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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

I have BL3 working (right now) in 4MB RAM, loop version (3.1) on our 
fastest pentium desktop, with swap file as instructed.

Without the swap file it gives me error messages and won't boot.

We are trying to install it to a laptop computer with 640K base plus 4M 
extended RAM, mono VGA LCD screen with 256K video RAM (and an output to 
external monitor that does 256 colors at 640 or 16 colors at 800)

As expected, the floppy disk version would not boot and it went black 
while uncompressing linux.  On another setup with 8MB RAM (also too 
little) the floppy disk version did not go black but we gots lots of error 
messages while booting about do try to free pages failing.

We put in an 80MB hard drive (from a dead 386 because the drive in this 
one had failed and was 80MB) and partitioned as follows:

32MB DOS (instructions call for 25MB)
9.2M swap partition (apparently 6.7M would have done it)
40MB linux partition

DOS would have been smaller except we needed space for the 20MB image file 
in the loop version, and the swap.zip and swap.img files.

James probably transferred the bl3-32.zip file via ethernet but we have a 
laptop.  plip and llpro (parallel) do not transfer that file properly 
(fs.img changes somehow) and I did not feel like experimenting with 
nullmodem serial cable and llpro or linux-dos kermit transfer.

So we downloaded the 2.8M zipfile.  Could have put arachne, nettamer, or a 
short version of lynx for DOS (bobcat or 2.8.5 without NLS) and downloaded 
that way. Or used the dialer from arachne or bobcat with a DOS wget port, 
but that would mean installing some software that we would only  need to 
remove right after the download to make space.

We chose to put on kermit (three files) and dial the local bbs, download 
using lynx there and save the file directly to our own computer via kermit 
file transfer, which worked (at 14.4K dial-in speed, since the bbs has 
slow modems).  An hour later we unzipped the two zip files.

Another option would have been to download to my sdf account and then ftp 
from there using Arachne's dialer and ftp programs (then delete those).

25MB would not have been enough space with both the zipped and unzipped 
swap files. 32MB left us about 1MB free in DOS.

We typed boot and it started to boot linux with loadlin, slowly, started 
to uncompress linux, and then went black.    For a while there was hard 
disk access every few seconds.

I mentioned the failed floppy boot because that also gave us a black 
screen so was diagnostic of something or other.

This is a cirrus video chip.  Might linux not support it?
We booted with FreeDOS F5 to bypass system files.

We have one other 386 with 5MB RAM to try but need to plug in an external 
monitor as the backlight bulb is broken.  I might experiment with file 
transfer via serial cable to that one.  I never did figure out how to do 
file transfer in dumb terminal mode with kermit, but kermit can be used 
without that for file transfer. 
--------

On the fast pentium linux runs in 4M RAM and X even works (800x600x12). 
I typed startx, then loaded links.  I can use two terminals at once and 
swm works okay.  The video speed is no problem, it is at least as fast as 
linux itself in 4MB RAM on this computer.

This video card supports 15-bit color so I presume that is what it is 
using.  From my web reading, only cameras, scanners, and PDAs do 12-bit 
color (4-bit R G and B, 16 intensities of each color blended together).

8-bit 'pseudocolor' appears to differ from other modes in that it only 
uses 256 colors chosen from a larger possible set, perhaps to conserve 
video RAM?  24-bit is 8-bit per color.  No idea what 15 and 16-bit are, 
but 8-bit seems to be more complex so perhaps Xvesa did not even attempt 
it.

I am telnetted to sdf, which does not seem any slower than usual (I need 
to wait a few seconds sometimes before what I type appears, but not 
always).
-----
Did anyone else get BL3 loop working on a 386 SX (no copro) with LCD mono 
vga?

My partner noticed that his text editor (written in nasm) is acting 
strangely on this laptop.  Until he has typed about two lines, it is 
glacially slow, then speeds up suddenly to normal.  The Freedos edit 
program works fine.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org