[SUCCESS STORY] Computing like it's 1999, woohoo!

[starhawk]

I wasn't sure it could be done... heck, of everyone I mentioned the idea to, I had the most faith in it, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't be possible. Yet, amazed and bemused, here we are.

I'm typing this from Puppy running on a 1999 laptop. I actually made this old heap of junk useful.

(This is not an April Fool's joke. I promise.)

System specs & info...

Dell Latitude D300XT
300 MHz Pentium II CPU
Intel 440BX Chipset
128 MB RAM (+384 MB swap partition)
20gb Fujitsu MHT2020A IDE Hard Drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM "Combo Drive"

...at least the screen is XGA (1024x768)...

This system is still a One Task Harry... running the browser and anything else at the same time slows it down big time.

Keep in mind that the system is remarkably limited. The only instruction set extensions the CPU has are... MMX. I don't get SSE with this system, let alone SSE2. (SSE came out with the Katmai-core [first-generation] Pentium III, and SSE2 with the Willamette-core [first generation] Pentium 4's). On top of that, the CPU runs at a hair under a third of a gigahertz -- 29.3% of 1024 MHz (remember, everything in computers is powers of two, unless you're a hard drive manufacturer). The RAM this thing uses is of a kind that is no longer made to the best of my knowledge; it's called "EDO" (extended data output) RAM. In this system it runs at all of 66 MHz. Whoo. Since that RAM is now somewhat rare, it's also somewhat expensive. I've got half what this system can take, maximum, in it right now. (You read that correctly, it maxes out at a quarter of a gig of RAM -- 256 MB.) It's what I could justify paying for...

Oh yeah, and the spacebar isgimpy sometimes. LOL. (I don't trust the battery, either.)

I have put many different Pups on this computer and they all bog it down to bits. TurboPup XTreme runs okayish... but I can't stand the limits it imposes aesthetically. ClassicPup is obnoxiously slow. AnitaOS won't boot. Anything else is either really dang slow, really dang old, or (more likely) both.

In addition, this Dell uses a weird graphics chip (NeoMagic 2160B + 2 MB VRAM stolen out of the main system RAM) that plays tricks with the screen (dang thing always reports itself as 800x600, ugh) and a very very odd ISA audio controller (Crystal 4237B) that has not functioned in Puppy since somewhere around Pup412. Not kidding -- in later versions of Puppy, the driver changed in some way and so Puppy is one mute dog.

Until now.

Inspired by a post of rokytnji's -- I installed Precise 571 Retro from CD. Frugal install to the hard drive. Added Slimboat (I actually wanted to try SlimJet -- ah, but it requires SSE2, oh well), Claws Mail, and SoftMaker FreeOffice 2012. It works!

Hurdles --

(1) Precise did not want to save session. (By which I mean it utterly refused.) Workaround: use SimplePupSave to create an empty savefile, and patch init to force PupMode 13 so that the savefile would always be used. (Remember to disable the 30min save-to-ram bit -- having that there really bogs things down when it kicks in!)

(2) Screen reports itself as 800x600 and consequently looks truly horrible -- everything is badly pixellated and the screen doesn't actually fill the screen. Fix: edit xorg.conf to reflect the fact that the monitor is a 1024x768 setup with 16 bit color depth. Delete all xorg.conf versions other than the one specifically named xorg.conf. (For example, xorg.conf0 has to go.) Then, and only then, restart X (either Menu > Shutdown > Restart X or CTRL+ALT+BKSP and 'xwin' [ENTER] at the prompt). That *will* fix the screen.

(3) Audio. For once, not much to do here! Although I should note -- the audio playback checker in the Sound Wizard (initial dialog from Menu > Setup > ALSA Sound Wizard) does NOT work, but playback through eg pMusic does.

(4) It's old and slow. Nothing fixable here but that's actually kind of the point.

This system runs acceptably as a light web-browsing system (I have not gone to YouTube with this heap yet! that's next...), and would be almost perfect, if not actually perfect, for someone who needed a super cheap word processor with limited Web/email capabilities. It's also eco-friendly, since it's not rotting in a landfill or being reduced to valuable periodic elements and slag in some rural Chinese town by chemicals that would make an EPA investigator barf, faint, and/or commit suicide.

So there you have it. In conclusion, get off my lawn

[nic007]

You'll do better with Puppy 412 and Opera 11 or 12. Windows 98 (or even 2000) will probably give the best performance overall.

[rokytnji]

So there you have it. In conclusion, get off my lawn

Been kinda there and done that

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/fix ... -gear.html

Back then. I sold that for more than one could expect or think.

[01micko]

me too

[ardvark]

Hi Starhawk...

Excellent work with that! But can't I finish my hot dog, though?!

Regards...

[darry1966]

Now that is what I call a sexy beast of a laptop.
http://www.baber.com/used/used_laptops/ ... 00xt-2.htm

There is a 412 based distro that works on beasts like this.....

Hondasid:= http://hondasid1984.angelfire.com/puplets.html

[8Geee]

What... no Toshiba 12x CD/RW?

j/k nice job

[starhawk]

Wow, lots of responses. Cool! Was not expecting that to be inspired from this ol' heap ding'n'dent laptop

@roky -- well done!

@01micko -- nice I actually have a Toshiba T3400CT... can't boot from the nice (real 16b PCMCIA!) HP external 4x CD-RW drive I have for it -- but I can boot from floppy they do not make computers like they used to lol, that thing is built like a tank. Oh, and the battery still holds a charge! (Dunno how long, though, haven't actually tested it. I do not trust that batt.)

Hey, you're a dev -- you tell me what Puppy I should try on that dusty old Toshiba. LOL.

@ardvark -- chow down, and enjoy. Make mine a Sabrett's, with onions'n'sauce (aka "cooked onions"), fresh onions, and brown mustard... what? Both my parents are from upstate NJ, ten min over the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan itself, lol.

@darry -- haha like them curves, do ya? I'd forgotten about Uhuru... TBH if I were going to go with a 4xx puppy I'd try and convince AnitaOS to run on it (that's one of yours, isn't it?). Modern glibc and all that.

@8Geee -- lol. The one in there is a Matsushita combo drive, that's gotta count for something. LOL. It's not even supposed to be there, it's a Thinkpad drive. I took apart a Dell Modular Bay module, stuffed the drive in (a significant upgrade over the original 24x ROM drive in that housing) and put it back together literally with Scotch tape. It's a sight... but the BIOS sees it and knows what it is, so I'm all good.

[ardvark]

@ardvark -- chow down, and enjoy. Make mine a Sabrett's, with onions'n'sauce (aka "cooked onions"), fresh onions, and brown mustard... what? Both my parents are from upstate NJ, ten min over the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan itself, lol.

[drool] Ah, a dog connoisseur! [/drool]

Regards...

[darry1966]

AnitaOS is yes.

Remember with my foggy brain running it - that is Uhuru 4.12 or 4.21 on Toshiba Pentium 2 laptop and it was apart from Damn Small the only thing that would run anyway enjoy that machine I luv the old stuff like that.

I have been running LinuxBBq lately they have some spins that may run on that too. They use Window Managers like DWM and Awesome etc and a lot of command line apps like MOC and low memory gui apps. Minimalism is their middle name.

Anyway a cool story thanks for showing us your iron.

[starhawk]

[drool] Ah, a dog connoisseur! [/drool]

Regards...

Ha! Sort of. I've had real NYC hot dogs. That's one of two acceptable recipes, I'm told... coincidentally, Mom likes the other. Saurkraut and brown mustard and nothing else. Well, OK, she fudges a bit. Despite being a Northerner, she prefers yellow mustard over brown! (I don't get it, either *shrug* )

[greengeek]

Goodonya Starhawk. I've got a similar machine so I will copy what you've done. Just one thing - you've spilled the mustard on your signature logo

[starhawk]

Eh, that's supposed to look like that

[rokytnji]

Make mine a Sabrett's

I get em here on the Mexican Border. They are high dollar dogs vs the 98 cents package.
But the crunch is worth it.

@roky -- well done!

It was done back when a banged up computer was still worth something.
Not like today where a used Chromebook can be had for under a 100 bucks.

Posted this from my other piece of junk that has not died yet that most folks would not bother with.

Code: Select all

$ inxi -M
Machine:   System: Matsushita product: CF-48V4HLUQM v: 004
           Mobo: Matsushita model: CF48-4 v: 001
           Bios: Phoenix K.K. v: V4.00L13 date: 12/12/2002

Panasonic CF-48 toughbook. Boys with the most toys win.

Edit. Oh. But it does have

Code: Select all

$ inxi -f
CPU:       Single core Intel Pentium 4 Mobile (-UP-) cache: 512 KB
           speed/max: 1200/1600 MHz
           CPU Flags: acpi bts clflush cmov cx8 de dts fpu fxsr ht mca mce mmx
           msr mtrr pae pat pebs pge pse pse36 sep ss sse sse2 tm tsc vme

[metastasis69]

It's good to know that this machine was resurrected back to life. It's too late that I just discovered this distribution few years back. I just throw away an old computer without trying a linux distro with it. Now, I have this old clunker using a pentium 4 running like a charm using tharpup 6.0. non pae.

[nubc]

You're running Precise 5.7 on an old lappy, when you could have put Wary 5.x? Wary is intended to run lite on older, low-end machines. In its day, Wary was the flagship version of Puppy, personally managed by Puppy creator Barry K. Would help a lot to up the RAM to 256 MB.

[starhawk]

Anything between Puppy 420 (or was it 412? can't remember) and Precise 571 Retro has no sound output. Something changed in the relevant driver, either by way of source configuration or Puppy-specific implementation, that rendered it broken on that hardware.

This Dell uses some very strange stuff inside.

[chillinfart]

I remember that alsaconf can detect those ISA cards (tested with a Creative AWE64) and Crystal was on it's database.

Is Puppy 4.x? Otherwise, you should compile and replace it.

[MikefromD]

You guys are running a lot older than me. The oldest I tried Wary 5.5 on was an old Sager laptop from 2000. That one actually had trouble skipping through videos. Typing this on HP laptop about 2003 I finally got wireless to connect. I heard there was OS named DSL for Damn Small Linux or something like that and read in some forum from a guy using it to get online with an old IBM PS2
I'm not real computer adept, but glad there is something like Puppy to help keep me experimenting

[Puppyt]

Thanks for an inspirational report, starhawk
Picked up two desktop mini-towers at the dump a few days ago - 1TB hard drives, 4-8GB DDR3 ram, USB 3 whatsits, win7 home premium (perhaps no wonder the owners decided to trash) - that's sad. What's sadder is I have more reverence for a 1996 Toshi Satellite 430CDS lappie (Pentium 120) with 16Mb ram... and the target of a how-to I wrote on the Murga forum a while back. I have FreeDOS on it, boots to the dos game menu in 11 seconds and wheeeee...
Main trouble is, the screen died. I haven't looked at it in yonks but I think the backlight tube blew. My intention was to replace it with an LCD solution. Starhawk - and maybe rokytnji or anyone else reading this thread with a thing for tinkering - have you had success doing such an operation? Sorry to hijack your thread starhawk