(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Thanks John,
Most puppies I've tried detect the PCI card so I'll give OS4mini another try since I liked it so much.

Danneauxs

I tried this OS on my laptop. Apart from the sound and wifi not working, I'm in love with it. I believe it's because newer hardware is not supported.

Now coming to the point, I want to install Legacy on an old Pentium 3 800 Mhz 256MB RAM computer. I tried installing it twice after rewriting the ISO to the flash drive but with no gain. After a lot of searching, I figured out that there is a bug which makes the files copy to the RAM and due to limitations, it overrides. I have a few RAMs lying around but none of them are compatible with this motherboard.

Has the bug been fixed?

Btw, I believe this is an amazing OS but it's community hasn't developed yet. It took me quite some time to know what the problem was.

Hi, here is John Biles solution to your problem about installation. Hope it helps, Rob

Hello slimhunter,
On some computers this has been a long standing problem which originates from the creator of Puppy (Barry K) belief that Puppy would aways be under 256mb's in size. When Developers like me come a long and increase the size of the iso above 256mb's his script or file decides to try and load the sfs file in to ram that's not big enough anyway. In the past I've posted for advice on this which never ended with a solution except one!

If you can pull out some RAM so you only have 128mb's Legacy OS 4 Mini will run off the CD and allow a full Hard Drive install. I use this trick all the time. Once Legacy OS 4 Mini is installed, replace the RAM and away you go.

You see, that's the problem. I don't have a compatible RAM.

Isn't there a way to create a swap partition on the flash drive which the system uses instead of actual RAM? Now that would be great.

Usman55, let me see if I can rephrase what oligin10 is saying. You don't need to ADD memory, but to temporarily remove some of it. Let me go over it at a sort of beginner level, since I don't know your technical skillset.

Your computer's RAM is in "sticks", each of which goes in a "slot". You have either two sticks in two slots, two sticks in four slots, or four sticks in four slots. Like this...

SLOT_1 128mb
SLOT_2 128mb

...or...

SLOT_1 128mb
SLOT_2 128mb
SLOT_3 [empty]
SLOT_4 [empty]

...or...

SLOT_1 64mb
SLOT_2 64mb
SLOT_3 64mb
SLOT_4 64mb

There are a few other possibilities, I've seen both three slot motherboards and four-slot boards that alternate. So it might also look like this:

SLOT_1 128mb
SLOT_2 128mb
SLOT_3 [empty]

...or...

SLOT_1 128mb
SLOT_2 [empty]
SLOT_3 128mb
SLOT_4 [empty]

With your computer turned off and unplugged, open the case and you will see them. Flip the latches out for the highest-numbered slot with a stick in it (for the first two possibilities, this would be Slot 2; for the third, it would be Slot 4 -- for the weird boards, it would be either Slot 2 or Slot 3) and remove that one stick.

Now close it up, plug it in, and boot and install Legacy OS 4 Mini.

After shutdown, unplug the computer, open it back up, and put the stick back in. Flip the latches out, and push the stick down in there (mind the notches on the stick -- they must match the slot) until the latches click into place. It should require a fair bit of force, but if that stick REALLY doesn't want to go in, make sure that you've got it turned right -- you probably need to flip it around so that the label is facing the other way

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the long detailed post but I'm not that dumb. There is only one 256MB RAM stick i.e. I can't remove 128MB out of it.

May be able to increase the size of the memory used by video in the BIOS settings to make system think it has less RAM for running.
If the boot scripts are directly taken from BK puppy, there is a buried command switch that does this, i.e. not well known if you do not read boot code directly.
I think its there so BK can test functionality without removing RAM just like the this situation.

Sorry Usman55. I was hoping you had 2x128mb sticks. I don't have any more suggestions myself. I do know that OS4 Mini does have that problem. Good luck. Thanks, Rob

I guess I'll need to install another distro until the problem is solved. Or maybe I'll connect the hard disk to my other computer (it has 768 MB RAM) and then format it. It will work, won't it? I seriously hope the hard disk installation doesn't differ with the computer setup i.e. amount of RAM, processor etc. I'm saying this because Windows 8 failed to install due to processor's incompatibility.

Until then, can someone suggest me a light-weight OS which can run Flash flawlessly and has Office and some other basic apps preinstalled.

Thanks.

Hi Usman55, you could try my updated version of Gray's Racy NOP522. It was just done about a month ago. You can find it under derivatives section. It has updated flash, browsers, xfburn, deadbeef, etc. I posted 2 versions. One with Open Office Light, one without. Just an offer, it may be what you need. It is listed as Custom Racy NOP522OOL. Thanks, Rob

Here is the link to the topic:

[/url]http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... =85517[url]

And here is the link to the download for the Open Office Light version:

[/url]http://www.filefactory.com/file/qt7zgu7 ... OL.iso[url]

I can't guarantee the flash works flawlessly for you. I haven't tested it on all sites of course. But it works at all the sites I go to. Let me know if it works out for you. If I have time, I'm going to put together a Puppy Linux 421CustomOOL iso also. But the RacyNOP based one has much better support for wireless and printers OOTB. Thanks, Rob

Hello Usman55,
Sorry I've been busy with work and other commitments. I searched through every accessible script written by Barry K and could never find the script that controlled the size limit setting. Now I asked if anyone knew where it was with no luck. Maybe someone will see this post and provide some answers. If it's discovered those changes will end up in future releases so anyone with this knowledge please help now.

OK try this grab a version of Puppy that does boot on you computer and partition the Hard Drive with with a ext2 partition and 1GB of swap.
Reboot with Legacy OS and see if it boots. I used this trick in the past with some luck.

I've just made a full install of Legacy OS4 Mini to my hard drive and so far it's working well (so thanks again John). I haven't had to install much extra software although I have added Softmaker Free Office as I like the extra Word compatibility.

Wireless, Internet but no sound
Alsamixer appears after replacing 'dev' by racy 5.3 dev
Firmware and modules from Racy too.
I wanted 'Tellico' so i am satisfied but with sound, Legacy Mini would have been perfect !

Hello Pelo,
Reading your post it appears you got sound working after added files from Racy is that correct? If so can you please explain what you did and I will test and include in the next update of Legacy OS 4 mini so others can benefit from the work you've done.
John

Pelo >> importantly >> had wireless working as well JB.

Cheers.....Chris.

Still using occasionally and working fine on this old P3........

Tried to boot Legacy OS 4 Mini on some odd hardware to see what would happen. Sort of a project...

Main thread here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=91711

Here's the result: it freezes at the "loading kernel modules" point. No green "done", no further boot process.

Any ideas or suggestions?

I got it ! legacyos speaks. Firstly the problem was to connect wireless. I changed the kernel to 3.0.25.
To-day i succeed in adjusting sound level.
Only sound capture is missing (xvidcap).

I did a full install of it to my hard drive and it was fine for a few days, but today X Windows wouldn't start and xorgwizard failed to remedy the problem. Sadly it's a problem I've had with several Puppies, not just this one, and this has happened with Legacy 4 before.