Puppy slow in Elitegroup ECS A907 Transmeta Crusoe CPU

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puppyhopper
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Joined: Fri 15 Mar 2013, 10:24

Puppy slow in Elitegroup ECS A907 Transmeta Crusoe CPU

#1 Post by puppyhopper »

I have an (very) old notebook called "ECS Desknote A907", it has 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD and a Transmeta Crusoe CPU.
I downloaded Wary Puppy 5.5, burned it onto a CD (can't boot from USB), and with all default settings (Xorg, SIS graphics correctly detected) it runs - or better said: it walks. It is unbearably slow.
I had and still have Win XP installed which runs fine and without much delay, but as support is terminated, I want to use Linux. This just means that in principle, the notebook can perform sufficiently.

I searched a lot, and found that the problem is the default setting for the CPU. Other apparently have compiled the kernel for this specific CPU (Crusoe), and reported significant speed improvement.

However, all posts are ages old, and I am unable to find someone to help me. I have to admit, I feel completely incapable of compiling my own kernel, particularly after reading the instructions on how to compile a kernel.

I'd appreciate it if someone could help me to compile the kernel or compile the kernel for me and provide a modified version of Wary Puppy.

I hope someone has mercy with me and can help me out of my misery.
Thank you!
Andre

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ally
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#2 Post by ally »

hey hopper

this is a good one.......

I found a thread about an arch linux guy who chased the problem down and produced a kernel patch (ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/kernel26/ ... 1-ARCH.bz2)

watch this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... _QQchhMqHo

full page here: http://news.techeye.net/software/patch- ... -full-i686

over to the clever people now! good luck......

:)

puppyhopper
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Joined: Fri 15 Mar 2013, 10:24

#3 Post by puppyhopper »

Thanks Ally. I believe this will turn out to be some useful info to my problem.

I am still considering to simply throw the laptop away. While there is nothing wrong with it and it seems such a waste to dispose of a technically-perfectly working piece, it will probably save some people (like me and you) a lot of time otherwise wasted with finding a solution to make this ancient machine usable in today's world.
To the benefit of the environment, I still could use the 12V 5A power supply for something else...

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ally
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#4 Post by ally »

from what I can glean the patch applied to the kernel and away you go

how is way above my abilities but someone will come along and some stage and fill in the blanks

recently there has been a thread on an arch based puppy (the patch is from an arch build), might be worth seeing if the patch can be applied to that distro (the kernel number was different but close)

it's old but you never know

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=85020

I've got a couple of 650mhz machines that are quite usable, wonderful quality and sturdy stuff, it's criminal to chuck it away

it's fun to try anyway

I hope someone pops along whose intelligent enough to help out!!

:)

puppyhopper
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri 15 Mar 2013, 10:24

#5 Post by puppyhopper »

I couldn't hold myself back - I disassembled that piece completely and took out items which I feel may be suitable for transplantation: screws, few metal pieces, the harddisk, the RAM, the speakers, and the motherboard. I will probably keep the board until I require some of its components.

The other pieces will rest in piece, together with the not-so-magic-any-more magic mouse that was faulty and got disassembled, too.

Ally, I hope you did not spend as much time with your research as I did, and I hope that others will follow my example to scrap this thing. It's not like having an ancient piece of rare jewel here, is it? It's more like a used chewing gum...
So long... rest in piece...
In fact, I still got all the parts and could put it together again... Arghhhhhhh

Thanks again Ally, you were my best help. Sorry I am disappointing you. But I can't see the sense any more in all this.
Andre

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ally
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#6 Post by ally »

no worries hopper

no, I didn't spend long but no problem anyway I just wish I had the technical skill to help further, nothing like a good challenge but you can't win them all

:)

soy4mal
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Joined: Wed 27 Mar 2013, 19:51

#7 Post by soy4mal »

Puppy slow in Elitegroup ECS A907 Transmeta Crusoe CPU

casualmente tengo el mismo portatil y hace un par de meses que intento darle vida, puppy siempre ha sido la mejor opcion, frente a dsl, slitaz, pclinuxos, etc pero el problema es que no consigo que funcione rapido. Hace tiempo que encontre lo que dice ally sobre el parche para las noop long y longrun, se supone que hay parches para compilar el kernel, incluso de v.3 pero yo tambien soy newbie y no me atrevo.

he intentado buscar el archpup desde la v.12.04 a la actual, pero necesito kernel non-PAE. y parece que esto no lo puedo encontrar, ni la version original con kernel 2.6. Así que sigo buscando. me falta probar este: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=85020

mientras prueba a copiar el archivo Plop con extension bin en la raiz del sistema y vuelve a cargar el grup, veras como en el menu avanzado te aparece la opcion de plop como si arrancaras del cd y así puedes arrancar el pc desde un usb boot.

Un consejo: de todos los sistemas probados (y son muchos) los más fáciles y de buen rendimiento LxPup y Bodhi Linux (non-PAE los dos). otros buenos absolute linux, Crunchbang, elive, luitlinux y otros basados en Knoffix, ...

NO TE RINDAS, HAY QUE SEGUIR INVESTIGANDO Y BUENA SUERTE.

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