What to do with an old machine.
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From: Damian Walker on 8 Jan 2008 05:20 Quoting Paul Martin's message of Yesterday: >> * File server >> * NNTP server > Overspecced. :-) Indeed. Its backup machine is a P133 with, I think, 128MB of RAM. In an AT case, no less. I'm sure that will manage if necessary. -- Damian - http://damian.snigfarp.karoo.net/ Put "sausage" in the subject of email replies to avoid my spam trap.
From: Daniel James on 9 Jan 2008 05:45 In article news:<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. That *is* surprising. It was quite common for a BIOS only to be able to work with a disk whose geometry was stored in one of its internal tables, but BIOSes that allowed you to define your own table entry generally worked with anything you provided -- as long as what you provided was compatible with the actual geometry of the disk, of course! I avoided most of these issues when they were common by always using SCSI disks (which were much faster than the IDE drives of the day). The SCSI controller provides its own BIOS extension which supports SCSI drives of all sizes (up to the limit for the SCSI spec, which is huge). > This has stuck in my brain because I couldn't get that BIOS to accept > any size of drive that was commercially available when I was setting up > dual booting - hence the need to scour eBay for a used 6.4 GB drive. Could you not upgrade the BIOS? Could you not have used 3rd-party software such as OnTrack Disk Manager? Cheers, Daniel.
From: Geoffrey Clements on 9 Jan 2008 06:27 "Martin Gregorie" <martin(a)see.sig.for.address> wrote in message news:urjc55-28d.ln1(a)zoogz.gregorie.org... > 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. > If you want to put a bigger disk in I've got an IDE card gathering dust somewhere that provides two IDE ports, it's got an ISA interface and its own on-board BIOS. I'm not sure what maximum disk size it can handle but I think it'll be bigger that 6.4 GB. I can let you have for the cost of the postage. -- Geoff
From: Martin Gregorie on 9 Jan 2008 09:29 Daniel James wrote: > > Could you not have used 3rd-party software such as OnTrack Disk Manager? > That would be OK for 'doze - I've used it in the past - but don't forget that GRUB uses BIOS services, so the fact that the BIOS couldn't see the disk means that GRUB won't boot from it. I have a hazy memory that I was able to install Linux in the bigger disk but then couldn't boot from it. At that point I read up on GRUB and discovered its BIOS dependency. In any case, there's something a bit icky in the hardware because it (K6/300, 384 MB RAM) doesn't run FC1 any faster than a Pentium/133 with 128 MB RAM - its annoyingly slow in fact. Currently I use it to run Win95 when I need to and only boot Linux to back it up. The rest of the time I use this 'ere Thinkpad 560Z for webby stuff and as a terminal to my main box (P3/866, 512MB RAM) which really flies since I doubled its RAM yesterday. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Martin Gregorie on 9 Jan 2008 09:19
Geoffrey Clements wrote: > "Martin Gregorie" <martin(a)see.sig.for.address> wrote in message > news:urjc55-28d.ln1(a)zoogz.gregorie.org... >> 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. >> > > If you want to put a bigger disk in I've got an IDE card gathering dust > somewhere that provides two IDE ports, it's got an ISA interface and its own > on-board BIOS. I'm not sure what maximum disk size it can handle but I > think it'll be bigger that 6.4 GB. > > I can let you have for the cost of the postage. > Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. The machine was sitting there with Win95 and almost unused so I dual booted it. However, it really is extremely slow and the 384 MB RAM I have fitted is all it will accept. There's also the oddity that its stuck on Fedora 1 because the installers for FC2 thru FC4 refused to run on it - they've all hung while copying the installer image to hard disk. If its to be useful for anything it needs a new mobo which will also fix the disk size problem. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | |