Digital PC 3100 5200 M (formerly Compaq Venturis FX-2)

[Egzoset]

Hello!

These last few weeks i been toying with a legacy P55C/X4 200 MHz (i586) desktop, equipped with only 96 MB RAM and a BiOS dating back to 1996~1997. So many ISOs were evaluated in such process now my memory feels like a piece of swiss cheese, somehow reading my hand-written notes doesn't help put order in those observations at all...

That was quite epic, hence it didn't hurt having its old hard-disk replaced by an SSD connected through some female SATA to 40-pins male IDE adapter. Nonetheless, the succession of frustrating experiments eventually diverted my attention toward another museum item: the Acer Aspire One D250, featured with Intel's Atom N270 (Diamondville) low-power CPU, a small/modest i686 laptop with better external VGA resolution, still plagued by USB 2.0 limitations besides its requirement for a 32-bits OS. Yet i thought that could speed up my selection a bit before it's time to revisit the other dinosaurus.



It seems one of my reasonably satisfying experiences on the Atom was with Porteus 3.2.2 Cinnamon i586, via a YUMi-exFAT USB thumbdrive because CD/DVD writing is time consuming to the extreme. This one is based on Slackware 14.2 which itself refers to the Linux kernel version 4.9.0 (SMP), not so old it wouldn't handle multi-media (like PDF, GiF, MP3, RM, MOV, WMV, MPG, FLV, MP4 and M3U) content. In comparison, i'd expect my best chances with Microsoft seem to be Win2K Pro SP4 with a swapfile, having video, sound and network drivers ready as well.

The thing is i'm confident Linux could compete much better if only it hadn't dropped 32-bits support at v3.8, while today's one exception is TinyCorePlus 16.0 with a fresh v6.12.11 kernel! So, i hate the idea that Windows shall rule forever in retro-computing and that's why i thought of suggesting that Porteus should take advantage of this and occupy the 32-bits niche once again, though exploiting code that's 20+ years younger than Microsoft's obsolete alternative.

In short, how about a Tiny Porteus v6 challenge with its feather-weight desktop environment built around 'Fast Light Tool Kit' (v1.4.2, 2025-Feb-23), e.g. still in active development on GitHub!, plus 'Fast Light Window Manager' (v1.02, 2006-Jun-30)??

It might turn out being so small we'd hardly notice such inclusion on a 32/64 bits Porteus 6 version.

[francois]

Welcome to the porteus forum community.

What do you want exactly?

[Ed_P]

dropped 32-bits support at v3.8

Obviously you haven't visited any of the Porteus 5.01 i586 sites at Porteus Mirrors Egzoset. i586 supports 32-bits.

[Egzoset]

What do you want exactly?

The message suggested to seek inspiration from TinyCore Plus 16 and its FLTK/FLWM desktop environment for a future version, and why not one capable of 32-bits support again, like in 2010 or so... But i must acknowledge there's a lot more than this initially, like to revalorize a vintage machine without re-installing Win98SE again - which actually i have done a couple times because i wanted to see some satisfying action, to be perfectly honest.

Obviously you haven't visited any of the Porteus 5.01 i586 sites...

That intuition has failed you, but i also tried a multitude of other distributions which seemed appropriate too, if it can be of any comfort.

One typical error message occurs quite early, warning about a need for some PAE CMOV feature, if the script is "polite"... Just this evening i evaluated Linux Console "32" with kernel 5.4.283 and later found clear verbose evidence this was compiled for an i686 instead, not a "x86_64", e.g. not the type of 32-bits i was expecting despite its filename in any case!

When i wake up tomorrow i plan to try Knoppix 7.7 (the CeBit 2016 CD version), an attempt with PLoP and it on flash USB resulted in a blank/dark screen. SlackEl v5.0 OpenBox is next, then SaliX RatPoison v14.0.1 or even its Live Xfce 14.2.1 version (i was unable to get v13.37-32). As for Knoppix v7.6.1 i vaguely recall that one didn't stick long but i forgot already. So far i'd say it won't be easy to match the apparent functionality of a 25-yr old W98 setup - if i renounce to exFAT partitions support and more, that is... Yet it was surprizing to observe how well it performed doing karaoke, playing Jazz JackRabbit Christmass '95 with a wired gamepad, etc. I keep hope that Linux will add fluid enough iP-TV to its palette, which hept me quite busy for the last few weeks, while temperatures are rising. Soon a pause may impose itself.

Fingers crossed!

[nanZor]

Hmm.. that's quite the project. Have you looked at the venerable Slitaz 32-bit? If you dig around a little, and not just use the default rolling-release iso, you may find one that is more memory appropriate for that box.

[Egzoset]

It's been slightly exhausting lately, the lack of success started to make it feel like a burden so i finally gave W2K Pro a few days, with my motivation suddenly rejuvenated after discovering 'Legacy Update': that's an on-line resource which automated Microsoft "hotfixes" by applying 150+ security patches (via a backup archive of course). But this still comes at the cost of severe restrictions, for example i had to drop my ISA Sound Blaster CT4170 "ViBRA16x" card because it worked at random, which left me with only a couple PCI slot combinations to choose from, mainly because of a need for NT-compatible drivers... At the moment i rely on a Sound Blaster SB0100 "Live! 5.1" and some 5-ports USB 2.0 card (NEC uPD720 series), complemented by the Linksys USB100TX (external) "EtherFast 10/100 USB Network Adapter". This way i can feed it with files via a FAT32 USB thumbdrive at reasonable speed and no trade-off on sound, while web access being massively HTTPS encrypted it defeats internet browsing, with a data rate around 25 % my ISP connection's capacity. I tried 3 different USB WiFi adapters to fix that but W2K rejected them all, a non-issue with Linux in any case.

Win98 required too many manual installs and WinXP just proved too sluggish, so W2K it is after deciding NT4 was no easy option neither.

Have you looked at the venerable Slitaz 32-bit?

Oh yes, that one too and so many more it would be shorter to mention those i've neglected so far. Actually it's on the desk in front of me, both in USB and CD form, but v5.0 i386 Core 5-in-1 results in "kernel panick" even on my Acer Aspire One which is a 686. So there's Slitaz v4.0, a valid i586 candidate except this is retro-grading back to kernel 2.6.37 that was released on January 4th, 2011... I've been hoping for at least 4.9 (late 2016) or better.

If you dig around a little, and not just use the default rolling-release iso, you may find one that is more memory appropriate for that box.

96 MB RAM ain't a lot for sure. Well, a pile of hand-written notes has accumulated in the process so maybe i'll simply opt for collecting the relevant details in a text file so i can finally decide what's next, a while later when i feel replenished again... The idea that W2K is the only optimal solution can't remained unchallenged indefinitely!