Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

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West
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Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

#1 Post by West »

Hi all,

Which Puppy distr. would you recommend for a 1999 HP Vectra VLi8 SF with PIII 600 MHz, 256 MB RAM and no hard drive?

It should be able to do web browsing and e-mail. Streaming audio would be nice too.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

Cheers.

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ally
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#2 Post by ally »

hey west

welcome to the land of puppy

I would try 432v3 which was an update to the excellent 431 and is available here: http://www.lamiaworks.com.au/puppy_isos.html

puppy 4.12 and 4.31 would be worth a look and 214x-top10 is a nice update of the puppy 2 series

have fun trying and let us know how you get on

:)

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Monsie
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Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

#3 Post by Monsie »

West,

I have a 1999 HP pentium III @ 500 mhz with 384 mb of ram, and my Puppy of choice is Wary Puppy. It is a fifth generation Puppy, so will probably have better support for recent browsers than Puppy 4x and is designed specifically for the older PC in terms of having drivers for older hardware: graphics cards, modems, sound cards, and the like.

Monsie
My [u]username[/u] is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

West
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Location: Netherlands

#4 Post by West »

Hi Ally and Monsie,

Thank you for your replies. I burned Wary 5.5 to a CD and it worked out of the box. Impressive. I like Wary's GUI too.

I remembered that I had an old 3 GB Seagate disk lying around and put that in the Vectra. I believe you're not supposed to install Puppy on a hard disk, but anyway, I managed to do a Full Install onto the hard disk. The only hiccup was the Grub Legacy Bootloader GUI which didn't respond to any input. Instead, I used Grub4Dos, which is conveniently available in 5.5. Grub4Dos hinted that I needed to also set the boot flag with GParted, and now I can boot Wary 5.5 from the HDD, which is a nice accomplishment for an absolute newbie like me :D

I'm not quite happy with the Seamonkey web browser, which seems a bit sluggish to my taste and am looking for a faster alternative.

BTW, I discovered that the processor in this box is not a 600 but a 500 MHz PIII.

Cheers.

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rcrsn51
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#5 Post by rcrsn51 »

West wrote: I believe you're not supposed to install Puppy on a hard disk,
I don't know where this myth comes from.
The only hiccup was the Grub Legacy Bootloader GUI which didn't respond to any input.
This is a bug in Wary 5.5. It's fixable, but Grub4Dos Bootloader Config works fine.

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nitehawk
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Re: Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

#6 Post by nitehawk »

West wrote:Hi all,

Which Puppy distr. would you recommend for a 1999 HP Vectra VLi8 SF with PIII 600 MHz, 256 MB RAM and no hard drive?

It should be able to do web browsing and e-mail. Streaming audio would be nice too.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

Cheers.
Hey,...
I also have one of those 1999 HP Vectras. They make really good Puppy boxes. I put another mobo in mine,.and an older Nvidia card. ..(was 866Mhz,...now 933Mhz)...and I put 512ram in it. I have a 40G hard drive in it though (you said yours didn't have a hd) I had Racy 5.2.2 running just great on it. Good 'ol computers. Puppy keeps 'em going.
(as mentioned above,...Wary should work on your Hp Vectra,...as well as the previously mentioned 431v3,...and Puppy 421)

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nitehawk
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#7 Post by nitehawk »

West wrote:Hi Ally and Monsie,

Thank you for your replies. I burned Wary 5.5 to a CD and it worked out of the box. Impressive. I like Wary's GUI too.

I remembered that I had an old 3 GB Seagate disk lying around and put that in the Vectra. I believe you're not supposed to install Puppy on a hard disk, but anyway, I managed to do a Full Install onto the hard disk. The only hiccup was the Grub Legacy Bootloader GUI which didn't respond to any input. Instead, I used Grub4Dos, which is conveniently available in 5.5. Grub4Dos hinted that I needed to also set the boot flag with GParted, and now I can boot Wary 5.5 from the HDD, which is a nice accomplishment for an absolute newbie like me :D

I'm not quite happy with the Seamonkey web browser, which seems a bit sluggish to my taste and am looking for a faster alternative.

BTW, I discovered that the processor in this box is not a 600 but a 500 MHz PIII.

Cheers.
HA!
I just now saw your post here,....that you settled on wary 5.5.
I was previously interruped by a phone call and didn't see your post 'til now (that's my story,...and I'm sticking to it)! Wary is a good choice! BTW it seems like Macpup 529 has that same problem with GrubLegacy. I always have to use the Grub4Dos on it (but that could just be my problem with it).

West
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Re: Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

#8 Post by West »

Hi,
nitehawk wrote:I also have one of those 1999 HP Vectras. They make really good Puppy boxes. I put another mobo in mine,.and an older Nvidia card. ..(was 866Mhz,...now 933Mhz)...and I put 512ram in it.
Would 512 MB RAM (currently 256 MB) increase the speed of the box noticeably? Thanks.

Cheers.

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nitehawk
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Re: Which Puppy on 1999 HP Vectra with 256 MB?

#9 Post by nitehawk »

West wrote:Hi,Would 512 MB RAM (currently 256 MB) increase the speed of the box noticeably? Thanks.

Cheers.
mmmmmmmmmmmm,....actually I'm not to sure about more ram increasing the speed. Someone with more knowledge of how ram works might chime in here.
But I originally had 384mb ram in it. I had one of those 1999 HP Vectra 500Mhz--256mb ram previously,...but that was a few years ago (it has since bit the dust, I'm afraid). If you can get 512mb ram,..give it a try.

EDIT: Just ran across these websites (that says more ram CAN increase computer operating speed)
http://www.wisegeek.com/does-adding-ram ... -speed.htm
http://www.ehow.com/about_5419000_addin ... puter.html

sfeeley
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Joined: Sun 14 Feb 2010, 16:34

#10 Post by sfeeley »

can increasing ram, increase speed?
Short answer is yes.

Longer answer:

for a computer with 256 ram, you would probably want to set up a swap partition on your harddrive (easy to do with gparted, which is part of puppy) look around for instructions in the forums, or come back here.

A swap partition basically makes part of your harddrive act like RAM.

Without a bit more RAM (or swap paritition), there's an increased chance that your computer will crash or freeze when doing some tasks, like surfing the web, etc. Ram (and swap) basically dictates how much stuff your computer is able to process and handle at the same time (with less ram, your computer will try to put tasks and computations aside and then come back to them. This all happens pretty fast, but having a certain level of ram, where this shuffling isn't happening all the time will make the computer much more "snappy."

Puppy already has much lower Ram requirements than most operating systems, which is why its better for old computers. But still I find 512 gets you closer to its sweet spot.

That said, I've had had a computer with less ram that was capable of wordprocessing and websurfing, so depending on your needs you might be ok.

recommended steps:
1) backup your installation (just incase you mess anything up--always wise to do anyways)
2) set up a swap partition (Ram + Swap= about 512 mb should be about good)
3) see how that goes for a while. If you come across a cheap stick of ram after that, by all means get it, and see if it helps.

(too many words for a simple message :D )

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