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| Author |
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cmcgee
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Heritage Computer Questions
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Sep 23 14:37 UTC 2000 |
The place for questions about antique or just tired old computers.
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| 198 responses total. |
keesan
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response 1 of 198:
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Sep 26 22:01 UTC 2000 |
I have found a way to make NewDeal work with all the pre-1993 video cards that
we have with at least 512K free RAM. Run univesa.exe, which is a 20K download
(univesa.zip) as opposed to about 1M for Display Doc (univbe51.exe) and is
free instead of shareware (nagware). It takes up 8K, so I loaded it high
after installing emm386.exe (which took up 4K). I also discovered that
NewDeal and Arachne when used with my ISP, though they were having trouble
with as little as 607K free conventional RAM, can manage with much less once
I load smartdrive (590K works, with smartdrive loaded low). So now we have
612K free, 1024-256 colors, and the internet working. This gives Andy a wide
choice of which computer to use as they can all be made to work with NewDeal
and it is only a matter of number of expansion slots and available RAM for
them. Univesa lists a long list of supported cards, nearly all of which we
have run across at one time or another: Oak 37 or 67, Tseng ET4000 and 3000,
Trident 8900 (C, CL, D), ATI 28800, Realtek 3106, Cirrus Logic CL-...., a few
NCR, and other I never heard of.
Does anyone out there want a computer all set up with NewDeal, once
the new version is out? Software is currently $70 but I might get a discount.
They are selling computers with modems and software for $99.
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tpryan
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response 2 of 198:
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Sep 27 16:32 UTC 2000 |
Sindi, we need to remind tod here that you have the 386 Model 80
IBM PS/2s that he was going to get from me, put couldn't make it. Before
you trash them, let tod get a hold of you for the machines, keyboards,
monitors and mice & cords I was going to give him. He has use for them
as I had/have them set up.
tod, contact keesan for those machines you never made it over to
me to get.
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keesan
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response 3 of 198:
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Sep 28 00:27 UTC 2000 |
He has until October 20, then Andy gets whatever is here. I don't have space
any more than you do to store them. Andy may use two as computers and the
others as parts, but there are plenty to go around, more than plenty.
What is the smallest hard drive onto which one can put BSD? What is the
smallest recommended hard drive for it?
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mcnally
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response 4 of 198:
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Sep 28 02:30 UTC 2000 |
That depends a great deal upon what you require from the BSD installation.
If you want a functional workstation that can connect to the internet using
lynx, telnet, ftp, etc.. you can probably get away with a pretty small
installation (<= 150MB..) If you want a windowing system and a graphical
browser, expect to require about 50-70MB more..
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keesan
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response 5 of 198:
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Sep 28 18:09 UTC 2000 |
So 250M would do it then?
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mcnally
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response 6 of 198:
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Sep 28 20:36 UTC 2000 |
Yes, I think you could probably install a very usable system in 250M
(without having a lot of space left over, mind you..)
I'd worry more about the physical memory on those machines..
Especially if you're going to use X and some sort of graphical browser
(probably Netscape) you'll want at least 16MB of RAM or the machine will
be constantly swapping to disk.. 32MB, or even 24MB, would be much better.
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ball
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response 7 of 198:
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Sep 30 01:04 UTC 2000 |
Sindi, I was scouring Jellyware for your post about BSD, I
didn't expect to stumble across it here in Agora! =o)
Mike, do you think 8Mb would be adequate for a lightly
loaded BSD box (without X)? I realise 16Mb would be more
comfortable, but I'd welcome your input.
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keesan
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response 8 of 198:
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Sep 30 02:45 UTC 2000 |
Someone was kind enough to design an item specifically about old computers,
so I put the question in it. We can probably come up with 16M for you if
needed. At least if you don't need two hard drives too. Or maybe even if
you do (if Jim can fix or replace one power supply in a tower).
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gull
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response 9 of 198:
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Sep 30 17:29 UTC 2000 |
If BSD will still install with 8 megs, it'll probably be fine. A
lightly-loaded, text-only distribution generally takes more RAM to install
than to run (because when you install, swap space isn't active yet, mostly.)
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mcnally
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response 10 of 198:
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Sep 30 21:12 UTC 2000 |
I haven't tried installing BSD on a machine with that little memory in
years and I can't guess whether it will still work, but back in the days
when I still had a 486 box, I used to run 386BSD, and later FreeBSD 2.*
on an 8MB machine. It swapped a lot when I compiled stuff, but basically
it did work, even if performance wasn't wonderful
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ball
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response 11 of 198:
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Sep 30 21:59 UTC 2000 |
As I said to Sindi in an email, 16Mb would probably make BSD
more comfortable =o) No-one seems to know what the minimum
disk requirement is, perhaps because no two BSD installations
are the same?
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keesan
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response 12 of 198:
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Oct 1 01:16 UTC 2000 |
We had Netscape 2 running on 6M RAM, though they said it needed 8M, but it
crashed a lot. Would BSD crash with 8M?
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mdw
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response 13 of 198:
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Oct 1 02:49 UTC 2000 |
It won't crash. At least, it shouldn't crash. Older versions of 386bsd
would get sick and hang, because the paging code got confused about
stack space and would end up losing memory, but that's ancient history
today.
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keesan
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response 14 of 198:
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Oct 1 10:32 UTC 2000 |
Would a computer that won't work with a 540M drive work with 2x270 drives?
The 540 worked in a pentium but not in a 486.
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bdh3
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response 15 of 198:
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Oct 1 10:48 UTC 2000 |
Do the two 270M drives work in the 486 and the 586? Duh.
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scott
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response 16 of 198:
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Oct 1 13:36 UTC 2000 |
Yes, but how would the OS and apps be split amongst two drives? It's
certainly possible, but would be more work to install.
On DOS it's pretty straightforward, you get a C drive and a D drive. OS on
C drive, most apps on D.
Under Unix, the 2nd drive can become another directory with capacity separate
from the other directories, so maybe you'd have a lot of stuff on the root
filesystem, then mount the 2nd disk as /disk2 and load a bunch of apps into
that.
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ball
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response 17 of 198:
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Oct 1 13:39 UTC 2000 |
Sindi, 540Mb is larger than the "528Mb barrier" that existed
on many earlier systems with ATA, that's why I kept asking
about the values for Cylinders, Heads and Sectors per track.
Both 270Mb drives will be smaller than this limit, which is
good, but you'll need to check they like each other enough
to share an ATA channel.
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keesan
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response 18 of 198:
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Oct 1 15:31 UTC 2000 |
We can find two identical drives. My question was whether a BIOS that cannot
handle a single drive that is 540 could handle two drives that add to this.
If the drives are the same brand but different sizes would this also work?
Did most 486s have this barrier? We got one to work with 500M, but neither
540 nor 800 would work in a couple of 486s but worked in a pentium.
Figure out how much hard drive you need for your second server, and we will
find some drives that add to this. What software will be on it? We could
probably get as high as 600 (270 plus 340) but would want to set this up and
configure to make sure it worked before you took it. The larger server has
600 and you might want to use identical software. For the second server with
two drives, did you also need a free bay?
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ball
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response 19 of 198:
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Oct 1 16:59 UTC 2000 |
It's not always easy to predict whether a 486 is limited to
528Mb, it's largely dependent on the machine's firmware and
some 486 PCs are flash upgradeable. Some large drives come
with software work-arounds (for DOS / Windows). Some ATA
host adaptors have on-board BIOS extensions. Often people
have to resort to trial and error.
It's a per-drive limitation though, so two drives that were
individually less than 528Mb wouldn't encounter this problem
but as noted earlier may have other incompatibilities. If
they're from the same manufacturer that may help, but again
trying it in practice is the only way to be sure.
I'll reply about the servers via email, since it won't be of
general interest.
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keesan
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response 20 of 198:
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Oct 2 00:42 UTC 2000 |
We have two identical pentium boards, we have set the switches the same, and
one board works with 2 72-pin SIMMs. The other board, using the same exact
components, gives the message on booting: Himem.sys error checking himem.
Himem.sys has detected unreadable XMS memory at address 277870h.
Is this board usable as is, and if not is there something on it that should
be replaced? Booted from hard drive, DOS 6.22.
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ball
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response 21 of 198:
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Oct 2 01:13 UTC 2000 |
How much RAM does it have?
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keesan
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response 22 of 198:
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Oct 2 01:35 UTC 2000 |
Two 4M or two 8M SIMMs. I hunted all over the internet for similar problems,
and people suggested software problems, virus problems, or bad RAM. There
was one suggestion to try the other SIMM sockets in case of a bad socket, and
this board allows you to bypass bank A and use bank B. (Jim is testing now...)
One person had their problem develop overnight without having done anything.
With the two 8's in the other bank it would not boot from the hard drive
(which has himem.sys) but would boot from the floppy. With the two 4's (he
is changing memory size in configuration) same problem. He says we have not
checked to make sure all the CMOS settings are the same. The booklet says
you can put the two SIMMs in either bank and leave the other empty.
We also have one other pentium board to try (60MHz) which a friend gave us
because it would not work after he changed the battery. Lots to play with.
The one that worked came with a 100MHz cpu, and was set to 50x2 (three
switches) and can also handle 60x2 or either times 3/2.
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keesan
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response 23 of 198:
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Oct 2 01:46 UTC 2000 |
Jim says he got things straightened out to the point where he gets the same
exact error message when the two SIMMs are put into either bank 0 or bank 1
in the problem motherboard, an no error in the other motherboard. I expect
he will not rest until he has checked all the CMOS settings first. More
later. He already fixed a computer with 'bad floppy drive' (reseated the
controller), the wrong cpu setting (it came with 33MHz, someone changed the
cpu to DX250MHz without changing the setting or adding a heat sink), and the
wrong hard drive for that BIOS (the 540). This is stuff we cleared out of
the back aisle at Kiwanis that other people had given up on, which we are
trying to make a few good computers out of for Andy's project. There will
probably be more appeals for help as we push things to their limits.
What sort of wrong CMOS setting might cause an XMS problem?
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n8nxf
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response 24 of 198:
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Oct 2 13:06 UTC 2000 |
I have some software somewhere that'll allow you to put bigger drives on
IDE controllers with the 540 meg limit. Want it?
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