your problem or not. Posted by doobit on Feb. 27 2006,15:38
Wireless cards remain a problem because they use a variety of chipsets that each require their own drivers. Some have Linux support, and some don't. NDiswrapper is an attempt to make a Linux wrapper around Windows drivers. Many more of those work and they update them. Ndiswrapper has their own site so check it out. The latest DSL most likely has the latest Ndiswapper that will work with it. Anyway, if you use Ndiswrapper, then you need to look at the site to understand how it works. That will increase your chances of success.
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 27 2006,18:07
It was weird, last night I got tired of trying to get 2.2b to see my card, so I went back to LiveCD 2.1 and 2.1 saw the card and I got my card to connect to my wireless network, but soon after again, it locked up the system and basically did a hardware crash...I was able to connect using the NDISWRAPPER....I think doobit is right though. I need to go to their website and try to learn more about NDISWRAPPER. It is so close to working... I bought another wireless card yesterday from a friend. It is a AirLink 101 (Forgot the chipset). I am going to mess with ACX 111 tonight a couple more times, if I still can't get it to work, I am going to install this one(Airlink) and see if I have anymore luck using the NDISWRAPPER. I think the solution here is: By a supported card. I bought the DSL 2.1 Book that is advertized on this website. It was pretty basic, but did have some useful information like the list of compatiable network cards that take little or no configuration to get working. But after I got the book and started reading it, I noticed that in one of the topic areas in this forum there is an area where people are posting what they got working. Posted by hhhhhh on Feb. 28 2006,14:01
I've tried it on P233 cyrix(junk) with 17MB RAM. it runs with X but slow.The problem is that XMMS bugs the whole system after a try to run it. You even cant turn it down after that, what shoud i do, (some hacking to run faster as well?) Posted by doobit on Feb. 28 2006,15:35
If you can put more RAM in that it will work a lot better. For slow processors, more RAM is extremely important.
Posted by NewDude on Feb. 28 2006,16:23
If you don't use more ram, the OS ends up using the hard drive for virual memory(Swap)... I bet your hard drive spins constantly. You should try dropping at least another 32mb in it, it will run so much better. Like I posted earlier, I have a P166mhz with 96MB of memory and it is fast. Running great and hardly ever needs the swap. Posted by kruser619 on Mar. 01 2006,03:50
Now, Im downloading DSL right now, and i want to see how smooth it will run on this computer.333mhz AMD processor 128mb Ram 7gb Hard drive 4mb ATI rage card. Posted by Kruser619 on Mar. 01 2006,04:00
As an added note, that is not the computer im running now. The computer im talking about is upstairs, and it is running Win98, and it gives me the blue screen of death every 20 seconds or so. If it will run smooth, i think this OS will be better.
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 01 2006,07:07
If you don't have a soundcard that uses DMA or if you don't have it set up for DMA, it is possible that XMMS could bring your computer to it's knees.Otherwise, you could try a commandline mp3 player inside of a terminal window: mpg321 name_of_file.mp3 and see if it works any better. Press CONTROL-C to kill it if it bogs down too much. Posted by hiltec on Mar. 01 2006,10:26
hi,i'm using several Now I am using a NCD ThinSTAR 564.NET Thin Client ==> < www.hiltec.at > Systemconfig: CPU: Geode 300 Mhz [333Mhz :-)=)] RAM: 256MB RAM [144 pin SO-DIMM and 168 pin SD-RAM Socket] HD: 512MB CF-Card [Fileserver 100GB 2,5”] LAN: 10/100 onboard Sound: SB comp. PORTS: 1 x IDE 40pin, 2 x COM, 1 x LPT, 3 x Sound 1 x PCI 1 x ISA Installation: frugal < www.hiltec.at > Posted by NewDude on Mar. 01 2006,15:09
Kruser619, Win98 sucks. Can it, DSL will be so much better and stable. I hated Win98, NT 4.0, Win95 and Win3.1 that all were so lame. I still to these day don't understand how Microsoft was able to become so successful with those OS's. Those OS's were bottom of the barrel. Win2k and XP are much more stable, but you still have to deal with Microsoft. DSL will be a perfect match for that older machine you have. Posted by NewDude on Mar. 01 2006,15:11
Sorry everyone for the typos... I have a habbit of not proof reading before I send.
Posted by wkearney99 on Mar. 03 2006,04:00
Heh, I've got it working on an ancient 486DX/75 with 28mb of RAM. At a dazzling 640x480x4 bit color! Besides being hideous to look at for anything other than basic text and graphics (you just do NOT want to see it dither images) it works great! I'll be leaving it on my boat to do wifi access point mapping. Way to go DSL!
Posted by NewDude on Mar. 03 2006,04:31
I am surprised you haven't picked up a old video card to get better color, but if you are just doing text stuff, I guess it doesn't matter.I bet though you could pick up an old ISA SVGA card for $2 on ebay or a garage sale. Hey, still great news. I think it is great people are still using 486's. I wish I still had my old ones. |