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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] BL3 loop won't install on laptop 386 sx-20 Ultra
  • Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:06:28 +0000 (UTC)

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




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