Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Sindi Keesan wrote:
> >
> > I think it ought to be possible to use BL3 with greyscale 
> > seejpeg in a bit more RAM - maybe 4MB with swap partition, 
> 
> Probably.
> 
> > which I don't think would be enough for Xvesa/xli 16 color
> > (which also looks worse than greyscale).  
> 
> Xvesa (without wm) is able to run in 4mb RAM.  However, it
> is tight.  If you try to run a substantial application on 
> top of that, you get terrible swapping.  

I tried once without swapping, in 3M, and it crashed.
The 3MB laptop will be DOS only.

But I am experimenting with seejpeg and links in BL3 and more RAM.

I have a Slackware 3.2 CD.  I forgot how to mount it in BL2.
First I did 
insmod cdrom
insmod ide-cd

Then 
mount -t iso9660 -r /dev/hdc /cd
(I first did mkdir /cd)
It complains about a device not existing.  Where did I goof?

So I rebooted into DOS and copied seejpeg.tgz and svgalib.tgz to d:\baslin 
and I can access them in BL3 from /initrd/DOS/baslin.  I also put two 
photos there.

I did pkg seejpeg and the executable file is 13K.
How would one make a linux package in BL3, where there is no makepkg?
Can it be done just using tar, if the package just consists of three files 
and no script to make symlinks?  I tried tar -cxvf * while in a temporary 
directory with subdirectory usr and /lib and /bin under that, but that did 
not work.  I can post the three files needed to run seejpeg if anyone 
wants, as a tar.gz with instructions where to put them. 

I typed seejpeg and it wanted libvga.so.1, which I got by 
doing  tar -zxvf svgalib.tgz and copying over libvga.so.1.2.10 to
usr/lib/libvga.so.1 (forget the symlink, I used your simpler method of 
renaming it).  I don't have vgalib.conf, just the defaults, since my S3 
card does not need to be run as VESA and I am not using a mouse.  
(If i were to install more of svgalib I think I could then set BL3 to work 
in more than 80 columns, choosable after booting - or did you not compile 
the kernel to support that?  It won't work on a 640x480 monitor anyway.)

libvga.so.1 is 172K (SW3.s)

I then discovered that for SW3.2 you don't need to hunt for files in 
packages.  filelist.txt (?) lists them all individually in the /live/ 
directory so I then copied over /live/usr/lib/libjpeg.so to
/usr/lib/libjpeg.so.1.  (I was reading this in DOS, which truncated the 
original file name, whatever it was).  This file is 107K.

I have a total of 285K of files (one executable and two libraries) and I 
can now view files with seejpeg instead of xli.  RAM occupied in so doing 
is 736K instead of 2.4M as with Xvesa/xli (without swm and menu and rxvt).  

seejpeg alone with my test photo took up 1340 bytes
seejpeg -g (greyscale) only 736 bytes, and looks the same in mono VGA
seejpeg -1 (one pass quantization) looks like 4-color and takes 744 bytes

links-0.90 takes up 768 bytes.
Add about 450 bytes for one sh and init.
What would a second one occupy, the same, or is it partly shared?

At most I can thus use links with seejpeg as a viewer, and two terminals, 
in

kernel - 2000 bytes or so  - how would I measure this?

links - 768 bytes
seejpeg greyscale - 736 bytes
sh and init - 450 bytes
second sh and init - no more than 450 bytes

4.4M
With one terminal, just under 4M.  

I just set up seejpeg as a viewer in links.  I changed
setup/associations/modify from xli to seejpeg (or seejpeg -g on the
'program line' instead of xli -quiet, -g is for greyscale), and unchecked
view in X and checked 'run on terminal' instead (otherwise it displays
lower ascii).  

If I type q while viewing an image it immediately exits both seejpeg and
links. (On another terminal).  Not too handy for viewing things online.
The Enter key while viewing also exits seejpeg/links.  Any ideas how to 
set this up so I can exit the viewer but stay in links?

I could not find a smaller viewer, but there is djpeg (could not figure 
out where to get it) which converts jpeg to gif and you could use the BL1 
viewer after converting, but this would be tricky to set up to use online.  
It might save RAM to download all images, convert jpegs to gifs, then view 
with the BL1 gif viewer.  Why bother.

Sindi