Subj : Re: unixs on a 386 To : Charles Angelich From : Russell Tiedt Date : Tue Nov 27 2001 08:40 am Hi Charles, RT>> Who says no warranty, besides, if it don't work, I return RT>> it, if three in succesion don't work, I change the RT>> manufacuter / model, no hassle. CA> "Three in succession don't work"?? This would be a nightmare to CA> the average person. Then I know that, that particular piece of hardware will not work in my situation, I have given my supplier and the manufacturer a fair shake, if that makes me better or worse than your average I don't know, but either way your neck of the woods seems to be/have a piss poor "average level" whatever that may be. RT>> Besides what does Linux caree if there is a warranty on the RT>> hardware or not. :-) CA> Not sure I understand this reference. LINUX is not a person and CA> cares little about you, me, or anything else. ;-) Well you paragraph prior to that seemed to imply that warranty/lack of warranty was somehow coupled/connected to Linux, unless I misunderstood you. RT>> Besides, in this neck off the woods, back then one only RT>> ever read of the above systems in imported computer RT>> journals, or magazines if you will. CA> Yes Gateway and Dell grew to be major players but began by CA> doing mail-order only sales. RT>> You built your own boxes or had a dealer build them for RT>> you, or you didn't buy computers, those where your choices. CA> In the USA this would describe the situation prior to IBM CA> entering the market with the PC and Radio Shack's TRS80. From CA> that time onward custom building was optional and not really CA> encouraged here anymore by any business. Bad pox to them! RT>>>> My 386 DX 33 (DFI motherBoard) 8M 30 pin SIMM's (4x2M) RT>>>> 540M Seagate HDD, Paradise VGA card worked great, with RT>>>> WIN 3.1 and Linux. Was my most stable box, till my RT>>>> current one. CA> The configuration worked so very well that when a newer machine CA> came along you turned your back and walked away from it or put CA> the machine out for the junk man with the hard drive inside the CA> case? CA> "Worked great" and "most stable box" does not describe CA> something that deserved to no longer exist. I find this CA> abandonment a bit confusing. Do you value your time? or don't you understand the term productivity? or does the term competetiveness not mean anything to you. At that stage I did a lot of graphics work, a faster machine mean't I could do an extra assignment every day, and spend less time while doing so. My time is valubale to me, if not to others. Does the above make sense to you or not. RT>> Really, you keep disparaging those who claim to have run RT>> Linux on a 386 Intel setup, CA> I am as uncomfortable with this as you must be. I am not uncomfortable with it at all, I just find your persistance a little tiresome. Especially your going on about an average machine, which was never an average machine here, the term here usually applies to something that is a non-descript system, three or so years old. CA> I've even read through the bulk of that boring tedious CA> sourceforg.net website and it's related links. Try that for CA> self-flagulation. Try just the `poplular' so-called mini-LINUX CA> mentioned frequently in echo messages. ELKS, mulinux, CA> monkey-linux, doslinux, etc. and see what is required and what CA> is really there. All the bog standard Linux versions that where current at the time worked, I personally installed Slackware, RedHat and Debian in that order on my i386DX33. CA> Nothing that I could find but assertions that it _did_ exist at CA> some time in some universe in our space/time continuum. CA> Would everyone benefit in some way if I just capitulate and CA> deny what I personally know to be the truth about what I could CA> not locate by any means available to me? RT>> well the above setup was what I first installed Linux on RT>> way back when I first used it as it was the only computer I RT>> owned, and I used it to surf the wild, wild WWW, read RT>> usenet news, exchange e-mail, and wonder of wonders connect RT>> to my long distance BBS and get my Fido "FIX". CA> The majority of 80386's don't have 8 meg or 540 meg hard drives CA> - but - if you did have a LINUX doing all that you say then it CA> wasn't just an `install'. You installed and then fixed, CA> patched, and added over some period of time. It was probably CA> somewhat useless at first and , over time, as parts of newer CA> versions were added it began to actually do something CA> worthwhile. If you had less than three different versions of CA> various LINUX combined into a workable system when you finished CA> I would be shocked. Like I said above, majority of 386'es here did, most 486'es came out with 540M HDD or 840's. Seems that the dealers flog you crowd a great deal of dumped goods there or what, maybe the crowd I deal with are as picky as myself what I spend my money on. I only installed standard distro's on that box, at that stage the only thing I "compiled" was the kernal to get real performance gains. CA> A person who would tolerate three inoperable pieces of the same CA> hardware before switching to another manufacturer would also CA> patiently wait years if necessary to combine enough parts of CA> various LINUX releases to create a working useful system. Never combined any parts from different distro's, I might be patient, but I am not totally stupid either, and any one who puts bits and pieces together from various distros has as much sense as someone who willy-nilly combines bits of WIN3.1, WIN95, and WINNT and expexts it to work. CA> Nothing to be ashamed of - most would brag. CA> But - not appropriate to tell a newbie "Sure LINUX installs on CA> an 80386". This is misleading in the extreme IMO. CA> This hybrid patch and compile is not what I was lead to believe CA> was required. It was said that so-and-so distribution had been CA> installed onto an 80386. No hybrid patches, CA> Not various parts, not reworked source code - one single CA> release that could install itself onto the 80386 machine. No reworked source, I am not a programmer, I can compile source code, I do not and never have written any, ever. All I had to do was put an "append" line into "lilo.conf" for Linux to be able to see and use the CD-ROM (2x) attached to a Media Vision PAS16 Spectrum sound card. This was documented in the SCSI How-To. That sound card is currenty in the childrens computer, the CD-ROM has long since ceased to function. :-( CA> When I realized this was less than likely I looked for hybrids CA> that were intact or detailed notes as to what part of what CA> distribution needed to be added to what other parts to make a CA> whole. Even that does not exist. Lot of them do, bog standard Distro's. Looking for hybrids- what are they? CA> If you can't find even one in the entire Internet or on FIDO or CA> usenet how would you convince yourself that no one lied, no one CA> exaggerated? Would you think yourself just a fool who cannot CA> find the obvious? If so many others did it and you cannot, mayhap you lack the motivation or competence to do so. From my point of view no other reasons exist. RT>> That is the 386 I personally first installed Linux on and RT>> on which I learn't Linux on. Linux unfortunately like every RT>> other OS I have ever run needs HARDWARE to run on. As the RT>> Subject of this post and your above paragraph state most RT>> clearly, the subject under discussion is "Linux on i386 RT>> Hardware" CA> The 80386 you describe would've been considered "server class" CA> hardware, not a typical purchase. Round here it was a typical purchase, anything less was considered not worth bothering with. CA> I don't think the typical 80386 would have more than 4 meg of CA> memory. Most seem to have 100 meg or even smaller hard drives CA> installed. I won't argue if you think the hard drives were CA> larger. As time went by they did get a bit larger but no one CA> used W9x then and no one foresaw a need for large drives. It CA> only made backups more difficult and expensive. Probably why CA> Zipdrives were at 100 meg for so very long and DAT tape backups CA> were 60 meg uncompressed and 120 compressed - Yes/No? What people could afford or what technology allowed. RT>>>> Those in-between worked well, but had minor problems. CA>>> The `in-between' are what I referred to above. Custom CA>>> builds can invite mismatch of parts that is difficult to CA>>> sort out, too complex to tune, and sometimes they just CA>>> never work properly. RT>> Mmmm... helps when you have decent drivers for all the RT>> hardware you have in a box, really. CA> Up to a point, yes. The existence of Plug-N-Play has encouraged CA> the manufacture of questionable hardware because the OS "finds" CA> the driver for you. Winmodems would've failed in the market CA> place without support from Plug-N-Play IMO. You mean without MS Windows surely? Russell --- Msged/NT TE 05 * Origin: Rusty's BBS - Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa (5:7105/1) .