Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT SDF.ORG>]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014, Ron Clarke wrote:

> Hi Sindi,
>
> On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 23:45:18 +0000 (UTC), sindi keesan wrote:
> > I notice it is 13MB, not 2.7MB like mine.
>
>  Yes, it is big. Static builds ARE big, because they contain all the
> libraries they require. This means that it will run in distros that don't
> already have those libraries.

David Moberg's static build used uclibc and is about 7MB because uclibc is 
smaller than glibc.

> > Does it work on a PI from 1996?
>
>  No idea. I have never even seen a PI.

If you use anything under 233MHz you have seen a Pentium I.

> From wikipedia (possibly misinterpreted by me)

386 - i386 
486 - i486

---------------------
Pentium I

Original pentium 60MHz or 66MHz, 5V.

P54C (and variants) 75-200MHz, 3.3V.

P55C (i586) or Pentium MMX (does graphics faster) late 1996, 166-300MHz.

Early laptops apparently did not use special processors.  I have seen 
full-sized cpus in them, sometimes removable (at least the AMD ones).

-------------------------

P6 (i686) - Pentium Pro (1995, 150-200MHz), Pentium II (233-450MHz), 
Pentium III (400MHz-1.4GHz), Pentium M (900MHz-2.2GHz - name continued to 
be used for later processors)

P68 - Pentium 4 also called Netburst
P7 -  Itanium
Core - Core 2 and Xeon  - upgraded P4's
Nehalem - Core i7 etc.

Someone just gave us four mostly fixable Core 2 machines from 2006-2008, 
the usual 7 years behind the times.  I used BL1 in about 1999 on a 486 
(1990-1995).

The 5500CT Omnibook early 1996 133hz is identified by mplayer as P54C.

David Moberg's mplayer was NOT compiled with P54C support. It plays MP3s 
offline but not online (that might require MMX).  I compiled mplayer 
(sound only) for my 120MHz pentium with midi port on the docking station. 
Rosegarden in BL3 works with my electronic piano to record to hard drive. 
I also compiled for i586 and i686, with fb video, glibc 2.3.6 or 2.2.5.

It would be lovely to have a working 2.6 kernel for BL, which would let us 
use a glibc new enough for a recent Opera (12.10 and later need glibc 
2.8).  Kernel 2.6.21.7 is the last to call ide hard drives hda not sda.
I tried repeatedly and failed to compile it.

ALSA sound as an option would be helpful too.  I have it working on two 
laptops where OSS won't work, but sometimes OSS works and not ALSA.

ipchains was replaced by iptables, also usable by typing three lines 
allowing forwarding, and setting IP numbers and default gateway.

pcmcia changed with kernel 2.6.  The older version works on the 5500CT but 
NOT the newer version.  Or this could be a bug in puppy linux.  Kernel 
2.4 
and older pcmcia were used through version 1.09  (and OSS through 1.07).

cardbus support would be helpful since the non-cardbus wireless cards 
don't support WPA2 (or WPA).  This includes onboard mini-PCI 
(mini-PCMCIA?) cards with the antennas embedded in the screen, giving them 
far better reception.

Any chance of a BL for the 21st century, Steven?