Re: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

newer
YOU foolings' or fooling with YOU?

older
can't get 100mb eth0 to work

Ken Hough

20 Dec 2002 20 Dec '02

18:42

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

El 2002-12-16 a las 11:22, Ken Hough escribió:

...
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:22:41 +0000 From: Ken Hough To: Carlos E. R. Subject: Re: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

...
I have been restoring to life my old 386SX-20, 91 vintage, and got it working with a 1.7Gb Hd (original was 80Mb), and dos5 (from a set 56 floppy disks, 5 1/4", holding the backup of that PC from that time).

[...]

...
...
Uncompressing.............................

And it stops right there - it has been at that exact point for half an hour, I think, and I doesn't seem to have intention of going on.

(I got the install running with another image - now the problem is different)

...
I run SuSE v6.4 on an old 486. Installation was from an IDE CDROM. No problems.

But this machine never had a cdrom, and linux does not recognise it, it says its an ide tape device.

...
You should stick with older distros as modern distros usually assume a Pentium processor.

Aparently, 6.1 was compiled for a 386, in theory at least :-)

...
My 486 PC can dual boot DOS v6 or SuSE v6.4, but normally runs well as a SAMBA / APACHE / NFS server. Just don't bother trying to run X windows -- it takes for ever!!!

Ah... pity, I fancied giving it a try - no kde or gnome, just fvwm or something similar. After all, this machine ran Win 3.11... :-)

I expect that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows on your 386 PC. I'm currently playing with playing with an old Toshiba Satalite Pro 480 CDT (233 MHz Pentium with 64 MB Ram). KDE3 will run but there's so much swapping that it's not viable. icewm is sort of OK, but still sluggish. I might have some spare RAM chips that could work in the 386. Let me know what your PC needs and I'll have a look. Don't know why Linux doesn't recognise your CDROM, I've used a variety of CDROMs ranging from old 8x drives to modern 56x units without any problems. Enybody else any suggestions? Ken Hough

Show replies by date

Ole Kofoed Hansen

20 Dec 20 Dec

20:55

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Ken Hough wrote:

...

I expect that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows on your 386 PC. I'm currently playing with playing with an old Toshiba Satalite Pro 480 CDT (233 MHz Pentium with 64 MB Ram). KDE3 will run but there's so much swapping that it's not viable. icewm is sort of OK, but still sluggish.

I know from personal experience that more RAM will make a world of difference. Untill recently, I used a 233 MHz K6 with 160 MB of RAM, and it ran KDE fine. A tad slow on startup and when starting Konqueror, but nothing else to complain about. IceWM was very fast and responsive. Even after days of use, it hadn't used more than a tiny bit of my swap.

...

I might have some spare RAM chips that could work in the 386. Let me know what your PC needs and I'll have a look.

I am certain that he could very well make use of whatever amount of RAM his 386 has room for. Regards Ole

Carlos E. R.

22 Dec 22 Dec

02:13

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

The 02.12.20 at 21:55, Ole Kofoed Hansen wrote:

...

...
I might have some spare RAM chips that could work in the 386. Let me know what your PC needs and I'll have a look.

I am certain that he could very well make use of whatever amount of RAM his 386 has room for.

Really... that's nice, but there is no need. If it were my only computer, or if I needed that machine for something terribly important that could not be done otherwise, then I would appreciate getting memory for it. As it is, I have been restoring it as a pastime. I had it collecting dust, and it occurred to me whether it could be restored again, and if so, if Linux could be make to run on it. Nothing serious :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Carlos E. R.

02:06

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

The 02.12.20 at 18:42, Ken Hough wrote:

...

...
But this machine never had a cdrom, and linux does not recognise it, it says its an ide tape device.

[...]

...

...
Ah... pity, I fancied giving it a try - no kde or gnome, just fvwm or something similar. After all, this machine ran Win 3.11... :-)

I expect that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows on your 386 PC.

Well, I assure you I used windows 3.10 when I bought that machine in 1991, and it run, with only 2 Mbytes of ram or so. Later, I increased it to 5 Mbytes. That machine was in use till 1995 or later, using dos 5 or 6 and win 3.11. It was never lightning fast, specially being an -SX, not a pure 386, but it served me well, I did not complain. You see, I only noticed it was slow when I first saw a pentium 90 ;-) - nowdays, a pentium would be considered horribly slow.

...

I'm currently playing with playing with an old Toshiba Satalite Pro 480 CDT (233 MHz Pentium with 64 MB Ram). KDE3 will run but there's so much swapping that it's not viable. icewm is sort of OK, but still sluggish.

Right here I have my Pentium 120 with 32 Mbytes (Suse 7.1 & W95), and it has kde and gnome; quite usable, but slow, specially with some apps like netscape (mozilla/netscape6 is horribly slow). Now that I'm used to my P-IV it certainly feels sluggish :-)

...

I might have some spare RAM chips that could work in the 386. Let me know what your PC needs and I'll have a look.

Don't worry, I'm not really using that machine. I only wanted to prove to myself that linux could be installed on it, and I have even managed to compile the kernel O:-) It is certainly more than what I expected. The only real use will be to retrieve my old backups (pctools), and move them over to CDs. Then, it will remain at part of my museum... er, junk pile ;-)

...

Don't know why Linux doesn't recognise your CDROM, I've used a variety of CDROMs ranging from old 8x drives to modern 56x units without any problems. Enybody else any suggestions?

That's something I don't understand, but it seems that the cdrom report itself wrongly as a tape machine :-? I could connect that cdrom to another machine and see what happens, it could be that the 386 is too old to cope with that - after all, cdroms were not invented yet, and windows came in 8 floppies (5 1/4) X-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Ken Hough

23 Dec 23 Dec

16:50

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

...

...
I expect that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows on your 386 PC.

Well, I assure you I used windows 3.10 when I bought that machine in 1991, and it run, with only 2 Mbytes of ram or so. Later, I increased it to 5 Mbytes. That machine was in use till 1995 or later, using dos 5 or 6 and win 3.11. It was never lightning fast, specially being an -SX, not a pure 386, but it served me well, I did not complain. You see, I only noticed it was slow when I first saw a pentium 90 ;-) - nowdays, a pentium would be considered horribly slow.

Sorry Carlos. I didn't doubt you. I meant that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows under Linux. DOS/Win3.1 is no problem. I still have a 486DX 40 set up to run DOS 6.2/Win3.11 (plus a TCP/IP stack so it talks to my LAN) and it's quite fast! I also have a small 'museum' --- includes a Sinclair Spectrum, BBC and an original IBM PC/XT -- remember when a 10MB hard disk was BIG and nobody needed more than 640KB of RAM? Regards Ken Hough

...

Carlos E. R.

23:33

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

The 02.12.23 at 16:50, Ken Hough wrote:

...

...
386, but it served me well, I did not complain. You see, I only noticed it was slow when I first saw a pentium 90 ;-) - nowdays, a pentium would be considered horribly slow.

Sorry Carlos. I didn't doubt you. I meant that you would have trouble trying to run any form of windows under Linux. DOS/Win3.1 is no problem. I still have a 486DX 40 set up to run DOS 6.2/Win3.11 (plus a TCP/IP stack so it talks to my LAN) and it's quite fast!

Sorry, I missunderstood O:-) I never thought of running modern windows on that machine - linux, I managed already, but W95, I won't even try :-)

...

I also have a small 'museum' --- includes a Sinclair Spectrum, BBC and an original IBM PC/XT -- remember when a 10MB hard disk was BIG and nobody needed more than 640KB of RAM?

Indeed I do! I remember the first day I saw one. I had bought, at last, an Amstrad 1512: an 8086 at 8Mhz (still in working order, by the way) with 512 Kbytes and two 360Kb 5 1/4 floppies. I went to see some friends, who had a PC and an oscilloscope - thus, a lab ;-) - and they were complaining that their 10 Mb hard disk was full and would have to be cleared. I could not understand how on earth was it posible to fill that much space! X-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

SuSEnixER

24 Dec 24 Dec

00:36

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

* Carlos E. R. [12-23-02 18:55]:

...

Indeed I do! I remember the first day I saw one. I had bought, at last, an Amstrad 1512: an 8086 at 8Mhz (still in working order, by the way) with 512 Kbytes and two 360Kb 5 1/4 floppies. I went to see some friends, who had a PC and an oscilloscope - thus, a lab ;-) - and they were complaining that their 10 Mb hard disk was full and would have to be cleared. I could not understand how on earth was it posible to fill that much space! X-)

How bout a Commodore VIC20 with an audio tape drive hanging off the back. And the Commodore 64 manual said **not** to put a 180k 5-1/4 floppy disk into the drive with the system off or the drive light on. No way. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://home.indy.rr.com/paka @ http://counter.li.org icq#173753138

Carlos E. R.

25 Dec 25 Dec

19:30

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

The 02.12.23 at 19:36, SuSEnixER wrote:

...

...
had a PC and an oscilloscope - thus, a lab ;-) - and they were complaining that their 10 Mb hard disk was full and would have to be cleared. I could not understand how on earth was it posible to fill that much space! X-)

How bout a Commodore VIC20 with an audio tape drive hanging off the back.

Ah, yes; a friend had one of those. Nice keyboard, specially compared to the Sinclair Spectrum I had access to.

...

And the Commodore 64 manual said **not** to put a 180k 5-1/4 floppy disk into the drive with the system off or the drive light on. No way.

Funny. I saw a chap with a few minitapes (microdrives?) daisy chained to his spectrum, and we thought that neat and fast, compared with the audio tape we normally used. Half an hour to load the flight simulator or the Lord of the Rings, and then somebody fell and switched off the thing for a second. He nearly went (propelled by the rest of us) over the window! X-) But this is way off-topic now; so... will you try linux on it? just to stay on topic, you understand :-p -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Mike

30 Dec 30 Dec

01:09

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

On Saturday 21 December 2002 21:06, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Don't worry, I'm not really using that machine. I only wanted to prove to myself that linux could be installed on it, and I have even managed to compile the kernel O:-)

How long did that take you? I managed to put Slack with the 1.59 kernel on a 385 and it took weeks to recomplie the kernel. I killed it after 3 weeks and more RAM in it to give it 8 meg and then it runs ok. I think the kernels after 2 require 4 meg of RAM, and even more for the installers.

...

The only real use will be to retrieve my old backups (pctools), and move them over to CDs. Then, it will remain at part of my museum... er, junk pile ;-)

I also have a 286 running minux in my collection.

...

...
Don't know why Linux doesn't recognise your CDROM, I've used a variety of CDROMs ranging from old 8x drives to modern 56x units without any problems. Enybody else any suggestions?

Old CDroms didn't follow standards the NEC 250 was OK but the 260 was not. I had a 260. I had to copy the files to a DOS partition and load linux from there.

Carlos E. R.

2 Jan 2 Jan

03:44

New subject: [SLE] Experimenting with installing Suse on an old computer.

The 02.12.29 at 20:09, Mike wrote:

...

...
Don't worry, I'm not really using that machine. I only wanted to prove to myself that linux could be installed on it, and I have even managed to compile the kernel O:-)

How long did that take you?

Well, I had to cheat O:-) I started the compile, and at some point, when I came back 12 hours later, it had segfaulted (on make -C drivers). The funny thing was that most programs segfaulted after that, even halt, so I had to power off. I tried again, and it halted with "parse error at null character" on file "include/linux/sched.h:502". So I took the hard disk to another PC (a pentium 120) and finished the compile there (make clean dep bzImage modules and make modules_install); then I went back to the 386, and did there a "make install" which took about 5 hours. After reboot, the compressed kernel was about 200 Kb smaller. I still have to check the amount of available memory, but it will be larger.

...

I managed to put Slack with the 1.59 kernel on a 385 and it took weeks to recomplie the kernel. I killed it after 3 weeks and more RAM in it to give it 8 meg and then it runs ok. I think the kernels after 2 require 4 meg of RAM, and even more for the installers.

As I said, I cheated ;-) Had to, that machine has only 5 megs ram. Now that the kernel is smaller, perhaps I could try again without cheating.

...

...
The only real use will be to retrieve my old backups (pctools), and move them over to CDs. Then, it will remain at part of my museum... er, junk pile ;-)

I also have a 286 running minux in my collection.

I had to study the Tanenboum book (Operating Systems), translated to spanish, that included the minix source, printed. But I could never get the floppies: the book was printed in Mexico, and I live in Spain: I couldn't get them (I still remember the face of the bokkseller when I asked!), so I never could try minix. Pity...

...

...
...
Don't know why Linux doesn't recognise your CDROM, I've used a variety of CDROMs ranging from old 8x drives to modern 56x units without any problems. Enybody else any suggestions?

Old CDroms didn't follow standards the NEC 250 was OK but the 260 was not. I had a 260. I had to copy the files to a DOS partition and load linux from there.

Yes, that is what I think. In fact, linux reports it as an ide-tape device. But the install from the dos partition did not work either, I had to cheat there as well, using the other PC. Now that linux is installed, I can install packages from the dos partition, it recognises the same directory that it rejected during the install. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

7793

Age (days ago)

7806

Last active (days ago)

List overview

Download

9 comments

5 participants

participants (5)

Carlos E. R.
Ken Hough
Mike
Ole Kofoed Hansen
SuSEnixER