Which Puppy for an older computer?

Booting, installing, newbie
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infromthepound
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#16 Post by infromthepound »

If I have to burn a CD/DVD as an ISO with "Doze, I use Deep Burner (The free version). I find it very simple.
I think that daemon Tools Lite is highly regarded too (And it's free)
JB

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Fossil
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Location: Gloucestershire, UK.

#17 Post by Fossil »

One of the simplest programs to burn an ISO to a CD, via Windows, is BurnCDCC. It's free. Get it from here.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downlo ... ftware.htm
Make sure that the host CD/RW is completely clean and reformatted - without traces of any previous programs - before burning a new ISO. Burn slowly. Lack of computer memory is going to be your major problem - you can't cram a quart into a pint pot! A smaller Puppy is the way to go. Perhaps try, Puppy-4.1.2-lite (71mb), from here: http://412collection.co.uk/b-bones.php#bb
A Linux swap-partition is also going to be a necessity. Please follow Dewbie's advice.

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Ray MK
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#18 Post by Ray MK »

Hi circularL7 and welcome to Puppyland (aka The Kennels).
Dewbie’s advice is very good and should get you going quickly.
BurnCDCC - extremely good, probably the best (with windows).
Hopefully - some of the following may also be of use.

leave w98 as is for the moment, but fully defrag your hdd before doing anything radical, if not already done.

Wary won’t run well on your machine, but other Puppy’s will.

Try Puppy 3.01, Puppy 2.14 and MeanPup 2.02
burn to a CD - boot and see which puppy runs best.
would start with Puppy 3.01 because it’s still very capable.

An afterthought - 2 more very usable puppy’s are Breeezy and Safepup.
And as suggested - a 412 puppy from the 412 collection would be another excellent choice - which reminds me - ChoicePup - well worth a look.

Once one puppy is booted and up and running - your machine can be properly prepared for the installations of many more.

Hope you have lots of fun with Puppy and that you find it as easy to use and as useful as I have. Very best regards - Ray
[b]Asus[/b] 701SD. 2gig ram. 8gb SSD. [b]IBM A21m[/b] laptop. 192mb ram. PIII Coppermine proc. [b]X60[/b] T2400 1.8Ghz proc. 2gig ram. 80gb hdd. [b]T41[/b] Pentium M 1400Mhz. 512mb ram.

jakfish
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#19 Post by jakfish »

4.31 is a good puppy for your specs. I use it on P1 133 computer with 114mb RAM. It runs better than its original OS (W2K).

Good luck w/ getting it up and running. Just think of all you're learning along the way :)

Jake

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greengeek
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#20 Post by greengeek »

CD and CDRW media contains information that specifies the burning speeds they can support. Some burning programs will only offer you the burning speeds that they think the particular CDRW wants to use. If I were you I would try to get hold of a CDR rather than a CDRW, and try to find a burning program that WILL let you select 4x as the burning speed. (of course it might be that your burner is only capable of 10x minimum but I suspect not)

I haven't had any success using CDRWs on my systems, but some other people use them successfully all the time. I think it may be more reliable to stick to CDRs to try and get past this problem.

EDIT: oops, I missed your comment about having found another disk that DOES write at 4x. I would still try to find a CDR though if poss...

EDIT: If it turns out not to be burn related it could be an issue with ram size, or that the PC doesn't handle CD booting the same way other machines do. Maybe have a look at this post/topic:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 0&start=24 Forum member eskimo (not the original poster for that thread..) added some questions about CD boot problems on his machine and there were a variety of replies from sfeeley, monsie, dewbie and tommy etc about how to use a floppy or a specially made CD to access the puppy files.

If your machine doesn't like booting Puppy from CD you may have to look at some of those alternatives.

circularL7
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#21 Post by circularL7 »

Thank you all for the help. I didn't accomplish what I had intended, but I've gained enough confidence through the experience to investigate newer computers.

Thank you.

Dewbie

#22 Post by Dewbie »

circularL7 wrote:
Thank you all for the help. I didn't accomplish what I had intended, but I've gained enough confidence through the experience to investigate newer computers.

OK, this might be easier to follow, instead of the manual.
For the most part, it refers to a full installation.
(Don't forget to test the Puppy for compatibility before installing.)

However, when you get to step 19, install the grub4dos .pet (linked earlier in thread) and use it instead.
(Try GRUB if you'd like...but it can be very picky...)
Also, grub4dos is built-in to some Puppies, but not 4.3.1.

Dewbie

#23 Post by Dewbie »

jakfish wrote:
4.31 is a good puppy for your specs. I use it on P1 133 computer with 114mb RAM. It runs better than its original OS (W2K).

Just for the record...are you running regular 4.3.1, or one of the retros?
(and if so, which kernel?)

circularL7
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Joined: Sat 02 Feb 2013, 07:26

#24 Post by circularL7 »

Dewbie wrote:circularL7 wrote:
Thank you all for the help. I didn't accomplish what I had intended, but I've gained enough confidence through the experience to investigate newer computers.

OK, this might be easier to follow, instead of the manual.
For the most part, it refers to a full installation.
(Don't forget to test the Puppy for compatibility before installing.)

However, when you get to step 19, install the grub4dos .pet (linked earlier in thread) and use it instead.
(Try GRUB if you'd like...but it can be very picky...)
Also, grub4dos is built-in to some Puppies, but not 4.3.1.
Hi, Dewbie.

Now that I've finally played with this and am getting a (slippery) grip on these machines, do you think that there's anything that I can use this thing for if I do finally get it over to a Puppy? For me, the machine is strictly for learning and experimenting, but I now wonder if it's even worth that.

What do you think?

Dewbie

#25 Post by Dewbie »

circularL7 wrote:
do you think that there's anything that I can use this thing for if I do finally get it over to a Puppy? For me, the machine is strictly for learning and experimenting, but I now wonder if it's even worth that.
You're still referring to this one, right?:
late 90's HP Intel Celeron; 266Mhz; Win 98; 112MB RAM; maybe 5GB.
If so, there are two obvious limitations:
1. YouTube or anything involving Flash video will be out of the question; processor is too slow.
(Also, you'll probably need Flashblock to conserve CPU/RAM when visiting websites.)

2. Newer browsers will likely be a problem; each release gets progressively heavier.

For full-featured browser I use SeaMonkey 1.x series.
It's relatively light and meets most of my needs.

I also use a lightweight browser called Dillo.
It's very fast, but doesn't support Flash, Java, cookies, history, etc...so you can't do e-mail or visit certain websites with it.

That box would be an interesting test case.
If nothing else you could try various Puppies and post the results here.
(provided you have the time, of course...)

circularL7
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#26 Post by circularL7 »

Dewbie wrote:If so, there are two obvious limitations:
1. YouTube or anything involving Flash video will be out of the question; processor is too slow.
(Also, you'll probably need Flashblock to conserve CPU/RAM when visiting websites.)

2. Newer browsers will likely be a problem; each release gets progressively heavier.

For full-featured browser I use SeaMonkey 1.x series.
It's relatively light and meets most of my needs.

I also use a lightweight browser called Dillo.
It's very fast, but doesn't support Flash, Java, cookies, history, etc...so you can't do e-mail or visit certain websites with it.

That box would be an interesting test case.
If nothing else you could try various Puppies and post the results here.
(provided you have the time, of course...)
That's the one, the '98 special. (It was manufactured in '98.)

I might do that.

What about using it to learn about programming and computers in general? Is there an old compiler that I could download (for free) that would help me get a feel for coding?

Dewbie

#27 Post by Dewbie »

circularL7 wrote:
What about using it to learn about programming and computers in general? Is there an old compiler that I could download (for free) that would help me get a feel for coding?
Don't know the answer to that one; you'll likely get more replies if you start a separate thread.

jakfish
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#28 Post by jakfish »

@Dewbie: No, I'm running puppy 4.32, in fact; ttuuxx's updated apps but with the regular kernel. Seamonkey not so good, but Links/Sylpheed does just fine. As does Softmaker 2008.

J

Dewbie

#29 Post by Dewbie »

@jakfish:
Wow, that's strange...RetroTechGuy said his 333MHz box will only run the 4.3.1 retro kernels.
I'm running puppy 4.32...Seamonkey not so good
With 4.3.2, ttuuxxx changed to SeaMonkey 2.x series, which is noticeably slower.
Try FirePup.
It's a bit dated, but runs like a bat out of hell.

circularL7
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Joined: Sat 02 Feb 2013, 07:26

#30 Post by circularL7 »

Dewbie wrote:Don't know the answer to that one; you'll likely get more replies if you start a separate thread.
I will. Thanks.

jakfish
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Joined: Fri 18 Jul 2008, 19:09

#31 Post by jakfish »

@Dewbie: I run 4.32 on an ancient Sony Vaio Picturebook, one of those with the Crusoe processor. The processor may have something to do with it, though on my equally-ancient IBM Thinkpad 570 (PII-300Mhz), 4.32 works as well, and much faster.

I will try that firepup, thanks for the tip.

Jake

tommy
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Location: Italy

#32 Post by tommy »

I suggest to use a barebones version of Puppy. I'm at this very moment writing this post on a acer 355 featuring Pentium non-mmx 133MHz, no L2 cache and 40MB ram. I run puppy barebones 2.01r2 on it. Your PC is faster than mine. You can add old Firefox 1.5 or Opera 9 to it, download at http://dotpups.de on puppy 1 and 2 section (dig into it to find other puppy 2.x stuff). Memory footprint is very little, but a swapfile is required, though! I use this old junk to connect remotely from home to work PC, using rdesktop and VNC through a ssh tunnel.

You can also try out Turbopup extreme, Akita (beta13 at present), 2.14R.
Good luck!

starhawk
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#33 Post by starhawk »

Heads-up -- TurboPup breaks when you try to change how it works or improve it. It works fine until you try to modify it, and then it makes a real mess on the carpet. (I've tried this.) Also, there is only one wallpaper setup that will ever work, and that's basic black.

Also, while ClassicPup will run, it's going to be incredibly slow because it's full of flashy special effects that bog down any processor.

FWIW, check out the "pUPnGO 2012 Plus Extras" thread in Puppy Projects here on the forum. I've got the FreeOffice version running on an old laptop with a 300MHz Pentium II CPU and 128MB RAM. Works great. Since Celeron's didn't come out until the Pentium II era anyways, you'll be OK (I can't guarantee that it'll run on a Pentium I or a K6-II or anything like that!).

circularL7
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Joined: Sat 02 Feb 2013, 07:26

#34 Post by circularL7 »

Haha. You guys/gals are great. I finally have an excuse to buy all the old computer stuff that I thought were junk. Now that the '98 is running smoothly for all kinds of things that it has never done before, I'll have my eyes peeled for experiments.

I need an old printer, so I can print e-books. :D

Dewbie

#35 Post by Dewbie »

circularL7 wrote:
Now that the '98 is running smoothly
Which Puppy version is it running?

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