I finally trashed my 14 year old Pentium II computer--it ran Windows2000 fine, but never could run L

[JeffM]

I can't really see the point
of trying to get any desktop use out of such an old system.

Well, there are some guys
who think it's a reasonable pastime to try to ride a bull.

Some guys create art out of grains of rice.

Yes, you can certainly get it running using a variety of distros
- but why bother?

Reportedly, when asked "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?",
George Mallory replied "Because it's there".

In another post in this thread,
I pointed to someone who had antiX going with 32MB of RAM.

I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to find
someone here who remembers running Linux with 8MB of RAM.

You are not going to use the system for anything,
unless you have need of a bulky thin client.

Ah, that we were all so affluent
that we could turn up our noses at every bit of old gear.
Ex-IT pro, teacher, and blogger Robert Pogson is in northern Canada
where most of his students have been native peoples
who have been screwed by governments for generations.
He has to use whatever hardware he can get his hands on.
Thin clients are a huge part of his method.
http://google.com/search?q=site:mrpogson.com+thin-client+OR+thin-clients&num=100
Of course he uses Linux.

....and you realize, of course, that the OP is a WinTroll
who only uses a computer to do secretarial work
and who can't use any software outside of preinstalled Windoze
and preinstalled M$Office.

 

[RayLopez99]

We find it hard to understand for 14 years you never once needed
to open the case (exposing the RAM chips to inspection.)

I never said that. I just said "after all these years". As I recall
I did play with the memory years ago.

And who is "we"?

RL

 

[JeffM]

I'm running Debian squeeze on this old piece of junk:
Cyrix MII 300 [MHz] CPU;

Note: The abbreviation of Heinrich Hertz's name gets capitalized
even when it's preceded by another capital letter.

64 MiB (70 ns) EDO-RAM;
[...]
the machine's main function is serving as a syslog server
for my Ubee EVW3200 Wireless "MODEM" (understatement).

My hat is off to you, dude.
Finding another way to use old hardware gains my admiration.
Not turning that kit into yet more landfill
makes the Greenie in me smile.

....and a Cyrix--WOW, like my first non-386 computer
(second-hand even then).

The problem with RayLopez is that
he doesn't [intend] to use or learn anything about GNU/Linux.

....nor use any software that doesn't come preinstalled
nor use software that can do anything besides secretarial tasks.

His only purpose is to troll
Obviously.

and miserably fails over and over and over again.

He is obviously a dull-witted masochist.

 

[William Poaster]

In reply to JeffM who posted:

David Brown wrote:

...and you realize, of course, that the OP is a WinTroll
who only uses a computer to do secretarial work
and who can't use any software outside of preinstalled Windoze
and preinstalled M$Office.

And the troll also declared that he uses pirated Windoze.

"I love my $5 copy of Windows 7 bought in SE Asia."
RayLopez99
M-ID: <[email protected]>
Tue, 05 Apr 2011

 

[Goblin]

In reply to JeffM who posted:




And the troll also declared that he uses pirated Windoze.

"I love my $5 copy of Windows 7 bought in SE Asia."
RayLopez99
M-ID:<[email protected]>
Tue, 05 Apr 2011

$5? That much?

You know what they say - "A fool and his money are easy parted"

I wouldn't even download Windows 7 for free. I'm very happy with the
choices Ive made and don't want to think of a life with Windows ever
again.....burned too many times.

--
Openbytes the Linux/FOSS Blogazine! - http://www.openbytes.tk
"Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui."
Catch me in #techrights on freenode.net

BytesMedia: www.bytesmedia.co.uk

Email: (e-mail address removed)

Skype: tim.openbytes
Twitter: twitter.com/_goblin
Identi.ca: identi.ca/openbytes

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

In reply to JeffM who posted:




And the troll also declared that he uses pirated Windoze.

"I love my $5 copy of Windows 7 bought in SE Asia."
RayLopez99
M-ID: <[email protected]>
Tue, 05 Apr 2011

and he claims to be a millionaire, too.

 

[Goblin]

and he claims to be a millionaire, too.

Maybe he's a millionare because of the fact he doesn't pay full price on
Microsoft products..... I'd certainly have saved many a penny if I
hadn't wastefully forked out on Microsoft products over the years.

--
Openbytes the Linux/FOSS Blogazine! - http://www.openbytes.tk
"Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui."
Catch me in #techrights on freenode.net

BytesMedia: www.bytesmedia.co.uk

Email: (e-mail address removed)

Skype: tim.openbytes
Twitter: twitter.com/_goblin
Identi.ca: identi.ca/openbytes

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

Maybe he's a millionare because of the fact he doesn't pay full price on
Microsoft products..... I'd certainly have saved many a penny if I
hadn't wastefully forked out on Microsoft products over the years.

I don't think I have paid for a Microsoft software product for...mm.
well over ten years anyway. Win 98 OEM that was.

I think I bought a Microsoft mouse though.

 

[Goblin]

I don't think I have paid for a Microsoft software product for...mm.
well over ten years anyway. Win 98 OEM that was.

I think I bought a Microsoft mouse though.

Mmm...last Microsoft package I bought.....I suppose it would have been
Vista and it was worth every penny. It convinced me to move to Linux
100% on the desktop at home.

That sort of advice is priceless.


--
Openbytes the Linux/FOSS Blogazine! - http://www.openbytes.tk
"Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui."
Catch me in #techrights on freenode.net

BytesMedia: www.bytesmedia.co.uk

Email: (e-mail address removed)

Skype: tim.openbytes
Twitter: twitter.com/_goblin
Identi.ca: identi.ca/openbytes

 

[Marti Van Lin]

Well, there are some guys
who think it's a reasonable pastime to try to ride a bull.

Some guys create art out of grains of rice.

Because I recycle those machines, gratis and mainly to elderly who don't
need all this horsepower.

Reportedly, when asked "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?",
George Mallory replied "Because it's there".

In another post in this thread,
I pointed to someone who had antiX going with 32MB of RAM.

I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to find
someone here who remembers running Linux with 8MB of RAM.

My minimum was A Pentium 166 MMC with 16 MiB RAM, ATI Mach64 based GPU
(2 MiB VRAM) and a 2.1 GiB IDE HDD. Dualboot running SuSE Linux
6.1/Windows 95.

But... I also ran Uzix 1.0 on a MSX2 machine with 128 KiB RAM.

http://uzix.sourceforge.net/

Oh well, mutt, slrn, Midnight Commander and aptitude run just fine on it
and the machine doesn't stand in my way. Also my wireless
MODEM/router/firewall/switch thingy requires a external machine to send
its logs to (using syslogd) and this old piece of trash, which nobody
wants, is perfect for that task ;-)

 

[JeffM]

What I do is collect the best useful parts of multiple machines
and build the best configuration possible.
[...]nobody seems to be interested in this particular machine.
[Therefore] I use it my self.
I'm not going to throw a perfectly working machine away.

K.Mandla has one of the 2 blogs which recently went quiet.
(Job responsibilities in his case.)
He has documented many years of using ancient, sparse laptops.
One machine that wasn't useful for general-purpose work
got a special assignment.
http://google.com/search?q=site:kmandla.wordpress.com+intitle:weather+intitle:clock
He lives in Japan and perhaps it was one of their temblors
which, after he had worked so carefully to get it going,
caused that machine to fall down from the wall one day. 8-(
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/an-apology-and-a-eulogy/

 

[Don Phillipson]

I never said that. I just said "after all these years". As I recall
I did play with the memory years ago.

And who is "we"?

We is the NG users to whom you originally posted. We
suppose you hoped for more than one reader.

 

[RayLopez99]

We is the NG users to whom you originally posted.  We
suppose you hoped for more than one reader.

The Royal "we". You presume to speak for all the readers in all the
myriad of countries reading each and every one of my brilliant posts,
eagerly awaiting my reply?

Pretty presumptuous of you.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

I still have an old, heavy Micron P2 450 Mhz system (256 MB of RAM) at
work as a test PC, BUT only for old Windows (98 to 2K) when needed (very
rare -- last time used was probably last year or two). Mostly it is
powered off and disconnected to last longer.

It's a common myth that disconnecting your PC will make the HD last
longer. Not really true (granted with no power it will last longer).
Reason is that hard drives are affected by cosmic rays (particles)
that bombard everything and everybody even indoors... and these will
often cause a HD to fail, not to mention metal oxide will corrode
slightly with time. So I've read on the net.

Yes, we have virtual
machines (VMs) but sometimes you still need to use those real PCs! The
only thing broken is its 3.5" floppy disk that doesn't work (never got
to replace it).

Why didn't you junk yank its HDD out and donate/sell the rest?

Because here in Athens, Greece they don't have charities that give
receipts, so no US tax writeoff. Besides it's a pretty poor computer
experience to give some kid a crummy old machine with such small RAM
that it constantly disk thrashes. Still, it paid for itself several
times over with the amount of Serious Work I did on it.

What is your experience with Virtual Machines? I'm thinking of
installing Visual Studio 2008 on such a VM (running XP)--while under
Windows 7. Do you think it will work? Or are VMs not really the same
as a physical machine (keep in mind Visual Studio is pretty complex--
not like running WordPad or something trivial).

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

It will work, just slow. Be sure your host PC is fast and plenty of RAM.
I use VM for testing softwares which is nice not to trash my real PCs
and I can do snapshots to retry scenarios. Try VirtualBox.org which
is free. VMware Workstation is not free but has better features IMO
(e.g., drag and drop between host and guest machines).
--

OK thanks Ant. I will try VirtualBox.org. I did load a VM from
Microsoft, also free, but I'll try this offering from Sun as well, as
it also runs on Microsoft Windows. Correct me if I'm wrong but I
think with a virtual machine you can, if you screw up installation of
the program, simply delete the VM and it's like nuking a HD and
starting over. I like that feature... Also I'm curious how you backup
a virtual machine, but I assume that any persistent state is stored in
some folder of the VM, so that would be like a "hard drive" on the
real machine. Presumably you can back up the 'hard drive' of the VM
by simply copying the folder someplace.

RL

 

[JeffM]

Why didn't you junk yank its HDD out and donate/sell the rest?

Why don't you stop repeating old mythology?
DON'T make the hardware LESS useful.
Leave the hardware intact.

Wipe the data on the drive
with Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN)
*ONE* pass will eradicate the contents beyond recovery.

....or use Linux's included dd command.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

 

[RayLopez99]

Why don't you stop repeating old mythology?
DON'T make the hardware LESS useful.
Leave the hardware intact.

Wipe the data on the drive
with Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN)
*ONE* pass will eradicate the contents beyond recovery.

...or use Linux's included dd command.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

Yeah I should have tried Darik's DBAN instead of just applying a
sledgehammer (which BTW did not even dent the aluminum case, contrary
to the hyperbole in my OP about splinters, but it broke the exposed
chips--just barely--rendering the drive useless to anybody except a
hardcore data thief and anyway the data on this drive was old, old
passwords, etc).

I also did not try Linux's command though I was aware of it.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

No no. You can have VM programs save SNAPSHOTS. Basically making an
image of the session. So if you revert/go back to this snapshot, it goes
to the setup of THAT session.

For example:
Install new slipstreamed Windows XP Pro. SP3. Once it works. Snapshot it.
Upgrade its with updates and IE8. Save a snapshot.
Do whatever. Make a mess. Install a buggy program.
Don't like this session? Revert back to clean state with updated Windows
XP and its IE8. .
Want to go back more to outdated clean Windows with IE6? Go back even more.

VM rocks.

Really? That's very cool. Well then how is data stored persistently
inbetween snapshots? There must be some folder somewhere, because
programs for example store your preferences (even and especially
Visual Studio, for example default locations where you would save
files, etc). I guess I'm asking whether a virtual machine makes use
of the hard drive and saves stuff there, so it can be used in the next
load up / session of the VM. The answer must be yes of course. Sorry
for my ignorance but this is very new to me still.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

Ant--have you tried this virtualized browser KACE? But maybe you don't
need it if you have a VM. --RL


Use a
Virtualized
Browser
Since the vast majority of
attacks are coming from the
browser, one of the safest
ways to surf the web is from
a virtualized browser or a
virtual machine. Dell off ers
its free KACE browser
(www.kace.com), which
virtualizes Firefox 3.6
along with Adobe Reader
and Flash. Malware that
exploits holes in Firefox,
Reader, or Flash would be contained within the
virtual machine. The bad news? If you do get an
infection and need to fl ush the virtual Firefox,
you lose all of your settings. That includes the
numerous updates to Firefox that come out
seemingly every month and any bookmarks
and plugins you installed. An alternative is to
build a virtual machine using either Virtual PC
2007 (www.microsoft .com) or VM Ware Player
(www.vmware.com). Both are free, and both
Microsoft and VM Ware off er free images that
include browsers. Microsoft off ers Vista and XP
with IE8 installed and VM Ware off ers Ubuntu
with Firefox installed. Of the three options, VM
Ware’s is the most solid but folks not used to
Linux might be thrown for a loop. Microsoft ’s
images time out aft er three months, so you’ll
have to download it again.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

Datas are saved in snapshots. You can't view it easily. VMs can. Like I
said, try it.

OK I will and thanks again. So then it stands to reason the
'snapshots', binary data that can only be read by VMs, must be huge if
you have for example Office, Visual Studio and some music files say
from iPod stored in your VM--I'm guessing your snapshot would be at
least 10 GB and probably double that.

RL