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

I am telnetted to my shell account again on the Northgate SlimLite 
386SX20.

I am not in CLI mode.  THere is no cursor.  This is the default telnet 
program.  My shell account is set to vt100.  ???

How can I turn off color for ls?  This is a 4-bit greyscale video chip.
Cirrus Logic.  In links I set terminal options to color off.

I can run X, slowly, though it complains 'impossible palette format'.

In X, I have a choice between plugging in a mouse or a modem.  If I were 
to run links in X in order to use xli I think it would be better to skip 
the wm since it does not work too wel without a mouse anyway.

I have been checking swap file usage.  112 when I am not in X, maximum, 
even while loading links or telnet; or dialing.

In X, image viewer, while viewing a jpeg via links and xli, it went as 
high as 2568K swap space used.  I think 6.7MB is too much for this system. 
When would I want more?  I doubt X would get much use.  The recommendation 
is not to use it with less than 8MB ram.  So I recommend not bothering 
with swap file on a 4.7MB laptop, and not using X.  Or using X with 3MB 
swap file only.  The computer is just too slow to wait for it to be 
swapping things around.

The video does draw slowly but in cli mode this is no problem.  I have not 
tried it as an X server.  Perhaps it would need more swap space then?

I will experiment with puttingo n the minimum libraries needed for seejpeg 
instead (svgalib files)
  Or would zgv (compiled for Bl1) work better?

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, sindi keesan wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org