Why does my copmuter hate me
Forum: HD Install
Topic: Why does my copmuter hate me
started by: mastersmite
Posted by mastersmite on May 02 2005,21:48
I have a 75 mhz computer with 32 mb of ram and a 1 gb HDDI have the DSL disk and it works fine on my new Dell, i have made the boot disk from the /knoppix/boot.img file and it starts to load, but after loading linux24, it stops after about 4 periods after loading the next thing and says boot faliure and then wants me to replace the disk and press any key.
What should i do?
Posted by Rapidweather on May 03 2005,01:00
The 32 MB of Ram is the problem, not enough. I have gotten Grey Cat Linux to run on 4 MB of ram, with Netscape 3.04,
a web server, and an editor to update the page being served.
Very slow, however, on a 486 sx 33.
Damn Small is built on Knoppix, and this is a modern up-to-date operating system, needing some ram, at least 128 MB in the case of KDE, and some fairly fast processor speed. I have DSL 6.2 running on a 200 MMX processor, and it does OK.
I have tried DSL disks on several machines with very limited ram as a test, (about 32 MB) and they all won't get going, too little ram to work. I know it is hard to understand, as Windows 98 will run on 16 MB of RAM.
Once you do get a machine to boot the DSL OS, however, the Fluxbox
window manager is probably the best you can do as far as using what ram you have to the fullest.
In my Knoppix remaster, I split it down the middle, with Icewm as default, and Fluxbox for less powerful machines, and KDE for the modern machines.
I stick with a customized version of Fluxbox for my DSL remaster, however.
That is all I can do to assist those running older machines. One additional thing, DSL offers the "syslinux" version as a download, that will run on almost all machines, but with at least a mimimal amount of ram, 32 MB not being enough, even for that.
Hope this helps.
Posted by cbagger01 on May 03 2005,03:51
It will work fine with 32MB of RAM.It is still a good idea to create a DOS swap file or set up a linux swap partition on the hard drive, however.
To maximize RAM usage, boot with this command:
fb800x600 noicons
If that doesn't work, see if you can get into text mode with:
dsl vga=normal 1 nousb nofirewire noagp noapm noscsi nosound nopcmcia atapicd nomce
As to your "..." problem, try using a brand new floppy disk.
It is likely that you have a bad floppy.
Posted by mastersmite on May 03 2005,22:01
Thanks for the help guys, i tried the bott disk on another machine and it worked fine on my mom's old laptop, which i hop to claim as my own. (233 mhz pentium 2, w/ 160 mb ram and a 4gb HD), other than that i will try with the different disk.