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baslinux - Re: [BL] BL3 loop won't install on laptop 386 sx-20 Ultra

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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] BL3 loop won't install on laptop 386 sx-20 Ultra
  • Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 06:00:35 +0000 (UTC)

I am happy to report that BL3.32 on a 386SX with 4.7MB RAM (and one of the terminals remarked out in /etc/inittab) is working very nicely online with an external modem. (The internal one could not be made to work and was 2400 anyway).

Links took maybe 30 sec to load (lots of hard drive light flashing) with or without swap file but after that BL3 was quite capable of keeping up with the 28.8K dialup connection. I had to set terminal color to off in order to be able to read the text on this 4-bit greyscale monitor.

Telnet works quite acceptably fast.


X worked, despite some odd error messages which I did not write down.
The mouse did not work but we did not plug it in until after booting linux. Without X we don't need a mouse.

The CMOS battery has been replaced. The backlight lamp has not but a bright frontlight is usable. The keyboard however is not usable so this is no longer a very portable computer. It is not convenient to carry along a keyboard. Any ideas on how to make a laptop keyboard work? Some rows of letters do not work at all, nor does Enter or ESC. The ribbon cable may have gotten broken.It probably worked before the battery replacement.


I am using 32K of swap file. I keep checking and the swap file is not getting significant use. When would it be used? I don't notice anything going faster now that we have unzipped swap.zip. With two terminals running only CLI programs is a swap file really needed?

I was able to load links on the other terminal in about 3 sec (from cache) the second time.


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




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