Install basic Puppy on a computer with 16 Mb RAM

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Puppyt
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Install basic Puppy on a computer with 16 Mb RAM

#1 Post by Puppyt »

Executive Summary:

NUTSHELL: INSTALL A BASIC PUPPY ON A USB-CADDIED HARD-DRIVE WITH 256MB SWAP, BEFORE TRANSFERRING THE DRIVE TO THE LAPTOP
Most current and emerging Linux versions require at least 64Mb RAM, or double that for satisfactory operation across a range of higher-end internet, gaming and and office applications. The process of "natural" succession tends to have older and still-functional computer hardware consigned straight to the junk heap, particularly those with a maximum capacity of less than 128Mb. Nonetheless, here I outline a procedure for successfully installing a Puppy 4.12 puplet (Pulp 0.03) on a laptop with 16Mb RAM, for its intended end-of-life role as a simple games computer for primary-school children. No previous experience with Linux is neccessary - I'm not a programmer, but a Windows refugee and end-user with just enough curiosity make trouble for myself.


1. Low RAM computers - General observations
It's important to highlight that the amount of RAM available is not the only factor in getting Puppy running happily on 'vintage' computers. CPU speed and health I won't mention further as defects in this department are often fatal as most CPU's can't be replaced on older motherboards without a soldering iron, and this can signal problems elsewhere on the board. Optical and hard drives can be easily replaced with newer components, and should be seriously considered for automatic replacement because:
a) The original 8x CD-ROM etc. drastically impacts on installation time and general operation. (Refer to the first sentence 'nutshell' in this post, and don't try this route.)
b) The symptoms of a dying CD drive are sometimes not easy to spot, and can 'hang' repeated installation attempts at random points, giving the impression that RAM or other hardware may be at fault. Persistent hangs at the "Booting to kernel..." message when installing Puppy and other versions of Linux is a sure indication that the CD drive needs replacing. (cf. nutshell)
c) The original hard drive (HDD) is likely to be a IDE/ATA/PATA vintage with a spindle speed of 5400 RPM, and possibly lacking DMA transfer rates. Drive speed is important - particularly when you require a sizeable linux-swap partition (256MB recommended - but see healthy debate regarding swap-partition size on the forum) to complement the low RAM. Exchanging the original with a faster ATA drive (i.e., 7200 RPM) will markedly improve installation and general operation speeds. Running noise is also reduced. Better still, replacing the old-style drive with a solid-state drive, that is, CF or SD cards in an internal IDE-adaptor will improve running speed, temperature and energy-efficiency.
d) Test the integrity of your HDD before committing it to the project. The "Ultimate Boot CD" (UBCD 4.1.1, with v. 4.1.2 arriving soon for official release) is an invaluable tool for any refurbishment project and is mentioned often in the Puppy forums. Plenty of tools are provided for diagnosing your CPU, motherboard and RAM. Make sure that you use Memtest86+ to assess the quality of your RAM - it is on UBCD, available alone for free download and is also provided stock-standard in many versions of Puppy, so there is no excuse to skip it's use. On UBCD I find MHDD32 particularly useful in diagnosing and "repairing" HDD problems with bad or degrading sectors (i.e., will provide operational workarounds but no HDD can be fully repaired). It's particularly useful when arranging the location of your linux-swap to avoid a swamp of slow sectors on areas of the drive - string-like patterns and well-defined areas of slow sectors are indications that the drive needs replacing.

I formatted my installation partitions in the Ext2 format as I had fatal halts whenever I attempted using Ext3.


2. BIOS, CD issues
Checking that you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard should be performed early in any recycling project. It's not hard to do, although it has moderate risk in that the 'flash' process should never be interrupted.
Regrettably, many early BIOS's - particularly in the Win95 and Win98 era - were designed to the MicroSoft script, including the inability to install straight from CD without the use of a boot floppy. WakePup2 is provided stock-standard in most versions of Puppy and enables detection of Puppy files on non-Linux hard-drive and USB partitions, for installation purposes. "Grubflop" from rcrsn51 is perfect for getting around the BIOS shortcoming and booting a Puppy installation CD - it will also boot the installation CD's of other Linux versions, and diagnostic discs like UBCD without any problem. Anyone who uses Puppy on older computers should have grubflop in their toolbox. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16950
Older CD-drives require care in the preparation of installation CD's: avoid using RW CD's; multisession CD's; use 'finalized' ISO's burned at the slowest speed you have available on your main or 'everyday' computer. (but cf. nutshell and save trouble)


3. Choosing your OS
A good test of your hardware and the range (and sophistication) of applications available to it is to install operating systems that were more-or-less designed for low RAM environments. These include; Win95, Win98SE given the 'lite' treatment (Win98lite), ReactOS 0.3.10 (not at 16Mb RAM), DeLi 0.8.0, SliTaz 2.0 (loram), TinyCore 2.4.1, Luit Linux 0.4 and Kantonix 2005-04-lite. However, at 64Mb RAM and below, it is likely you will find such distributions too bulky in their attempts to provide all things for all people, and my inclination is to pick a lite Puplet that can be easily modified to perform a restricted range of functions...


4. Choosing and preparing your Puppy version
Understandably, not all hardware can be supported by the latest official version of Puppy Linux in the constant pursuit of support and compatibility for the latest technology (and software demands). “Retro

panzerpuppy
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#2 Post by panzerpuppy »

@Puppyt: Have you tried the latest version of Turbopup Xtreme (v1.0 FINAL) ?

It's much lighter than the old Beta you've tried before.
Turbopup Tech Support

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technosaurus
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#3 Post by technosaurus »

I have posted a bunch of jwm hacks that will make it a full desktop environment (without the moderately heavy Rox) here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 161#381161

For browsing - netsurf or dillo2 or a console base browser (links...)

If you have a smaller spare hard drive put it on a SEPARATE ide channel and setup your swap partition on it (of course more RAM is better)

Many versions will work, but you'd need to comment out the auto-started daemons like CUPS, Rox, event manager,... and remove the <Swallow'd applets from /root/.jwmrc or /root/.jwmrc-tray (absvolume, blinky, asapm...) pprocess will tell the tale and pfind will find the culprit script (unless it is in the init script - maybe syslogd and klogd)

Recompiling some of the stuff statically and with unneeded options removed can also help (for instance maybe you don't need jpeg or xpm support in jwm if you convert all icons to png and use a single color background)

Maybe once finished it would be possible to share using something like:

Code: Select all

dd -if=/dev/sda1 -of=/mnt/sda2/lite_pup.img  #not sure?
so others could install it using a boot floppy, CD and:

Code: Select all

dd -if=/mnt/sda2/lite_pup.img -of=/dev/sda1 #not sure?
... or you could bypass X altogether and use many SDL games on the framebuffer - (DOS flashback method)
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#4 Post by Puppyt »

Thanks for your replies panzerpuppy and technosaurus:-

panzerpuppy, I have been following synth's progress with Turbopup Xtreme and was kinda hoping to test version 1.1 out on the old Toshiba 430CDS. You seem to have inside info on that development - should I just stick to 1.0 instead for such a machine? (I've tested Xtreme 1.0 on my main desktop, and liked what I saw there very much, but haven't had the chance to trot it out on the 430CDS.)

technosaurus, many thanks indeed for the hacks for a ROXless puppy - that thread you started is brimming with tips on reducing running overheads - I hope to give some of those a running when I get a chance in the not-too-distant future..

To All, I acquired a 32MB RAM module secondhand from a Chinese supplier very helpfully suggested by a puppian responding to my post on another thread. However, I haven't had any puplet running on the 430CDS continuously due to improper shutdowns (e.g., my 4yo daughter just loves pressing those buttons), and running fsck on such a machine on a regular basis is, well, pretty fsckd. So given my level of expertise with Linux (where I just keep breaking stuff till it works) the project in on the backburner til I find a decent lump of time to work it through.
What I have found is that until I have found a puplet (native or suitably hacked) that will shutdown cleanly on such hardware, operational performance will tend to degrade on successive bootups - SilverPuppy's brilliant resource here on his "Make Puppy recover automatically from improper shutdowns" thread here http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=47668 backgrounds the issue well.

Sorry that I haven't properly updated the project as quite a few people seem curious about running Puppy on such limited hardware resources, and the update is overdue. I was kinda hoping that ttuuxx might have put the blowtorch to his 214X series and had a version Big-bassified for a Fat-free release... such a beast might run sweet on sub-64 Mb RAM behemoths... Not to be (anytime soon) so a revisit of the versions listed earlier (plus Murga's MeanPuppy, TurboPup Xtreme 1.0) on 48 Ram, ext3 etc plus experiments outlined by SilverPuppy and technosaurus and their contributers is warranted. Could you wait a fortnight please?

Cheers All

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Hugh
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#5 Post by Hugh »

The older cd drives can often be 'restored' to
normal operation by using a lens cleaning disk
to remove dust accumulation from the laser
optical unit. Insert it into the drive and let
it automatically do its chores.

Or, if the optical unit is accessible for manual
cleaning, a Q tip very slightly moistened with
isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol may be used to
very gently remove dust/debris from the lens.

As long as the cd drive is able to 'read' some
portion of a cd before cleaning, there is a good
possibility that it will come back to 'life.'

The optical unit is very delicate so very gentle
handling is a necessity.

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#6 Post by Puppyt »

Cheers Hugh - those are great tips. (And I hope you're over your 'flu)
I forgot to mention too that a loosely-fitted IDE cable between the motherboard and the CD can also run you into trouble at the "Booting the kernel" stage. (But more often than not your CD simply will not be picked up at boot.) The plastic connections tend to wear over time. Also check the cable itself - sharp creases, pinpricks in the cable can often be the cause of many mysterious ailments in ye-olde-worlde-charm computer.

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#7 Post by Sage »

We did the no-shutdown feature to death many times. For certain chipsets there is no answer just a work-around with acpi set to <force> or one of the alternative settings.
As for old CD drives, I've seen hundreds of DOA s and not a single one could ever be resurrected by cleaning the lens - it's an urban myth. Even cleaning the disc rarely works - it's usually a fault in the inter layer(s).
Also beware of 'rubbing alcohol' which is usually denatured plain old ethanol, but might contain lanolin as well! If you are contemplating chemical cleaners, you need to source them from a laboratory (supplier) in at least Analar grade or better and apply it with clinically clean swabs. There's clean & 'pure', then there's chemical clean & pure, and finally bacteriostatic reagents. If you don't understand these terms check in with your local university chemistry department or clean-room fab (which will be operated by chemists*)...

[*Brits take heed: a chemist is rarely a pharmacist; different breed in the UK.]

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#8 Post by technosaurus »

One thing I didn't mention was the size of the mandatory processes. To reduce the memory requirements I supplemented these binaries with minimal static uclibc versions... for instance - I compiled additional busybox implementations using the uclibc capable compilers at http://www.impactlinux.com/aboriginal
make allnoconfig
make menuconfig
>select only one applet (getty is a good example)
>>exit & save
make

(if you are only doing 1 applet you can just rename busybox to your applet name... NOTE that recent developments in busybox have complicated this a bit, because if the "full" busybox has the applet, then the internal one gets called - which can be an issue if busybox ash is the shell that execs the command - to prevent this behavior busybox-full must be either configured without the applet or the, enabled-by-default, "prefer applets" feature disabled)

Most of this is in the PupNgo thread already, so look there for pets, scripts and techniques. I have had jwm running in Xvesa with <16mb in pupngo but if you set up a swap file/partition and use a full install you should be able to still run other apps, however slowly
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#9 Post by hayden »

Congrats to all you minimalists! I'll just mention that a 2011 HDD or CD drive may be wasted on old hardware. The CPU and drive controller may not be able to see the whole thing or keep up with the transfer rate anyway, and may even freak out at the new stuff. For really old machines you can often find giveaway drives that will boost performance to as high as it is ever going to go. 1998 drives can do wonders for a 1992 machine!-)

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#10 Post by Puppyt »

Alas - a confessional...

The nub is I have had to relent and leave Puppy for FreeDOS on the smaller of the two machines - many thanks to the suggestions of various other puppians (including hondasid, author of Uhuru Puppy).
With no real surprise I found that hardware of this vintage is perfectly geared for the mountains of DOS "abandonware" lurking on the 'net - providing acceptably challenging entertainment and educational value for my early Primary-school-aged kids. PERHAPS a DOSBox-dedicated pUPnGO would be OK on this machine - I tried goingnuts' latest version (pUPnGO_V412_200110.iso; see http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51478) and while I had fun - especially online with the text web-browser - household rioting nearly ensued. I didn't have the time or the nous to continue with that Puppy avenue further, but I really liked where pUPnGO was taking me on that old beast.

I had concentrated on getting the smaller Toshiba 430CDS Satellite Pro up and running (now 32MB RAM with original 1.2GB hdd formatted to Ext2, 128MB swap - unlike its bigger brother 'maxed out' at 48MB RAM). I was pleasantly surprised that pUPnGO booted and could install straight from the PCMCIA CD-ROM, but again rcrsn51's grub floppy was vital. For other puplets (as listed in the OP) it was still a case to best load Puppy onto the laptop's harddrive while it was connected to a newer computer. Most regrettably, I couldn't maintain a kid-friendly/foolproof Puppy working reliably on the smaller machine. That is, not a puplet that would also provide the range of resource-friendly entertainment as the old DOS software.
I used the drive diagnostic tool MHDD (from within UBCD) and it revealed the tragic 'track marks' of failing sectors in the last 15% of the hard drive - tell-tale signs of years of abuse from Windows disk-threshing. Even using Gparted to "cut off" the dodgy tail by leaving it unused as an unformatted partition didn't provide the consistency I was expecting, although complete crashes were less likely. I suspect very much to be able to remove a range of performance glitches by ditching the old drive for a solid-state hard-drive (SD or CF) with an IDE adapter - but I don't have one spare. However as hayden mentioned earlier, there is only so much that might be gained from mixing technologies from such disparate 'eras'. Nonetheless, even given the vintage motherboard and CPU, it may well benefit from an IDE adapter for two CF cards - with one dedicated for swap, as technosaurus suggested earlier.

After a VERY torturous journey, I eventually settled on the mix of FreeDOS 1.0 (with the latest JEMM memory expander), the child-friendly GUI of Ronald Blankendaal's "Access" arranged to open automatically from the boot-up http://surf.to/AccessDosMenu, and for occasional 'housekeeping' duties use the file manager provided in DosStart http://www.icdc.com/~dnice/dosstart.html - rather than use OpenGEM or SEAL2. I'm using the entire drive formatted to FAT16, and crashes are extremely rare.

For more advanced users on such hardware, an embedded Puppy like pUPnGO could meet a range of requirements although I think at present, it is possible but not probable for children's entertainment. And not perhaps with the economy of DOS - though goingnuts, technosaurus and other collaborators certainly are working to that end.

Apologies that I haven't responded sooner - apparently there's been a glitch with automated notifications regarding comments on this thread.
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#11 Post by goingnuts »

Puppyt: Thank you for a really impressive report on your trials! You mention that you did test pUPnGO version pUPnGO_V412_200110. You might have fun testing the latest version (pUPnGO_V412_041210.iso) as a lot happened: The CLI (and core part) is totally separated from the GUI part - and also everything in CLI is build as static bins. This means that you can load different GUI parts - one is included on the download iso-image but two other is offered: Xwoaf (very tiny using ulibc) and bl3. Especially the bl3-dress might be worth trying as it should be able to boot to GUI in 16Mb ram. It can use Slackware 4 packages so there are a lot of expansion possibilities. Attached a screen-shoot of pUPnGO running the bl3-dress loaded as sfs-file after boot to prompt. If you have the time to test some day I could do a pUPnGO-bl3-iso for you...
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#12 Post by Puppyt »

Hi goingnuts,
I beg your pardon - it was actually pUPnGO_V412_041210.iso that I tested, but in the confusion of waterlogged days recently at my end and release dates I erred in haste. I enjoyed ivansampa's little youtube video and downloaded and installed about 5th Jan. I had a fab but limited time playing with it, but that is feedback best left on your thread...

I've actually run way overtime on my muddled-headed computer-testing for the time being, but thankyou very much indeed for your kind offer for a bl3 version of your puplet. Thanks too for pointing out the Slackware compatibility - if I was to stick to your pUPnGO ethos of a single-role, embedded system - would it be feasible to run a DosBox package (e.g., http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/slac ... osbox/pkg/) from within pUPnGO - what sort of advantages might you get over using a straight DOS version when running ye olde software? And if pUPnGo was to act as a DosBox 'server', perhaps via to the Dos 'flashback' method technosaurus hints at earlier in this thread, or busybox applet (I have only a rough sense of what he means in these respects), could a X-like gui be eliminated to reduce overheads further? Though on second thought a graphical file manager within Puppy would be preferable to the FreeDOS offerings I've butted my head against recently.
...And what I'm seeing very clearly now is the points I originally listed in the first post are really championed in your pUPnGO thread, and I really should be directing my questions there!

Many Thanks

P.S. I reckon I owe it to the Puppy Community to get a 44-pin (laptop) IDE CF or SD adapter (with ports for 2 cards to follow technosaurus' suggestion) and revisit the issue of Puppy4's and below on a sub 48MB machine...
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#13 Post by cprivers »

Puppyt,

The original Norton Commander (which has been cloned many times) might be a good choice for file management in FreeDOS. Let me know if you want a copy.

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#14 Post by BeefyCat »

I know I'm posting on here a tad late, but I had absolutely, positively NO IDEA that puppy linux could be posted on that slow of a computer. Am I reading this right? 16 MB (not GB's) of RAM? The reason I'm shocked is because I'm wanting to install a separate partition on an older computer. . .for no particular reason, actually. Honestly, I'm just wanting to experiment with other OS's and laptop platforms (old and new) and thought this might be interesting. I found an old Compaq Armada at a rummage sale. Now THAT'S old school. Although, when it comes to new laptops, I certainly wouldn't be going to rummage sales. . .more like a retail -- y'know, places like hhgregg or something.

Anyway...with any luck, these tips will work. Thanks for allowing me to chime in and thanks for the trips. :)
Last edited by BeefyCat on Sat 12 Nov 2011, 08:33, edited 1 time in total.
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#15 Post by saintless »

Puppyt, thank you for the information about puppy running on low ram computer like that.
I have an old computer with 40 Mhz processor, 3 Mb RAM (three MB RAM) and 40 MB HDD. It has a network card.
It has only floppy drive but I can connect CD-Rom and I can put about 500 Mb HDD as well.
At the moment it works with MSDos 6.2 and Windows 3.1 and it takes about 30 MB from 40 MB hard drive.
Does anybody have any idea if there is a chance to make some puppy work on that computer? :roll:

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#16 Post by Puppyt »

G'day Beefycat and saintless,

thanks for your posts. Bit of a sorry story - since my last post on this thread, both Satellite Pro 430s had lost their screens - and the 16Mb RAM one has declared that it is 'toast' by doing nothing apart from showing a continuously-lit caps lock led when booted up. The 48Mb machine's video port is working so we use a second monitor, but as of yesterday the serial mouse seems to have died... :(

I haven't had the time or the spare change to accomplish the final upgrade on this era of computer - exchanging the old IDE HD for a IDE+SD-card adapter. When I upgraded the original 5400RPM IDE for a 7200RPM, everything became possible and so it is my belief that the upgrade to a snappier solid-state hard drive would squeeze the most amount of blood out that brick. I think a decent 256Mb swap file on an SD drive would ease the pain in other performance areas...
(Discussions with REAL experts on other threads in the DOS environment convince me that CF cards are probably not the way to go, due to CHS addressing incompatibilities that you could expect to run into - whereas any everyday SD card (or more expensive DOM drive) should be fine- BIOS permitting :) )

Beefycat - welcome to the kennels! For low-spec x486 machines the real Puppy experts to follow are goingnuts with his pUPnGO http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 262#383262 and sindi is forging ahead with investigations in zenfunk's Pulp on old Dell Inspirons http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 178#569178. Alas synth didn't get around to completing his TuboPup Xtreme 1.1 http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 156#289156, but v1.0 is pretty naff and sc0ttman is taking TurboPup further with his 'Akita' project that might do wonders for your new pet project http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 382#522382. I don't know whether ttuuxx's 214X series might be a possible candidate for your machine http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 792#306792 - might have too much Bling for your RAM Buck.
technosaurus is pretty prominent in each of those threads, and when you have a developer with such expertise interested in gearing Puppy for vintage computers, you know your chances are good :)

saintless - while it gladdens my heart to see the working specs you posted, my immediate concern is that what you have there is a x386 machine. (I'm resting my feet on mine at the moment - I wrote my honors thesis on it - Win 3.1 + Plannet Crafters Plug-In and MagnaRAM2, RamGate etc - still works better than Win98 (even when switched on)) I could be wrong, but I don't think that any of the Puppy kernels work with x386 -vintage motherboards. So it breaks my heart to point you over to FreeDOS for that machine, v1.1 is to be publicly released in about 2 weeks but you can get an unofficial alpha from their threads.

HTH
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#17 Post by saintless »

Puppyt wrote:G'day Beefycat and saintless,

saintless - while it gladdens my heart to see the working specs you posted, my immediate concern is that what you have there is a x386 machine. (I'm resting my feet on mine at the moment - I wrote my honors thesis on it - Win 3.1 + Plannet Crafters Plug-In and MagnaRAM2, RamGate etc - still works better than Win98 (even when switched on)) I could be wrong, but I don't think that any of the Puppy kernels work with x386 -vintage motherboards. So it breaks my heart to point you over to FreeDOS for that machine, v1.1 is to be publicly released in about 2 weeks but you can get an unofficial alpha from their threads.

HTH
Thank you for the quick respond, Puppyt.
Sorry for your laptop screens and mouse troubles. :cry:
I will check out Free DOS.
Yes, it is 386 processor. I am quite happy with Win 3.1. I even found working cyrillic keyboard layout for it. :) I use it from time to time to write some documents and print them on Star LC-15 printer. There are many good games for DOS too :)
Unfortunately I can't make ethernet card work. It is an old ISA card with input for coaxial cable or something like that and Win 3.1 does not have a driver for it, or I can not find one. I also don't know how to connect it to my modem.
It would be good to have puppy on it, but even just to make that machine boot and work is a little miracle. :lol:

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#18 Post by Puppyt »

Is your ethernet card working at all perhaps? Could you try re-seating the card in case that is your problem with card detection/driver function? I'm pretty sure that FreeDOS should pick it up for you if the card is operational. There have been discussions there recently about the issue of Cyrillic, however - I'm not sure that all fonts/languages are supported in all instances but at least you might be able to rule out hardware corruption.
Cheers!

PS I purchased all my software for Win3.1 mentioned in the previous post, but Plannet Crafter's Plug-In is abandonware now, I believe, and I recommend that you locate a copy and try it. It had user-modifiable right-mouse click operations on the desktop waaaaay back then, just like Puppy today.
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#19 Post by saintless »

Thanks for the advices, Puppyt,
I am not sure the network card is working. I'll do the trick with re-seating and see if it works. I'll try Free DOS and search for Planet Crafter's Plug-in too.
Here is a link to the site I used to download software for Win 3.1 and other old OS. It needs a free registration and it allows only 3 downloads per day, but if you reset the cookie the situation is different :wink: I've got from there Word and Excel for Win 3.1:
http://vetusware.com/

Puppyt
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Joined: Fri 09 May 2008, 23:37
Location: Moorooka, Queensland
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#20 Post by Puppyt »

Ah yes - Vetusware is great - I got WordPerfect 5.1 from there, still on the hunt for anything comparable in current Linux/Windows. Good tip with getting around the daily download limits!
It's a shame but I think that Plug-In will only work with Win3.1 and Win95, and not with any form of DOS. Good luck with your experiments!

One thing I think I neglected to mention is to use your nose when locating the source of hardware malfunctions. I mean, sometimes there are obvious physical "blowouts" and scorchmarks on the cards or circuitboards - but without that, if you can detect a smell similar to burnt cordite /fireworks, your board is probably 'toasted' :(.
Look out too for those little silo-like capacitors - a bulge or break on the top of those means disaster. There was a real scandal back in the early 90's when one of the main supplier companies used the wrong formulae and shortened the life of huge amounts of equipment. I don't know whether your ISA card might be affected in this way - so much else can go wrong in hardware of that era...
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