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plaidfishes
04-14-2002, 07:48 PM
I am new to Free-DC but I am an old geek. Yes, I did learn to code on a Commodore PET. And I have always believed that computers could change the world. Which brings me to my current problems...

My side job is consulting with financial firms and I frequently run into masses of old computers stacked up in some closet. Nobody really wants to throw away functioning computers that have become obsolete. But, realistically, charities and such need at least semi modern systems so they have support and parts. I really don't want to tell them to trash these systems. They may be old, but somebody once loved them.:cry:

I have a couple of extra ports on the hub, bandwidth, power jacks and a stack of old computers. I want to give these old boxen a home until they finally die. I know most of the people here are concerned with massive power and the latest upgrade but I think a bunch of old boxen contentedly working through their twilight years can make a good contribution :cool:

Hardware specs: Usually 486 or Pentium systems. Generally 8 to 32 MB of RAM. SVGA, and 400MB to 1 GB HDs. 3.5 floppies with the occasional 5.25. Sorry, almost never a CD and only occasionally is the NIC present. NICs are cheap so I can provide those but CDs are pretty much out of the picture since these systems only rarely are able to support them.

I need to make these systems ready for crunching. So I figure Linux, a NIC and use the text client. The question is how? I havent used any flavor of Nix since SCO Xenix in 1994. Thus, some newbie issues in this area.

Every Linux that I have seen comes on a CD. Not feasible for this application. I need something that can at least boot from a floppy. One possible is to have a boot floppy then setup the NIC and finally install the OS over the LAN. Any good ideas here? Which distro etc.

Just to begin, first box is Ivy. She came from a good home, a secretary loved her for many years. She only did word processing and an aquarium screensaver. She is a Pentium100 with 8MB of RAM on a P55P4N mortherboard, a 853MB IDE HD, VGA and dual 3.5 floppy. Can you help me help her to become a productive happy boxen chewing on structures in her old age?

FoBoT
04-14-2002, 08:25 PM
its a nice idea, one major concern is the cost of the electricity

free is good and all, but your power isn't free

i see you are in B.C. , i used to live in Washington, so i assume your price for a kilowatt hour of juice is pretty low? in that case , this is sorta viable

but, one big problem with those older systems will be memory limited
an 8mb pc will barely run anything but DOS
and you may consider only choosing boxen with pci slots, ISA nics can be tricky in linux sometimes, if you restrict your farm to systems with pci slots, you can use all pci nics, as you said, not anymore cost than ISA these days

i would limit this venture to a minimum system config of

pentium 100
16mb ram
200mb hard drive
pci NIC
as far as floppy or CDROM, i wouldn't put a permanent one of EITHER on these boxen

i don't normally leave a CD or floppy drive in my servers/crunchers at home, i just plug in a CD drive long enough to load the OS , then shut it down and pull it out, one CD drive to cover multiple systems

you can do the same with a floppy drive, once the OS is on the hard drive, why leave the floppy attached?

if you are going with floppy , i would recommend using Debian (http://www.debian.org) linux, its easy to install a base system with between 2 and 17 floppy disks, if you have a LAN in your house and a newer PCI nic, you can load up the bare system with 2-6 disks and then complete the base install from ftp

worse case, you complete the base install with 11 additional disks

with this base installation, you can ftp your client software onto the pc and start crunching away

the projects that lend themselves to such slow/old boxen include (in my opinion):

RC5 - distributed.net
DF - distributedfolding.org
G@H - gah.stanford.edu

the first two have very small work units, so i think they would be better, i have run G@H on some pentium 100Mhz 16mb pc's at work and depending on the actual work unit size, they can take a week or more to complete a single unit

with RC5 and DF , the WU's are so small that you could complete much more #'s

good luck! :)

plaidfishes
04-14-2002, 09:39 PM
Thanks FoBot:notworthy

Looks like some heavy work for tonight. Debian, here I come.


Power is not really an issue, Hydro is pretty cheap here, about the same dollars as in WA but in Loonies! Besides, there are 10 other computers here in the office so a couple, few, dozen probably won't get me in trouble. I'll ask the boss, (myself) yep, its OK. It is an OLD building too so lack of circuits will likely be the issue here. The only real advantage this office is that I am about 5 meters from the main Telco exchange for the finacial district. DSL at 4.5MB/sec :smoking: means the boxen live at the office.

Ivy has mixed ISA and PCI, should be OK. 8MB is pretty damn small but thats why I am shooting for Linux. With any luck, I will be able to get this down to a recipe for setting up so it will go faster.

You are right of course about not leaving any Floppies or CD on the beast but I am more concerned about tring to get the CD's to work while also installing an OS. Having bad memories of fighting CD's on these type systems when they were new makes me wary of tempting it now:bang: . Using already installed floppies seems a much saner concept.

Was going to do DF anyway, an old canuck like IVY would likely prefer working with a Toronto group.

Thanks again

FoBoT
04-14-2002, 11:24 PM
shortcut to the floppy installation instructions (http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-install-methods.en.html#s-install-floppies)

good luck! :)

i know a canadian debian guru, he lives on vancover island, but its in a small town quite a ways north of victoria

if you get stuck, i'll see if he can help out :)

plaidfishes
04-15-2002, 05:20 AM
Say hello to Ivy!!!!:cheers:

I took a lot of tries, first to figure out why the network wasn't working but the DCHP was. Had to register the MAC with telus.net. Figured out how to get a MAC from a half complete install. Then net connection kept dropping during the big dl of base2_2. Finally figured out where the hard disk was mounted. I must have dl/d base2_2 at least 20 times... However, in the end I succeeded!!!!

I could like Linux a lot, but there is a lot of work needs to be done on the installer. Some things are absolutely perfect but then you get dropped off into nowhere without the faintest clue how to proceed. :swear:

All in all, I am pretty happy with Debian, they mostly made sense, only occasionally dropping into insider or undefined jargon. It ranks as a nicer install than NT4, WIN3.11 or SCO Xenix but no where near as nice as Mac or XP.

Anyway, I will do the install of the text client tommorrow, must sleep or I will be all grouchy at the marketing droids. Ivy will be cruching on the new protien first thing tommorrow.

Much Thanks to you FoBot.