I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly well
equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a pair of
10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a decent cdrom
drive. My original intention was to install Red Hat on it, but RH9 has a
minimum requirement of a P200 to install. Debian is an option, but I'd like
to try Slackware instead. How's the current Slack9.1 distro on a 486
speedwise? Would it be adviseable to use an older version of slack?

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 13:02:25 +0100, logic7 wrote:

> [...] How's the current Slack9.1 distro on a 486 speedwise?

I have not tryed 9.1 on it (jet) but on a P54@60Mhz 16megs 9.0 runs fine.
Note, this is without much boat (such as X).

> Would it be adviseable to use an older version of slack?

That depends upon what you want to use it for.
Even X should not be a problem (useing TWM (or even FVWM)).
If this is to be a server you might however want to look for a 100Mbit NIC.

--
-Menno.

Hi logic7

logic7 wrote:
> I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly well
> equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a pair of

AMD 5x86-133 ? Is it a 586 or a 486?

On a Pentium with 32 MB Slack 9.1 runs like music.

If it is 486, personally I would go for 8.1 (Kernel 2.4.18).

> 10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a decent cdrom

Bootable? Then you won't have any problems. Even without a bootable,
there is a clever system with floppies, con: in 8.1 you'll need 6
CDs, and perhaps a 7th for the network.

All depends on what you plan to do. Pure server is no problem,
X window system will be a hurdle though.

Arun

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 13:02:25 +0100, logic7 <georgejonesiv@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
> I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly well
> equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a pair of
> 10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a decent cdrom
> drive. My original intention was to install Red Hat on it, but RH9 has a
> minimum requirement of a P200 to install. Debian is an option, but I'd like
> to try Slackware instead. How's the current Slack9.1 distro on a 486
> speedwise? Would it be adviseable to use an older version of slack?
>
>

Here's a site where you can get older versions of Slack:

ftp://ftp.kpn.be/pub/linux/slackware/

And this is a link to a stripped-down 4.0 (that has X):

http://tiny.seul.org/en/index.html

--
Alan C
Post validation at http://tinyurl.com/rv0y

logic7 wrote:

> I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly
> well equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a
> pair of 10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a
> decent cdrom drive. My original intention was to install Red Hat on
> it, but RH9 has a minimum requirement of a P200 to install. Debian is
> an option, but I'd like to try Slackware instead. How's the current
> Slack9.1 distro on a 486 speedwise? Would it be adviseable to use an
> older version of slack?

Since you asked.. I currently use slack 9.1 on a:

486dx2-66mHz
48mb RAM
1/2 Mb Video
10mb NIC
4x cdrom
2 gig Hdd

I don't use X (min 64mb ram reccommended) but from the command line it's
not to bad. Obviously any tough commands take longer, and compiling
can be real bad. Personally, I have it set as an exact mirror to my
main server in my home/office, and use it to test various scripts and
such before running them on my main server. BTW, the fastest i could
ever fully configure, complile, and install a kernel (timed from 'make
xconfig' to reboot), was 5 hours and 44 minutes.

You have at least double the hardware so you should be good, maybe even
run x/kde but probably woundn't be very responsive.. YMMV
--
-alex49201

logic7 wrote:

> I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly well
> equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a pair of
> 10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a decent cdrom
> drive. My original intention was to install Red Hat on it, but RH9 has a
> minimum requirement of a P200 to install. Debian is an option, but I'd like
> to try Slackware instead. How's the current Slack9.1 distro on a 486
> speedwise? Would it be adviseable to use an older version of slack?

I'm currently running 9.1 on an Am486DX4/100 with 20MB RAM and a dead slow old
500MB disk drive (no, it's not easy to upgrade, that's a real cute, small
laptop that is kinda hard to fiddle around with), and it's quite usable as an
ssh, mail and web client in text mode (i tried starting X, but i abandoned
after nearly 1h of full cpu usage by X... gotta look into that someday). with
the heap of RAM you've thrown at it, though, you should be able to use X and
some "light" WM easily. i see no reason to go with an older slackware version
performance-wise...

st

On Saturday 25 October 2003 10:47 pm in alt.os.linux.slackware alex49201
wrote:

> 486dx2-66mHz
> 48mb RAM
> 1/2 Mb Video
> 10mb NIC
> 4x cdrom
> 2 gig Hdd
>
> I don't use X (min 64mb ram reccommended) but from the command line it's
> not to bad.
> You have at least double the hardware so you should be good, maybe even
> run x/kde but probably woundn't be very responsive.. YMMV

Huh ?.

I run Splack 8.0 on an old diskless Javastation with 32Mb and no swap,
it runs X just fine.
OK, so KDE is bloatware, just use fvwm and it will work fine.
One of my 486/33 boxes only had 16Mb, it also ran fvwm with
no problems until I cleared out all of the P100 and below boxes
for the local school who were short on kit.

Old computers never die, they just smell that way <B-).

--
My real address is crn (at) netunix (dot) com
WARNING all messages containing attachments or html will be silently
deleted. Send only plain text.

> Huh ?.

Actually, i never even tried to run X, i thought it might work, but i
really had no need. It's purpose is as testing machine, so i have it
mirrored with the exact setup of my main server, absolutely identical,
except the ips are off by one. I only access it via ssh and have no
need for graphic anything on it. Although i have thought about trying
it just to see if it would run...

--
-alex49201

Menno Duursma <menno@desktop.lan> says...
>
>On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 13:02:25 +0100, logic7 wrote:
>
>> [...] How's the current Slack9.1 distro on a 486 speedwise?
>
>I have not tryed 9.1 on it (jet) but on a P54@60Mhz 16megs 9.0 runs fine.
>Note, this is without much boat (such as X).
>
>> Would it be adviseable to use an older version of slack?
>
>That depends upon what you want to use it for.
>Even X should not be a problem (useing TWM (or even FVWM)).
>If this is to be a server you might however want to look for a 100Mbit NIC.

One way to boost X performance is to use two 486 boxes, one as an
X client and the other as an X server.


--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

the AMD 5x86 is/was nothing more than a rebadged 486. AMD produced
processors with the 486 name up to their 486-120MHz processor. The next
processor was named 5x86 to buy more time for the K5.

As for XF86, I had planned on using X with Blackbox or Fluxbox as my wm.
WindowMaker was also an option, but I may hold off on that one 'cause I love
Black/FluxBox so much.

I plan to use this box for learning to write shell scripts. I'm severely
weak in that area and found that, in order to get a job as an *nix admin, I
need to know how to write scripts.

George Jones - Logic7
http://allways.nu
http://www.geocities.com/labwerx
http://www.mp3.com/logic7

"Arun Dev" <nospam@pleaz.xy> wrote in message
news:3f9ae35f$1_2@news.tiscalinet.ch...
> Hi logic7
>
> logic7 wrote:
> > I have finally started working on my 486/5x86 project PC. It's fairly
well
> > equipped with an AMD 5x86-133, 128MB RAM, a Promise ATA66 card, a pair
of
>
> AMD 5x86-133 ? Is it a 586 or a 486?
>
> On a Pentium with 32 MB Slack 9.1 runs like music.
>
> If it is 486, personally I would go for 8.1 (Kernel 2.4.18).
>
> > 10GB ATA66 drives, a 4MB S3 Virge GX card, 10Mb nic, and a decent cdrom
>
> Bootable? Then you won't have any problems. Even without a bootable,
> there is a clever system with floppies, con: in 8.1 you'll need 6
> CDs, and perhaps a 7th for the network.
>
> All depends on what you plan to do. Pure server is no problem,
> X window system will be a hurdle though.
>
> Arun
>