Worthless internet connection - Creative modem on XP

[philoÂ]

I told you what machines they were over and over again. You are just
very forgetful.

I usually just skip over your posts and never saw the specs...
but that's irrelevant. If you knew anything about Linux you'd know which
distribution would be best for your machine or how to configure what you
had.
As to Win2k, that does not need too much H/W I have a nice P-III with an
Ultra-wide drive and it runs Win2k great. I do not use it on-line so I
don't have to worry about malware.

My first was on the top secret VTAS computer in '74.

I never heard of the VTAS but I did get my first calculator in 1974

It uses a 4004 and I still have the thing and it works!
One relic I'm glad I never got rid of.


I started out in 1968 back in the punch card days so probably an more or
less the same age as you.

With your experience you should easily be able to setup a Linux machine
and get it work work right.

What? I have been defragging for decades. What the hell are you talking
about? I had to defrag MFM drives all of the time and it helped a huge
amount. Since IDE drives, defragging only helps by 2% during my
experiments. That is a very lousy way to increase disk speed. You are
much better off getting a faster drive if you are looking for a speed
increase. And if you are serious about real speed then run RAID like I
do on my game machines.

In one sentence you say you don't defrag, then in the next you say you
do. sheesh

I'm not a gamer (other than the old 16 bit version of Tetris) I do not
need a terribly high end machine.

My dual core 3ghz with 4gigs of RAM is fine.

 

[Paul]

I told you many times now already including these:

On 3/14/2014 5:05 AM, BillW50 wrote:
I just fired up this Linux machine about 25 minutes
ago (after dusting it off) and I had to wait 20
minutes for Thunderbird to respond. And Linux is
claiming my battery now at 80% will take 20 hours to
charge to 100%. Yes Linux is really good for
something, click and wait, click and wait.

Amazing! Now it says that my battery is 90% charged
and just 10 hours now to finish. Gee it thinks 10
hours just past in less than a minute. At least the
outside temp seems right on the money and it got the
time and date right. So it is good for something.
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix Linux

On 3/14/2014 5:43 AM, BillW50 wrote:
Linux at idle is eating 40% of the processor power
(reported by the System Monitor), that is huge!
Windows 7 on this same machine eats 50% at idle and
XP eats 10% at idle.
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix Linux

On 3/14/2014 11:09 AM, BillW50 wrote:
Same machines that I run Windows on. And my earlier
posts sig had one of the Linux machines listed. And
the EeePC one runs Windows 2000/XP just fine with 2GB
of RAM. But Ubuntu Netbook Remix is pretty dang slow.
Yet it is specially configured for that machine. So
far you got nothing right yet.
[...]
Maybe you don't know how to setup Windows? As Windows
2000/XP blows Linux away here on the same machines.
The other Linux machine has dualboot Ubuntu/Puppy on
a Gateway M465. Same machines that I run XP,
Windows 7, and Windows 8 on.

I don't know why this is so hard for you? Here let me spell it out for you.

Asus EeePC 702
Celeron 900 MHz
4GB SSD
Intel 915GM
2GB of PC5300 RAM

Gateway M465
Intel Core Duo T2300 1.66 GHz
40GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive
Intel 945GM
2GB of PC5300 RAM

I asked him twice now, but he has ducked the issue....but the bottom
line is that if it's not running well, he does not have the hardware for
whatever distribution he's using. There are a lot of distributions out
there designed to run well on a low end machine.

What a load of crap! My Gateway M465 with an Intel T2300 with 2GB of RAM
and a 7200rpm SATA hard drive is plenty of power for Ubuntu and Puppy.
And so is my EeePC with a 900MHz Celeron with 2GB of RAM is as well.

The problem with Linux nay sayers is simply that they do not know what
they are doing.

Just the opposite in my experience. Linux supporters are generally too
clueless and don't know what in the hell they are talking about. If
Linux isn't so hot, they falsely blame your hardware. And they are
generally too stupid to even install an antivirus checker which means a
trojan was allowed to roam free undetected for almost 7 months.

http://computingondemand.com/linux-infected-by-complacency/

There are some things you can try.

Disable some of the animation effects.

If it's running Compiz, you could disable that. I
disable that out of choice, rather than necessity.

Intel 915GM and 945GM don't have a lot of facilities
for accelerating things. For example, in the Ubuntu 13.10
I just tested within the last couple of weeks, I could
tell the graphics effects they were using, they were intended
to be GPU accelerated. When the GPU doesn't have the
facility for it, things like MESA or other emulation
layers are used. Which means the CPU ends up doing
unnecessary animations.

You can tune that stuff, if you want.

I don't think 915GM and 945GM have programmable shaders.
They wouldn't have a dedicated video decoder either. They
still can provide a frame buffer and some level of DirectX
support. Just not year 2014 features. Very little of my hardware
here can make that claim. The best I've got here, is DirectX 9C
hardware support. I have nothing I can try GPGPU stuff on, and
no dedicated video decoders either.

And that's why some of the latest distros I've popped in for
a quick test, the animations have been *slow*. Stupidly and
unnecessarily slow. For example, to animate an icon, you
don't need fancy stuff. Even playing an animated GIF would give
you a motion effect if you wanted it. And that should take
hardly any CPU at all.

You have plenty of RAM, so I doubt it's a paging problem.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

I did not suggest you use Linux for your applications.

My suggestion was to dual boot and to use Linux for all your Internet
activities. You could probably try out a live cd just to see how your
dial-up works. With Linux you'd not have to worry about viruses
and you could then keep on using XP for the next 30 years and not have
to worry about it

Live CD. That's what I was referring to. I could not recall the
correct wording. I have thisd PC-Linux LIVE CD from 2008. This is a
2002 computer, so I figured I should use something older. Someone gave
me that cd several years ago. I never tried it, fearing that it might
damage Windows on the HD. But since I was building another computer
which did not have a hard drive in it at the moment, I tried to run that
live CD. It spent 3 to 5 minutes loading, gave some error, and went to
Linux command mode. Arrrrggghhhhh !!!!

I tried this 3 times, same problem each time.
I planned to toss that CD in the garbage, but it's still laying here.

 

[philoÂ]

This is directed to BillW but I am commenting here as the specs are
listed as:
I never ever use a Celeron for anything and certainly do not use a
900mhz machine for anything other than just fooling around.

Also, if the 4GB ssd is one of those mini-drives their performance is
terrible! I have one in a Dell mini...even with 2 gigs of RAM it barely
runs XP


None of the current "full" Linux distributions will work very well on a
900Mhz Celeron (at least not with Gnome or KDE) and any OS such as Win7
or Win8 would not install on that machine. XP would run, but once a
virus checker were installed would probably bog down considerably.

OTOH: I use Tiny Core Linux and it would work great on a 900mhz cpu
and so would Puppy Linux

 

[casey.o]

What? I have been defragging for decades. What the hell are you talking
about? I had to defrag MFM drives all of the time and it helped a huge
amount. Since IDE drives, defragging only helps by 2% during my
experiments. That is a very lousy way to increase disk speed. You are
much better off getting a faster drive if you are looking for a speed
increase. And if you are serious about real speed then run RAID like I
do on my game machines.

While I dont see much speed increase on modern IDE drives, defragging
makes drives last longer because they dont have to work so hard. I
defrag at least one a week, usually twice if I'm online alot, or
installing/removing software. First I always remove all browser cache
and junk files. This is on my Win98 machine, and I have now done the
same on XP. After I installed SP3 a few days ago, it took awhile to
defrag C:. But I suppose a lot of files are moved and overwritten, plus
new ones installed.

 

[casey.o]

I did not suggest you use Linux for your applications.

My suggestion was to dual boot and to use Linux for all your Internet
activities. You could probably try out a live cd just to see how your
dial-up works. With Linux you'd not have to worry about viruses
and you could then keep on using XP for the next 30 years and not have
to worry about it

If I really wanted to try a very simple Linux Live CD, would Puppy Linux
be the way to go? Several months ago, I was reading about linux, with
some consideration of giving it a try. The Puppy seemed to be one of
the most recommended for a minimal installation. I did download the ISO
file, and unpacked it with Winzip. But I dont have any way to burn a
CD. I'd rather pay someone else to burn one for me, than buy a burner
and software, then have to try to learn to use it. Burning CDs is not
something I really care to even try. I remember some guy doing it years
ago, and he must have burned 25 CDs, and every one of them went into the
garbage afterwards. The guy got so pissed, he literally threw his whole
computer thru a second story window. (the guy was a little nuts). But
seeing that, made me not want to ever burn a CD.

But I was wondering if it's possible to just take that unpacked ISO file
and install it to a spare harddrive? I got a whole box full of 1 and
2g drives to play with. But how do I begin? I'd have to floppy boot
from Dos, I guess???? Then I would somehow have to copy the unpacked
files from a Flash drive, which I dont know if I can access a flash
drive from a Dos boot......

The target computer is a PIII 1200mhz processor, 256m Ram. Age from
around 2002. Compaq 5400US. So, I cant run any power hungry version.
I could download an older version of Puppy too, I suppose...

I might try it if I can figure out how, It wont cost me anything. I'll
just unplug the XP hard drive and install one of those small drives. I
coudl probably format the drive and plug it in as a second drive to XP
or W98, and copy all the linux install files to the drive. But what do
I do next? Can I boot from a Dos floppy and just click whatever file is
the installer, from on the destination drive?

Just a thought. I might give it a try, if its possible. Of course if I
get the command line, I'm finished! I can run Dos commands, but I am
clueless how to run linux ones.

 

[Rasta Robert]

If I really wanted to try a very simple Linux Live CD, would Puppy Linux
be the way to go? Several months ago, I was reading about linux, with
some consideration of giving it a try. The Puppy seemed to be one of
the most recommended for a minimal installation. I did download the ISO
file, and unpacked it with Winzip. But I dont have any way to burn a
CD. I'd rather pay someone else to burn one for me, than buy a burner
and software, then have to try to learn to use it. Burning CDs is not
something I really care to even try. I remember some guy doing it years
ago, and he must have burned 25 CDs, and every one of them went into the
garbage afterwards. The guy got so pissed, he literally threw his whole
computer thru a second story window. (the guy was a little nuts). But
seeing that, made me not want to ever burn a CD.

Puppy Linux is pretty good/easy, you can skip the CD and install it to a
USB stick, external USB disk and likely also to a spare hard disk
or hard disk partition. I'm using PuppEee Linux on some EeePC netbooks
as well as Slacko Puppy Linux, booting from SDCard or USB stick.
There are a few utilities to make a bootable USB stick/drive, like
Unetbootin and Live Linux Creator, and even some to put multiple Linux
Live distro's on a multiboot USB (pen)drive, like YUMI.
When you install Wine (as SFS or through the software package manager)
your Linix OS will happily run most software made for mswindows.

But I was wondering if it's possible to just take that unpacked ISO file
and install it to a spare harddrive? I got a whole box full of 1 and
2g drives to play with. But how do I begin? I'd have to floppy boot
from Dos, I guess???? Then I would somehow have to copy the unpacked
files from a Flash drive, which I dont know if I can access a flash
drive from a Dos boot......

Easiest would be to make a bootable USBstick, and use the installer in
Puppy Linux to install it to a spare harddisk.

The target computer is a PIII 1200mhz processor, 256m Ram. Age from
around 2002. Compaq 5400US. So, I cant run any power hungry version.
I could download an older version of Puppy too, I suppose...

You could start trying out one or more of the currently available stable
Puppy releases (like the Ubuntu based one and the Slackware based one),
could make a multiboot USBstick to testrun a few varieties, then after
a while put/install the variety you like best to a spare HD.
(Live distro's run slowest from CD, a lot better/faster from USBstick,
and a real harddisk will give the best performance; but some distros
can use tricks (when the PC has enough RAM) to copy a part or all
of the filesystem to RAM, so it doesn't have to read from the slow
medium, which, when everything gets copied to RAM may even be removed
after booting (when you keep the persistence/save file that keeps
track of settings/changes on an internal HD).

I might try it if I can figure out how, It wont cost me anything. I'll
just unplug the XP hard drive and install one of those small drives. I
coudl probably format the drive and plug it in as a second drive to XP
or W98, and copy all the linux install files to the drive. But what do
I do next? Can I boot from a Dos floppy and just click whatever file is
the installer, from on the destination drive?

Just a thought. I might give it a try, if its possible. Of course if I
get the command line, I'm finished! I can run Dos commands, but I am
clueless how to run linux ones.

The Puppy varieties boot nicely to a graphical desktop by default.
That you would get dropped to a commandline prompt and had to type
'startx' is getting rare/ancient (mostly just on some specialized
tiny system tools / rescue system live linux varieties).

 

[Mayayana]

You might try disabling javascript and using
a HOSTS file to block Google, Doubleclick, etc.
Also, if you use a Mozilla browser you can block
3rd-party images (read "ads") with this setting
in about:config -

permissions.default.image Value: 3

Pages are so bloated these days that a dialup
modem is just unrealistic. As an example, I just
visited CNN.com. The page is 135 KB. The files
that went with it total about 1.5 MB. The bulk of
that is javascript, and 1/4 MB CSS file! (I was unable
to retrieve 3 javascript files that were blocked by my
HOSTS file, so actually the total was more than 1.5
MB.)

When modems were common, a big page was 60 KB
and a typical software download was < 2 MB. A typical
commercial page today is really a complex software
program written in javascript, with included javascript
libraries up to 1 MB not unusual. 1 MB takes about 4
minutes to download on a typical 56K modem. So at
the speed you're getting, just the basic CNN page with
included files is probably a 6-10 minute download!

The Filehippo pages are not as bad as CNN, but the
front page alone is about 200 KB. That's more than 1
minute to download on your modem.


|I now have my Creative EXT modem connected to the XP computer. I
| connected with no problems, am connected at 38.6.
| I was able to read a few messages on this newsgroup. I ten opened
| Seamonkey and went to Filehippo.com. I intended to check the download
| speed of some random file. I chose Acdsee. I have waited 26 minuites
| so far, just for the download page to load. Have not even gotten to the
| actual download, and the data transfer has nearly come to a stop. I
| cant even open messages on my newsreader at the same time.
|
| While this EXT modem connects better than the internal one, the
| connection is totally useless.
|
| At 29 minutes, the download page on Filehippo timed out, and is dead.
|
| This is the same shit I have gotten trying to use my Win2K install dual
| booted on my Win98 machine, with same modem and phone line and ISP.
|
|
| I think I'd be better off going back to sending Telegraphs, using the
| Morse Code, than this shit!!!
|
| I'll have to disconnect and reconnect to the internet just to send this
| message! My newsreader shows no connection posssible, yet I am
| connected.
|
| I shut down, had to try 4 times to connect, shut modem off to reset it.
| I now have a 42.6 connection. Lets see if I can send this messasge,
|

 

[philo]

If I really wanted to try a very simple Linux Live CD, would Puppy Linux
be the way to go? Several months ago, I was reading about linux, with
some consideration of giving it a try. The Puppy seemed to be one of
the most recommended for a minimal installation. I did download the ISO
file, and unpacked it with Winzip. But I dont have any way to burn a
CD. I'd rather pay someone else to burn one for me, than buy a burner
and software, then have to try to learn to use it. Burning CDs is not
something I really care to even try. I remember some guy doing it years
ago, and he must have burned 25 CDs, and every one of them went into the
garbage afterwards. The guy got so pissed, he literally threw his whole
computer thru a second story window. (the guy was a little nuts). But
seeing that, made me not want to ever burn a CD.

But I was wondering if it's possible to just take that unpacked ISO file
and install it to a spare harddrive? I got a whole box full of 1 and
2g drives to play with. But how do I begin? I'd have to floppy boot
from Dos, I guess???? Then I would somehow have to copy the unpacked
files from a Flash drive, which I dont know if I can access a flash
drive from a Dos boot......

The target computer is a PIII 1200mhz processor, 256m Ram. Age from
around 2002. Compaq 5400US. So, I cant run any power hungry version.
I could download an older version of Puppy too, I suppose...

I would not recommend the older version of Puppy, go with the newest.

You can boot with a Puppy Linux cd and test it out "live" without
installing it. From the CD it will run slowly but give you an idea.

Chances are you will not need to use the command line to do anything.

If you want me to burn you a copy just let me know.

 

[Ben Myers]

I now have my Creative EXT modem connected to the XP computer. I
connected with no problems, am connected at 38.6.
I was able to read a few messages on this newsgroup. I ten opened
Seamonkey and went to Filehippo.com. I intended to check the download
speed of some random file. I chose Acdsee. I have waited 26 minuites
so far, just for the download page to load. Have not even gotten to the
actual download, and the data transfer has nearly come to a stop. I
cant even open messages on my newsreader at the same time.
While this EXT modem connects better than the internal one, the
connection is totally useless.
At 29 minutes, the download page on Filehippo timed out, and is dead.
This is the same shit I have gotten trying to use my Win2K install dual
booted on my Win98 machine, with same modem and phone line and ISP.
I think I'd be better off going back to sending Telegraphs, using the
Morse Code, than this shit!!!
I'll have to disconnect and reconnect to the internet just to send this
message! My newsreader shows no connection posssible, yet I am
connected.
I shut down, had to try 4 times to connect, shut modem off to reset it.
I now have a 42.6 connection. Lets see if I can send this messasge,

See if automatic updates are enabled. If so, disable them or switch it to "Notify, but
don't download or install."

Ben

 

[micky]

I now have my Creative EXT modem connected to the XP computer. I
connected with no problems, am connected at 38.6.
I was able to read a few messages on this newsgroup. I ten opened
Seamonkey and went to Filehippo.com. I intended to check the download
speed of some random file. I chose Acdsee. I have waited 26 minuites
so far, just for the download page to load. Have not even gotten to the
actual download, and the data transfer has nearly come to a stop. I
cant even open messages on my newsreader at the same time.

While this EXT modem connects better than the internal one, the
connection is totally useless.

At 29 minutes, the download page on Filehippo timed out, and is dead.

I havent' read most of the thread and I don't know if this is helpful,
but when I had dialup and they were doing various other things to annoy
me, like not sending a bill by mail or email, cancelling my account, and
throwing away all my email that had not been downloaded yet, and then
claiming I told them I didnt want bills either by mail or email (when in
fact I would have chosen both if I could have) ....

And they kept telling me high speed would come to Baltimore soon (6
years later and it's still not here from them, plus the 4 years they
told me that. )

......when they were annoying me, they offered me a web download
accelerator. I figured it woudlnt' work but I had to try it or I
couldn't denounce it, but indeed it was a big help. I think it works
by not transmitting 1000 bytes of blue background, but instead 1 byte
and the number 1000.

Not every ISP has to have this. IIUC, they had a separate server that
sent out compressed webpages, and they gave me software to install that
de-compressed it.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

[]
When you say you can't open messages on your newsreader, is that a
newsreader that doesn't fetch bodies until you open them? If not (i. e.
it downloads them and holds them locally until you read them, expiring
them after a while), then the above may not be to do with your link
speed, but something else that is eating your CPU time.

Have you looked at the network graph in Task Manager (I assume you're
using some form of Windows)? If so, does that tell you anything useful?

While this EXT modem connects better than the internal one, the
connection is totally useless.

At 29 minutes, the download page on Filehippo timed out, and is dead.

[]
couldn't denounce it, but indeed it was a big help. I think it works
by not transmitting 1000 bytes of blue background, but instead 1 byte
and the number 1000.

Yes, that's how most compressors work (at least, one of the ways).

Not every ISP has to have this. IIUC, they had a separate server that
sent out compressed webpages, and they gave me software to install that
de-compressed it.

There is at least some compression built into the MoDem communication
standards - V42 or something like that. Obviously it is possible to do
more than can just be done inside a MoDem.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

# 10^-12 boos = 1 picoboo # 2*10^3 mockingbirds = 2 kilo mockingbird
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