386 box supertunning

[enginerd]

I'd also suggest using earlier versions of Opera: Version 3.62 is the best 16bit web browser I've ever tried (and it runs quite fast on my 486DX-33 with 8MB RAM and Windows for workgroups), and version 4.0 renders websites quite ok (I've tried it on a 486DX2-66 with 16MB RAM and Windows NT 3.51).
The only disadvantage in using earlier versions of Opera is that they're shareware, and so they'll stop working after 30 days unless you have a valid serial number.

[dave]

idisjunction - I have downloaded the floppy image and I am going to test it. When I find time ;D

Just a slight bit of news for anyone who cares. Because I live in Australia (the best place in the world in my opinion ), I got a laptop from Mr Kevin 07 (a.k.a Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister) and so did every other school kid in a public school in year 9! The laptop is a Lenovo IdeaPad s10e (a netbook actually, but meh... It's free, and it's red! ). It has Windows 7, 2 Intel Atom N270's, 2GB of RAM, 160GB of HDD space, but there is a catch. We are not allowed to run programs off of our flash drive (the group policy on windows actually prevents it) and we are not allowed to modify the hardware or software configuration (So, technically, we're not supposed to plug in flashdrives and mice and such)

[Tom Maneiro]

So... technically, you have a brick, or at most, a unmoddable Nintendo. Government-sponsored PCs sucks

In other news, Saki is back to service - no NIC was lost, it just was dust. LOTS of dust. After some quick blowing (hey, don't think dirty things, kiddies!), the NICs were back to service. Saki needs a GOOD exhaustive cleanup

[idisjunction]

Nov 9, 2009 5:37:11 GMT -5 dave said:

idisjunction - I have downloaded the floppy image and I am going to test it. When I find time ;D

There's no rush. I'm almost sure now I'm going to have to find an alternative C library and compiler to get it to run on a 386, anyway. Real 386 support broke in glibc / GCC somewhere around 2003/2004 according to my research. The problem is I don't know of any other C compiler that can compile a Linux kernel without a lot of hassle.

[dave]

idisjunction - The image file wouldn't open with winimage or PowerISO, so I was going to try it on my linux computer (I thought maybe because it was a linux disk image, I might have to open it under linux). Fedora was loaded up, I was about to log ion, and the power supply fried itself! I guess i'll have to load it up on my other computer . I'm intending to run your boot floppy on a 486 (I don't own a 386, so a 486 is the next best)

@tom - This netbook thing is basically a poxed up piece of crap. Still, I can play hearts on it when i've got nothing to do . Also, talking about dust, I had to hose out the heatsink in our Dell. It was loaded with cat hair and dust and god knows what else

[idisjunction]

Nov 10, 2009 5:06:12 GMT -5 dave said:

The image file wouldn't open with winimage or PowerISO, so I was going to try it on my linux computer (I thought maybe because it was a linux disk image, I might have to open it under linux). Fedora was loaded up, I was about to log ion, and the power supply fried itself! I guess i'll have to load it up on my other computer . I'm intending to run your boot floppy on a 486 (I don't own a 386, so a 486 is the next best)

Yeah, its an ext2 file system (you can't have device nodes on a FAT file system in the 2.6 kernel). It'll run on a 486; just keep in mind my goal was minimal usage of RAM and fitting on a normal floppy, so if you have more than 4 MB of RAM, you'll probably be unimpressed. It's the first "distro" I made from scratch, though, and like so many other script kiddies I'm anxious to show it off.

[Tom Maneiro]

Shameless plug: If you live (or are near) from Venezuela, take the opportunity to buy some of my shit (including some uber-rare AS/400 memorabila!)

listado.mercadolibre.com.ve/_CustId_79094320

I now need a way to get rid of that bunch of copper wires...

[Tom Maneiro]

Can anyone help me to identify a few RAM chips?

I'm keeping an eye on MercadoLibre auctions to see if i ever spot some 30-pin 4MB SIMMs for Marika (to see if i EVER get that 16MB upgrade done...), and from time to time people sells (or at least attempt, since nobody loves old things here) that class of modules. Sadly, all the auctions that i've seen are for 1MB sticks. However, i've seen this one:

articulo.mercadolibre.com.ve/MLV-14409604-memorias-ram-de-32-contactos-_JM

Unfortunately the guy does not know the size of the modules that he is selling. But, i asked him for the RAM IC numbers on the sticks, and got this:

- Elite Memory EM4003NJ-7, from early 1994
- GoldStar GM710442568, from early 1993

Tried googling those, and for the Goldstar i got no matches, and only gazillons of part miners for the Elite (I DON'T WANT TO BUY THE F*CKING CHIP!), but no datasheets, or even a simple description. I suspect that those thingies are more lame 1MB sticks, but i'm not sure... Since nobody buys that class of stuff in Venezuela, if these result to be 4MB sticks, i will go for these, but only if i can get the exact info.

In other boring news, i finally got my degree in Computer Engineering, after 5 years of sweat, blood, and tears... and lots of cool parts!

System status upgrade:

- All systems will be moved from my university dorm to my home base the next week. Get ready for another wiring mess!

[oompa loompa]

Those are most likely 1mb sticks. The 4mb sticks shouldn't be that rare on places like ebay, e.g. cgi.ebay.com/4-x-RARE-SAMSUNG-MEMORY-MODULES-4MB-30-PIN-RAM-VINTAGE_W0QQitemZ260513069947QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_VintageComputing_RL?hash=item3ca7c9fb7b

Congratulations on the graduation, now good luck on finding a on job

[Tom Maneiro]

Bummer... I already have a gazillon of 1MB sticks...

And nope, eBay is no option for me thanks to our retarded currency exchange control imposed by our fine government (translation: you can't have $$$ without a credit card AND a lot of complex paperwork... and that's just for $400 (for purchases on Internet) for the entire year!)

Too bad for me, since i like Samsung memory

[oompa loompa]

if you're really good, you could also try to find some 72 pin simms with some 4mbit x 1 or 4mbit x 4 fast page mode simms, and then create a pcb. a homemade pcb won't last (homemade as in a clothes iron, some copper clad board, some magazine paper, a laser printer/copier, and a nice dangerous mix of hcl+h2o2), so it has to be fabbed

[Tom Maneiro]

Moving times!

Since i got my degree, my dorm lease died, so i had to move all my crap back to home. This included the systems! All HDs survived the long 250Km trip on the back of a 2007 Ford F150 (Look Ma, NO PADDING!), and are back to service, ready for more experiments:

- Saki is now doing duty as a router for my house. And since it has a parallel port, i plugged my good ol' Canon BJC-250 there, for sharing with all the boxes around home. It required a CUPS rebuild, which in turn required to rebuild a lot of other misc libraries (libjpeg/tiff/png, OpenSSL, Gutenprint...), but now the printer is working fine. Despite being a ol' P225MMX, this box is not too slow building things from source: the full CUPS build took around 30 minutes (in total it was around 4 hours building deps, and messing with the configuration).

- Marika also got a new printer: yep, it's printing to ACTUAL PAPER through Saki. Fortunately i still keep my BJC-250 driver floppies, that are STILL WORKING after 11 years! Now, the funny thing is that it takes around 5 MINUTES to print a simple page! But the quailty is good (at least for this ancient printer). The setup was also sloooow (around 10 minutes), but it didn't required reboots or system updates. Who needs stinkin' USB HP faggot printers when we have the old gold parport paper engravers?

[Tom Maneiro]

Posting this from my 386 - IE3 is actualy more use-able at 40MHz!

Note for myself: Get this shitty IBM monitor fixed...

[Tom Maneiro]

2K10 'Q1 update! (A.K.A: "time to bump the longest thread ever on this forum")

The systems are doin' well, despite the forced rolling blackouts here in Venezuela (because, you know, our power grid is soooooo bad, everybody is blaming everybody, but noone cares...). Fortunately, i also got an APC Back-UPS 550 (up to 30 minutes on a 200W load), so at the very least, i won't get more fried RAM/HDs due to (un)scheduled blackouts

- Asumi (P133): I've replaced the dead Quantum Bigcrap with a couple of spares: that Champ 1.3GB, and a IBM DSAA-3720 (720 MB, mainly for swap, since this one is faster than the JTS). I've installed Knoppix 6.0, but it SUUUUUCKS! (not only in this machine, but the whole 6.x Knoppix line is full of fail) Tried with Ubuntu 5.04 (!!!), but the LiveCD crashed somewhere late in the boot, not mentioning that it was awfully sloooow. Also i've tested Damn Small Linux - it's Damn Fast Linux, but the installer is not nearly as customizable as Knoppix, and it does not work properly if you try to add more users (aside of the default "dsl"). So, for now, it's stuck with Knoppix 6.0, but waiting for something more... useful.

- Marika (386SX-40): Haven't booted it this year... but i did some maintenance today:

The case fan vibrates A LOT (generating some annoying "bang-bang-bang" noise while the PC is running) because the screws are too large, so you must push it far from the PC case. As a quick band-aid, i've used an old prepaid cellphone card (wow, those shitty Movistar cards are finally USEFUL for something!):



- Saki (P225MMX): Taking advantage of the scheduled blackout for today, i performed some heavy maintenance tasks on it:

* PSU replacement: the old one had some wiring faults, mostly in the DVD drive, that stopped working or acted funky in the mid of my Sailor Moon reruns (well, that Toshitba-Crapsung drive is also faulty too). So i've replaced it with my last remaining part from my original '98 Pentium box: a beefy 250W AT PSU. After cracking open the thing for cleanup, surprise! a nice dust coating



Did anyone mentioned "FIRE HAZARD"? Since i got that PSU (in late 2006), i didn't bothered to open it for cleanup. You're looking at 19 years of Resident Crap(tm). And despite that, the sucker worked without issues 24/7 in the last 3 years, without blowing fuses or overheating!
Oh, and this:

I didn't noticed burn marks on the motherboard, so i assume that these were present way before building Saki Curiously, both burnt spots were both +5V lines...

* RAM replacement: I've found a couple of "L@@k, RARE" 32MB EDO sticks on my stash (unknown brand, with Nanya chips). On Saki, there were two EDO sticks (Apacer/LG), and two FPM sticks (Goldenram/Hyundai/Samsung). Obviously, the latter had to go out of the way, so now Saki is full EDO, ready for some overclocking madness

(if you want these, get ready to shell $42+S&H on most shady online retailers... 32MB SIMMs were qute rare, and they still are). After the usual battles and brawlings with the SIMM slots with those old Pentium motherboards (because you can't change RAM on these without a couple of failed boot attempts, it's written with invisible ink on the motherboard booklet), Saki was back to service.

* Cables: I've replaced the remaining 40-wire IDE cable with a dirt cheap 80-wire cable (you can still find them brand new over here in local retailers, but they won't sell you IDE drives anymore ). Also, i've replaced the floppy cable for a shorter, single-drive piece. Less wiring madness, better for cooling

* USB: If you've been following this thread from the beginning, you may know that i had fried the +5V USB power trace on the motherboard, forcing me to do some "temporary rewiring" to get the USB ports working. But the "temporary wire" got loose, so the USB ports stopped working. So i had to redo the temporary wiring (that i haven't tested yet, so i'm not sure if it works or if it will fry the motherboard ). It's a pain to work with the motherboard already bolted on the case...

* Dust: Removed 60% of it. I suppose that the NIC cards won't "latch-up" again (although i got a kernel panic this week from the pcnet32 driver... first time since 2008!)

See ya later, and don't forget: dust is not the enemy all of the times!

[electronixguy]

Looks like quite the set of projects you've got going on there. I've been doing some smaller ones here, as well. What I'm working on at the moment is a Samsung S5200 portable computer, 286/1MB RAM/30MB HDD/gas plasma display. Got it booting up ok, but there seems to be an issue with the keyboard controller...

I'll upload a picture or two of that machine. Of all things that are really hard to find here, I still haven't been able to get my hands on a running 386 of any kind... I'll keep looking around.

I'll try to come around here a bit more often, too. Take care, all