[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

[R James]

On 9/26/10, Giuseppe Ghibò <ghibomgx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I said I would see someone with such hardware, taking a CD of latest MDV
> or cooker and try to install to do something and do a report.
>
> That  reminds me also one suggestion. If someone has old hardware that not
> in use anymore then could be donated to who is willing to test the latest
> MDV|Mageia on it. It's not ironic (I think this is a brainstorming), or I'm
> not kidding, but there could be an wiki hardware section for that.
>
I'm typing this from a 1997 AMD K6-233MHz system with 128MB running
Mandriva 2010.1  At the time of installation, it only had 96MB and the
text mode installer was slow but worked OK.  I did a minimal install
then added task-x11, xdm and icewm post-install.  Even after booting
into X, its surprisingly fast.  From pressing enter in the GRUB menu
to XDM takes 53 seconds.  According to /var/log/prcsys.log, the init
scripts portion takes 19 seconds.

I did make a few post-installation tweaks:

1. Remove msec.
2. Disable PulseAudio.
3. Delete /etc/X11/xinit.d/70net_applet
   (net_applet is a pig and not needed for static wired connection)

Google Chromium is finally a browser that can handle gmail on
low-resource systems.  Of course, it won't be playing YouTube
videos but for basic email and web-surfing, this system is usable.

Here are some interesting outputs:

"free" right after logging into IceWM: (27MB RAM, no swap)
[guest at jarrio ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        122812      83684      39128          0       6728      49652
-/+ buffers/cache:      27304      95508
Swap:       524144          0     524144

"free" while running Google Chromium: (78MB RAM, 6MB swap)
[guest at jarrio ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        122812     115992       6820          0        620      35516
-/+ buffers/cache:      79856      42956
Swap:       524144       6632     517512

CPU information:
[guest at jarrio ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 5
model           : 6
model name      : AMD-K6tm w/ multimedia extensions
stepping        : 2
cache size      : 64 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse msr cx8 mmx up
bogomips        : 449.53
clflush size    : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes   : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

Kernel information:
[guest at jarrio ~]$ uname -a
Linux jarrio.upsnag.priv 2.6.33.7-desktop586-2mnb #1 SMP Mon Sep 20
18:19:58 UTC 2010 i586 i586 i386 GNU/Linux

Hardware information:
[guest at jarrio ~]$ lspcidrake
pata_ali        : ALi Corporation|M5229 IDE [STORAGE_IDE] (rev: 20)
Card:Trident-based cards: Trident Microsystems|TGUI 9660/938x/968x
[DISPLAY_VGA] (rev: d3)
8139too         : D-Link System Inc|RTL8139 Ethernet
[NETWORK_ETHERNET] (rev: 10)
snd_ens1371     : Ensoniq|5880B [AudioPCI] [MULTIMEDIA_AUDIO] (rev: 02)
alim7101_wdt    : ALi Corporation|M1533/M1535/M1543 PCI to ISA Bridge
[Aladdin IV/V/V+] [BRIDGE_ISA] (rev: b4)
unknown         : ALi Corporation|M1531 [Aladdin IV] [BRIDGE_HOST] (rev: b3)

The old Trident TGUI graphics card only has 2MB RAM.
1024x768 at 16bit video works fine for 2D. :o)

On the front-panel of this system, there is the old LED which says
"233" with the "Turbo" button enabled and "133" with it disabled.
That could make an interesting photo for proving that Mandriva
and soon Mageia *can* run on legacy hardware.

Not sure if this was helpful but perhaps its a good data point?

Regards,
Rick