What to do with an old machine.
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From: Tony Houghton on 7 Jan 2008 17:25 In <slrn.2008-01-07.21-15-20(a)cunegonde.bas.me.uk> Ben Shimmin <bas(a)llamaselector.com> wrote: > Tony Houghton <h(a)realh.co.uk>: > > In <slrn.2008-01-07.17-31-47(a)cunegonde.bas.me.uk> > > Ben Shimmin <bas(a)llamaselector.com> wrote: > >> > >> I also find that the fetchnews from Leafnode 2 is about an order of > >> magnitude faster than its predecessor. > > > > I bet it's still not as good as newsstar ;->. > > Possibly not, though you are perhaps a tiny bit biased... :) Well, I meant more in overall features than speed; I don't know how they compare for performance. Newsstar ticks all the right boxes - pipelining, multiple "threads" [1] and using article numbers instead of NEWNEWS - but on a typical daily fetch lasting a few seconds it doesn't get near saturating my connection. It does hoover up the bandwidth when fetching binaries though. I think fetchnews+leafnode uses some private protocol for getting the fetched articles into the server so I haven't made it possible to use newsstar in place of fetchnews. No doubt I could work it out by reading the source but the protocol might be subject to change with minimal documentation and I don't really want to have to keep track of it. [1] It actually uses separate processes communicating with each other over pipes for some daft reason, but I might try changing it to use threads some day. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk
From: Ian Rawlings on 7 Jan 2008 17:37 On 2008-01-07, Tony Houghton <h(a)realh.co.uk> wrote: > Why keep slrn open? By the same token, why quit it? If it don't need quitting, I don't quit it ;-) I have a screen session running with several apps installed on set screens so I can hit ctrl-A 0 to get to SLRN, ctrl-A 1 to get to my p2p machine and so on. I used to have mutt in there too but blunderbird managed to oust mutt, can't remember why now, some specific feature I needed. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
From: Owain on 8 Jan 2008 10:35 Ben Shimmin wrote: >>... I wish there was a >>standard for using some sort of online newsrc files so you could read >>news from any client without losing track of which articles you've read. > That sounds rather like what would happen if you crossed Google Reader > with the 1980s! No, what you need is INAP :-) Owain
From: Vince Coen on 8 Jan 2008 11:14 <7ee5232c-52be-499f-983e-528f81309ad9(a)q77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> Hello Neil! 04 Jan 08 18:29, Neil Sluman wrote to All: NS> I recently resurrected an old machine. A K6-2 running at 300MHz. NS> Seems I might as well install Linux on it. NS> Trouble is, I have no idea what to do with this thing. Anyone have NS> any thoughts? It's too slow for video. And doesn't really have NS> enough disk space to use as a file server. (Yes, I know you have no NS> idea what I'm interested in. I'm after random ideas here!) NS> Also, what linux distribution I should use? The CPU is in the Pentium NS> family so anything targetted at Pentium Pro or Pentium 2 or better NS> isn't going to work. I installed Mandriva Linux on a old P2 box with 128mb (upgraded to 256mb) having installed a 60gb IDE drive that the bios could only see 6 mb or so. Using Linux I created a 150mb partition for swap and the rest for linux, Luckily Linux can see all the disc space after it installs its own bios. Vince Essex, UK Based.
From: Martin Gregorie on 8 Jan 2008 11:10
Paul Martin wrote: > In article <5bm955-1up.ln1(a)zoogz.gregorie.org>, > Martin Gregorie wrote: > >> From memory the BIOS had an number of predefined disk geometries you >> could select but none defined a disk of over 6.4 GB. It also provided >> the ability to accept your own definition, but you couldn't put in >> anything that exceeded 6.4 GB. > > What happens if you put a larger drive in, but tell the BIOS that it's > only 6.4GB in size? > I never tried that. In any case, I'm disappointed with the performance of the machine - subjectively another box with a 133MHz Pentium and 128 MB as 4 x SIMMs is faster. The P133 (currently a semi-gutted chassis) has a BIOS that DOES work OK with a 30 GB disk (don't know about 40 GB - never tried), but is a Baby/AT mobo format, so is almost junk by now. As the K6 box is an early ATX midi tower I should just gut it and scare up a decent board with a bit of speed and big disk capability. The tower case design is poor though - badly placed drive bays and not nearly enough of them. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | |