Prehistoric Thinkpad 760EL looking for a puppy

What works, and doesn't, for you. Be specific, and please include Puppy version.
Message
Author
s243a
Posts: 2580
Joined: Tue 02 Sep 2014, 04:48
Contact:

#16 Post by s243a »

ahoppin wrote:This Dell CPi has 128mb of memory. The service manual spec page says that's all, folks. It's not even SDRAM, it's old 60ns EDO memory.

...
Wary 5.11 with kernel (I think) 2.6.31.14 worked pretty well. Xorgwizard ran through its prompts and got the video right. The audio played 16 bit PCM, though it couldn't handle Puppy's 8-bit barks. The menu was fairly responsive.

The downside is that it has Seamonkey 2.0.11 from 2010, which doesn't work with an increasing number of websites. I haven't been able to find an updated browser that works with Wary.
...
Puppy 4.3.1 was surprisingly snappy and responsive. Xorgwizard did fine. However, it had the same browser problem as Wary 5.11. It also couldn't figure out what to do with the Dell's Crystal 4237B audio chip, so this dog won't bark.
...
Legacy 2017 wouldn't even load. "ERROR, cannot find Puppy on idehd boot media. PUPMODE=1 PDEV1="

Lucid 5.2.5 was on speaking terms with Seamonkey 2.33.1, and it had outstanding audio through mplayer (though it couldn't play Puppy's barks either).

But it was quite a bit slower than Wary 5.11 and 4.3.1. Click the menu button and it takes close to 10 seconds for the menu to display. Starting Seamonkey takes forever, and loading a website of any complexity would try a Buddhist monk's patience.

Maybe Lucid would hustle a bit more if it were run from a full installation on an ext2 formatted disk, but I suspect the main problem is the lack of RAM.

Of the ones I've tested so far, only Wary 5.11 and Lucid 5.2.5 are on the short list. I'll keep trying.
I'd try one of the following:
Anitaos, TLC Puppy, pUPnGO

Regarding, Lagacy Pup (AKA classic pup?) it looks like it is having trouble finding your puppy files. You might be able to fix this with the right mix of boot parameters. Also note that there are palemoon updates for Lucid and warry. Anitaos & TLC pup might have these updates out of the box.

Running directly off the hard drive (e.g. full install saves a lot of ram) but at the same time having stuff you use often in ram can speed things up. One can try to optimize this by putting the files they use the most in the base sfs and then symbolically linking the rest of the files to the hard drive.

ahoppin
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon 16 May 2011, 04:13

#17 Post by ahoppin »

> I'd try one of the following:

Thanks for the ideas! I'll check out those Pups.

> Legacy Pup (AKA classic pup?) ... is having trouble finding your puppy
> files. You might be able to fix this with the right mix of boot parameters.

I might try it again. I didn't spend much time trying to make it work mostly because I was a little intimidated by its Great Pyrenees size -- pup_214.sfs is 678mb!

Legacy 2017: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 5&t=111457

> Also note that there are palemoon updates for Lucid and warry.

I like Palemoon a lot. Not sure it will work here, though. Someone noted above that Palemoon needs a processor that speaks SSE2. There is also a PM version that needs only SSE opcodes (implemented in Pentium III, IIRC). But this is a Pentium II, which I think has neither of those. I could be wrong (and often am).

I get the impression that most recent browsers are coded using these advanced instruction sets. I suppose that eventually, that trend will leave all old hardware like this behind. :-(
Last edited by ahoppin on Sat 12 May 2018, 05:40, edited 1 time in total.

darry19662018
Posts: 721
Joined: Sat 31 Mar 2018, 08:01
Location: Rakaia
Contact:

#18 Post by darry19662018 »

You need to use a special version of Palemoon from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UUxL6N ... sp=sharing

ahoppin
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon 16 May 2011, 04:13

#19 Post by ahoppin »

> You need to use a special version of Palemoon from here:

Isn't that SSE, though? I don't think PII processors even support that. I could be wrong.

darry19662018
Posts: 721
Joined: Sat 31 Mar 2018, 08:01
Location: Rakaia
Contact:

#20 Post by darry19662018 »

It is labelled as such because if you use that build of Palemoon on more modern machines you won't get the benefits of SSE so in short thats the build you need.

Quote: "The linux SSE build is functionally identical to the mainstream linux build, except that it does not use the SSE2 instruction set "under the hood". This allows it to run on Pentium-3 and similar CPUs. The build is 32-bit-only, because that's all these CPUs can handle. See the first post in this thread for installation instructions and a full list of target CPUs.

Reference: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=13530

User avatar
Mike Walsh
Posts: 6351
Joined: Sat 28 Jun 2014, 12:42
Location: King's Lynn, UK.

#21 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ ahoppin:-
ahoppin wrote:My compromise Seamonkey (2.33.1) says "XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /initrd/mnt/dev_save/lbin/seamonkey/libxul.so: libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. Couldn't load XPCOM." I don't know how to find libdbus-glib.so.2 for it.
Try this libdbus-glib .pet for it. I've grabbed these from Racy 5.5. Racy and Wary are closely-related; Racy being described as 'Wary on steroids'.

https://www.datafilehost.com/d/75ee2c24

You may need other stuff yet; Wary was well-known for being pretty basic, and needing a lot of libs & stuff to be added in order to get many things working. There's a whole heap of libs in the Wary packages page at Ibiblio:-

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... ges-wary5/

Let us know if Wary wants anything else that isn't at Ibiblio; my Racy is pretty well-stocked! (I've added no end of stuff to it over the last couple of years.)

It doesn't take above a coupla minutes to run up .pets for libs, and things like that....


Mike. :wink:

Post Reply