OSes and Applications for Aging Machines? 120
TellarHK asks: "My aunt and uncle, both completely unfamiliar with computers, are looking to replace a broken word processor with something new. They'd like to either spend as few dollars as possible on a computer, or replace the word processor. Silly me, I mentioned I had a spare PC kicking around. It's a Digital Equipment 'Starion 930' Pentium 100 with 40M, and onboard video of an unknown type. As this machine is going to be used for word processing, I need an OS that will work with my newly dusted-off Lexmark Z11 printer. So what are my options? Will QNX handle the limited video and printer? Is there a WYSIWYG solution for FreeDOS? Is there a chance in hell any Linux distribution can give me graphics? I've got a whopping three gig drive in there. What can I do with it?"
Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:1)
This is especially useful, seeing as the Un*x printer compatibility database lists the Lexmark Z11 as being only paritally supported. [linuxprinting.org] Or to be more specific, the Linux driver does 600dpi colour only. Besides, I highly doubt you'd even want to think about getting X running on that old of a machine.
Re:Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:1)
Back in the day, I had X running on a 386DX 40MHz system with 16MB RAM. Not that I would want to run anything close to that configuration today! But it is possible.
Re:Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:1)
No problem running Linux and X on such a machine. I once installed it on my father's 100 Mhz Pentium.
These days I am experimenting with low-latency and preemptive kernels, and they do a real good job on such machines.
I think that the printer driver probably should make the decision.
Re:Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:2, Insightful)
Quick, easy and stable, and all your kit should just work out of the box. The remote manageability and increased stability of NT over 3.x (gack!) and 9x (urgh!) make this a nobrainer.
Re:Windows 3.1 to the rescue! (Score:1)
Come to think of it, I still have that machine here and boot it up for kicks. My next machine was a Pentium 100 that I didn't retire until four years ago. What the hell is this? Its not like we are talking about a 386 DX 40 with 4 megs of ram.
Whoa (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Hrmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hrmm....Indeed (Score:1)
Working front panels...paper tape...10-30 characters per second...human interface devices (terminals) that weigh so much you cannot move them...terminals that make so much noise, you can't hear the roar of the computer's fans.
Later we got amazing advancements like 3-chip MICRO processors, 256 bits of static ram in a "chip" smaller than your little finger nail!
Wooaah...those were the days.
Back then, we flew kites while listening to transistor radios. Isn't FM cool? You don't get static during thunderstormns!
My daughter had to show her friend a "record" is, and how to operate a "turntable".
Re:Hrmm....Indeed (Score:2)
Back then, we flew kites while listening to transistor radios. Isn't FM cool? You don't get static during thunderstormns!
---snip
I just hope for your sake you were not noticing FM's immunity to thunderstorms/spark gap transmissions _while_ you were flying kites. )
I survived (Score:1)
Re:Whoa (Score:1)
Overkill - Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Despite these shortcomings, I am still able to run Windows 98 with Word 2000. '98 boots up in about a minute, and word takes about 10 seconds to load. For an 8 year old laptop, that's pretty darn good. The only drawback is that the type is somewat laggy, although the system described in this article should be nearly twice as fast.
WordPerfect (Score:3, Insightful)
You might also want to look for some really ancient versions of Word, if they'll have an easier time with that. I don't know, I haven't used either.
It's possible to run linux on that type of hardware - I'm currently running Linux on my Pentium 90 with 16 MB of RAM. Go with an older version of Debian, like 2.1 or maybe 2.2.
However, I can't think of any word processors on Linux that are easy and stable enough for someone without Linux experience to use. LyX is close, but you have to learn LyX first (it's so different from most word processors). Forget about running AbiWord, KWord, or especially OpenOffice on that kind of hardware.
Re:WordPerfect (Score:1)
Speaking from experience, 95 SR2 + Office 95/7 will run fine, and fit in a smaller space then that if need be.
Re:WordPerfect (Score:1)
is this slashdot? (Score:2)
Is this really an entire thread pushing non-Open Source apps & OSes on Slashdot? Or did I end up on Bizaro Slash?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:is this slashdot? (Score:1)
I still can't believe that people have problems running Mozilla and OOo on systems that are more powerful than mine.
I run OOo 1.0 on the following systems :
I use these to write documents which I must export to .doc format and to create slideshows for courses on Linux. Yes, startup time is a little long, but I am now used to it, but working with it is no problem.
Mozilla is a little bit slow in the tooth, and I would certainly not recommend it for slower systems than mine, but it performs fine for me.
Re:WordPerfect (Score:1)
debian (Score:3, Informative)
Loverly.
Re:debian (Score:1)
Re:debian (Score:1)
Re:debian (Score:1)
Do your research (Score:3, Interesting)
The post even comes off as a bit insulting, as many of us were using Linux+GUI way before 100 mhz + 40 MB was considered outdated. It is by no means something far fetched.
Practical advice:
* Stripped down Linux
* FVWM or BlackBox or Aewm spawn of your choice
Re:Do your research (Score:3, Interesting)
Practical advice:
* Stripped down Linux
* FVWM or BlackBox or Aewm spawn of your choice
---snip
add (from the evil dark side)
* Win95
* Win98
* NT 3.5x
* NT 4
All will run fine on this hardware.
At my parents house I have a 486dx4/75 with 16MB of RAM running windows nt server, working as a dial on demand router between a wireless "symphony" (product made by Proxim) LAN to a dialup ISP (as well as hosting a small local postoffice). It's been in place and running for over 3 years now. Slak would/could not install on that proprietary POS Compaq Presario (known problem, some older compaq's of that era had a known incompatibility I found out about later), so out of desperation, I installed NT. Squeezing it onto the 180-something MB system partition was a challenge, and using the remaining space on the 210MB drive for the postoffice did not leave them with much room for large messages, but it works. Your P-100 with 40MB of RAM and 3GB (geez, what will you do with all of that?) of disk space is spacious in comparison.
Why bother with QNX and work to support the odd video card/printer, when you could just install windows 98 and be done with it? Or for that matter, plenty of Linux distros will work fine (Mandrake for one will not; just the graphical _installer_ on 8.0 complains about resources at the slightest nudge; but there is always the text-mode installer).
Otoh, if what you really looking for for your aunt and uncle is an oddball OS that will shutup any of their annoying friends silly enough to come over to help them with their computer, install OS/2 Warp 3. It will _fly_ on that machine, in fact you have a little too much RAM for that version of OS/2 to use optimally, (some RAM will be forced into disk cache duty only) and I have yet to see any equivalent (in functionality) to the presentation manager/object desktop combo anywhere else (Evolution may be much prettier, but not nearly as elegant IMO). Plus, OS/2 always has had great support for Lexmark printers.
And you maintain the goal of using something which is definitely no longer mainstream.
Re:Do your research (Score:3, Informative)
There are a lot of light apps one can run. I had a similar setup up until not so long ago. These are the apps that I found ran nicely on that hardware.
Re:Do your research (Score:2)
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but if you go the *nix route there's a decent window manager that is lightweight, and nicely configured right "out of the box". I haven't used it in some time -- but the project website suggests that development is still active...but check out the XFCE window manager.
Check it out here [xfce.org].
Its lightweight, and in the past, its run quite well on all of my old naff hardware. It borrows alot from Sun's CDE.
Re:Do your research (Score:1)
That's running some various Mozilla skins/themes (GTK, XFce, and Gkrellm), and xplanet for the auto-updating backdrop with weather maps showing a geosynchronous view from space of my house
It's especially nice for new users because you can put the apps they care about on the icon bar or its pop-up menus. It's also very snappy from a performance perspective -- in fact, my wife uses it on a 10Mbit xterm, and you'd never know you weren't at the host.
On the larger subject of whether to use Windows or Linux on an old PC... I've tried Linux on various relatives in the past, and my advice is: if they don't ask for it, don't give it to them. My mother-in-law is a perfect example -- when I replaced her OE5/Word98/IE/Freecell machine with an Evolution/OpenOffice/Mozilla/AisleRiot machine, you'd probably think she was happy, right? Well, the transition from Word to OpenOffice was the show-stopper, because despite being shown a few times she couldn't make the leap from a W icon to a Seagull icon. That plus stupid webmasters who lock their sites to non-IE users with a browser-detection routine. I've had similar experiences with other relatives, but my wife is a happy Linux user because she's grokked the freedom issue.
So if the user is interested in Linux for the freedom or performance or stability aspect, as some of my neighbors are, help them install OpenOffice and Mozilla on their Windows machines and then see what they think in a month. But if the user just asks for a machine and won't listen to the freedom argument, give them Windows or a Mac. Otherwise, they won't be motivated to attack the slightest of learning curves.
Linux all the way (Score:2, Interesting)
If the video card gives you trouble, just use the generic VGA driver
Re:Linux all the way (Score:1)
The lowest thing I booted Linux on was a Toshiba laptop 386sx, 16 Mhz with only 3 Mb of RAM. I had to create a special boot diskette to be able to partition it first and add 5 Mb swap, before I could install Slackware on it.
The lowest thing I ran X on was another 386sx with 16 Mb RAM and a Hercules card (yeah , b/w), 80 Meg HDD. I used it as an Xserver for my large system.
The only thing with these systems is that even on the command line they are slow. I suspect it is the kernels, because in 1993 I already had installed Linux on such systems, and they did not seem slow at that time.
Re:Linux all the way (Score:2)
Help?!~ (Score:1, Troll)
hate to do this to you. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want calls about how to get the *nix to work like windows by all means sign them up. I really would like to stress just droping win95 on it. Scream all you want but it is a small foot print, it is stable if your really only using for for word processing, and you not the "only well of knowledge" for that os.
Just my views, I have only put a computer in about quite a few famialy/friends homes and linux in the long run always ends up kicking my ass. That is because they get hooked on the computer and they want to talk about it with frinds, share all the stupid shit that is not going to work on linux without some computer skills to get it to work.
Linux and endless support for "my friends computer does this" how come I don't have the stuff he has...
Install windows and the crash now and then with the virus that goes with it. Install linux and be the only person that can help them, and deal with the why does this not work like everyone else "I" know besides you that runs windows.
Hard choice, make it wisely for your friends. There are cases for both, just depends which set of problems you are going to want to deal with.
Good luck, and get use to being someones free tech support for the life of that computer. The linux biggots are going to eat me alive on this, but that just shows they are like a lot of people I know. They don't use the best tool for the job, they use the tool that they can wave like a badge of knowledge even if it was not the best choice.
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:3, Insightful)
By contrast, Windows 95 is in end of life so it (and anything older like the non y2k compliant Win 3.1 somebody else suggested) isn't going to get fixed for any bugs found later, it's not particularly safe to put on the net if they decide to expand their computing horizons later and it's running on a slow, old machine which could start having hardware failures at any time.
At today's prices ($299) a new machine just makes sense.
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:2)
Another thing, Lindows is working with an OEM partner to drop the price to $199. At a certain point, it doesn't make sense to give an old machine to relatives.
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:1)
$299? Try $199
800Mhz/10GB/128MB [walmart.com]
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:2)
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:1)
Sadly, and even not-so-sadly, Linux is perfect for use as the single-function device that all CS professors dread. The good news is that if Linux catches on in this market, Windows won't have the chance to embed their OS with all it's DRM and licensing glory into every hardware device made.
BTW, I have a friend who "supports" his girlfriend's XP box, and believe me, it's "kicking (his) ass".
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:2)
Ho lord, I really really fell for him on that one. XP is not fun to hand hold with, more so if this is the first taste of computers for them.
I really do agree with your point on the single function I was just trying to point on more than anything else, which I think I failed to do is that:
#1. if you put linux on that machine, your the only person for help they can call. It is hard enough to get help with a computer, let alone if you pick an OS that is not the one everyone else has. You would be amazed how many people have at least a little knowledge with windows and are willing to help a greeny.
#2. Everyone else has these cutsy little craptard things that your "person" is going to want to use as they get into computers. It is just human nature to want to fit it.
#3. Which I agree with you on, is if you lock them out they have a very secure and robust machine for what they are doing. Stressing that is all they want to do.
XP....sends chills down my spine now just thinking about my parents, grandparents, friends, and other extended members of my family who know what I do for a living and have me on speed dial.
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:1)
craptard
Yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
In that same vein, just tell them to get a type-writer. You can find old 30kg models all over the place, and they get an intuitive interface, plenty of flexibility, and no hassles. If they want to be sophisticated, simply steer them in the direction of one of those overpriced 'word processor' typewriters from Brother. I heard they're only $900, and no computer skills are required.
Re:Yeah (Score:1)
Re:hate to do this to you. (Score:2)
Aside from the "how do I use the mouse" questions that are platform-independent, I certainly get a few questions about why she can't open this or that attachment. (Usually some Word or Excel document.)
My feeling as the family's designated sysadmin was that I would rather have to sometimes say "Your computer can't do that. Tell the sender to reformat it as text and send it to you." rather than sometimes say "Sorry your computer is hosed. Looks like you shouldn't have opened that email from that person. I'll have to reinstall everything now." For one thing, it's way less work. Also, I've been able to remotely admin the machine, which is a huge timesaver.
So far things are working out pretty well. As I said, the initial questions were mostly about how to use a computer, with some that were derived from Linux's shortcomings as a desktop. But things have been pretty quiet lately.
I think a bigger worry I'd have is supporting old hardware. You never know when some IC or other component is going to flake out, or the BIOS battery runs out.
Good luck!
OS/2 Warp 4 (Score:4, Interesting)
In my experiencing, Warp 4 runs better in low memory systems (less than 64MB) than Linux + X does. I have a 40MB laptop that runs OS/2 great but Linux won't install on it.
Re:OS/2 Warp 4 (Score:1)
Out of interest, what linux distros have you tried? 40Mb is more than enough for most, except the heavier eye-candy ones (RH, SuSE and MDK spring to mind). A little slackware or debian should run just great with 40Mb.
Re:OS/2 Warp 4 (Score:1)
Re:OS/2 Warp 4 (Score:1)
Re:OS/2 Warp 4 (Score:1)
Has anyone heard or read something similar?
Slashdot recommends...Microsoft VisualStudio.NET (Score:2, Funny)
Joe
You have fast machines (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound like youre underestimating the power of your computers. I have for over a year collected 486 and pentium machines people throw away and used them on the network here. With the VERY cheap token ring cards and hubs available, I have a full lan almost for free.
Use TWM with X, well maybe youll have to fork out some for the RAM. I could get by with 32mb RAM with the latest distro (debian or slackware) but had this pain waiting for the system to work until I upgraded to a VGA card with 2mb+ mem and 64mb ram. With this combination thing will run smoothly. I also set major software to be installed over a common NFS share, which altho gets slower than the HDD, the system can get by even with 256mb hdd, Still need more speed and have highly compatible vga cards?? use netbsd and older versions of xfree86!!
Re:You have fast machines (Score:1)
I have actually found that the newer version of XFree86 (I'm using 4.2.99.1 from CVS) is faster than the older versions.
As for another tidbit...I would recommend using Slackware. I run it on my old 486 laptop w/ 16MB of RAM using the vga driver for X.
Back off...this sig is mine!!
Re:You have fast machines (Score:1)
Options (Score:2, Informative)
I use and setup equiptment like this all the time, I collect older hardware, and also you find this level of equiptment when dumpster diving, found 5 or 6 386 throu 586 mobo's the other night.
There are really two options, the Microsoft solution or the unix solution.
MS Win 3.1(1) will work fine on that hardware, it is generally above spec for the software. I run it on some slower 386 level stuff fine. For a P100 like you have, I'd suggest win95 or win98 with IE stripped out(win98Lite - look it up). I've been able to shoehorn 95 onto a 386 and 98 onto a lowend 486 and they ran ok(little programs that run in the config.sys that lie to programs and say your on a pentium!)
As for WYSIWYG word processing - use a copy of Wordperfect, it was the standard at that time, the MS products were not that great. Wordperfect does not even require win3.1, it can run WYSIWYG in dos. Use DOS 6.2 not 6.22 that was one after they lost a fight and had to remove some stuff.
The unix solutions are also not too bad. BSD or linux will run fine, just get rid of the useless extras, and use a simple window manager, nothing complex. That said, I use enlightenment on a P150 system with a ati mach32 2meg and it runs reasonably well.
QNX is one I have been playing with for a little bit now, like the interface it has, really slick. But it can sometimes be a pain to configure if it did not detect things right. Once you find and understand the manual, things are OK. I don't know of any word processor for it, but I do know there is a wordpad equivalent.
My suggestion after all that: Try the unicies first, they are cheaper and you will know if you like it. If you find usability is low, just dig up a couple of old MS and Novel(wordperfect) disks at a garage sale or something and install. That is what those programs were made for.
Re:Options (Score:1)
BeOS (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:BeOS (Score:1)
Also, where can one get goBe for free?
Re:BeOS (Score:1)
Easy this one. You put BeOS on it...
Too much power! (Score:1)
It's not wysiwyg, but that's not really much of a problem for most people.
It's actually much EASIER in my experience for most people to use this sort of system. For the simple things most people do in word processors, you need to learn and memorize (or just write down) about 10 commands that are easily entered, you don't have to worry about stability, or the periodic reinstalls that windows seems to necessitate, and you don't end up trying to set up linux or something similar in a truly idiot-proof way.
And hell, if you go that route, you could sell that overpowered machine and get an XT or something.
What about software from when that PC was current? (Score:2)
If you're looking to go the Linux/BSD/similar route, you can probably do fine starting with a base install that's more recent (as the core stuff hasn't gotten so heavy a P100 can't handle it fine), just with a stripped-down window manager (no KDE/Gnome), and applications you may want to recompile with optimizations and stripping out things you don't need.
Run what the OS that the computer came with... (Score:1, Informative)
Why is anyone suggesting MicroShaft? (Score:1)
As for Word Processing, I recommend a program called gobePRODUCTIVE! (http://www.gobe.com) I use it on my (ack..)Windows(gag..) box in leiu of Office, and on the BE box. It's damn good and very powerful for how comparatively cheap it is. It's only $49.something on BeOS which I am sure you can get to work well, and it's well worth it. It can even do an almost perfect (I have noticed trouble with OffXP) conversions from
On "helping" your family... (Score:4, Insightful)
Duh! WINDOWS 3.1 (Score:1, Insightful)
options (Score:2)
NewDeal Office / GEOS (Score:1, Informative)
Hardware Requirements
* Minimum 386 IBM compatible computer or better
* 640k minimum RAM (2-4Mb or more recommended)
* 15Mb free hard disk space
* EGA, VGA, Super VGA
* Mouse (optional/recommended)
NetBSD and SIAG Office (Score:2)
SIAG Office (http://www.siag.nu/) relies on the Athena libraries - but the much more attractive NeXTstep themed ones rather than the ugly originals. NeXTaw is maintained by the SIAG Office author, so it's not going to suffer the same bitrot as other Athena based toolkits. This means none of the overhead associated with Abiword or Staroffice and their considerable dependencies - all in all, it's a neat software package.
Chris
The OS may be fine, but what about wordprocessing? (Score:2)
However, a painful point to consider is that when using Windows 95, IE4 and Word 97 also run fine on such machines, whereas Mozilla and OpenOffice (although great software, I use both every day) absolutely suck rocks as far as resource efficiency is concerned.
These applications are not usable on anything lower than a 300Mhz Celeron with 64Mb RAM (128 for OpenOffice not to feel too sluggish; StarOffice 5 is a little better here).
In the browser area, Opera may be a good alternative, but I don't see one for word processing.
It would have been great if Corel would still sell the SCO version of the (character mode) WordPerfect 5.1; it would probably run fine on Linux with iBCS, and together with Lynx you could even make a 4Mb 486/25 with a text-only video adapter useful this way.
Re:The OS may be fine, but what about wordprocessi (Score:2)
Somebody else already mentioned Siag office.
OS/2 will run like lightning on that machine (Score:1)
You can still get StarOffice for OS/2 (version 5.1) from a a helpful enthusiast, and your video and printer drivers will be easy to find at http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html
If you want to spend money for supported OS/2 (you probably don't) then there's www.ecomstation.com.
Your P100 with 40 megs of RAM will happily run Lotus SmartSuite too.
Slackware Roolz (Score:2)
I used Gnu Parted to shrink the existing Fat32 partition, added an ext3 root and 80MB swap space (for a total of 120MB virtual memeory).
From slack, get the following packages:
a/ - all packages
n/ - tcpip1, tcpip2 and ppp, not inetd or any other servers
x/ - xfree86, xfree86-fonts-scale, xfree86-fonts-misc (thats it)
xap/ - fvwm2, mozilla (yes, mozilla on a 133!)
ap/ - sudo (!), hpijs and ghostscript for printing,
l/ - as needed when programs complain about missing libs
d/ - nada (glibc devel package is > 100MB)
I set up pppd to start in demand dialing mode (15 mins idle time) at boot time. I set up sudo to let all users "killall -HUP pppd", reboot, and shutdown. Then I added the same three commands to the window mgr config.
The machine is primarily a web and email box, and it works well for that. Abiword (and the rest of Gnome and KDE) is on the Slackware iso, but I haven't tried it out yet.
GEOS (Score:2)
Available from Breadbox Computing [breadbox.com]. (They call it New Deal Office 2000 [breadbox.com].)
It's an operating systemish thing that runs on top of DOS. What you get is a complete Windows-like operating environment with virtual memory, long filenames, threads, outline fonts, WYSIWYG word processor, drawing package, database, spreadsheet, loads of applications, basic web browser, email, PPP, etc. It runs in bugger all memory. Minimum useful spec is a 386 with 4MB and 20MB or so of hard disk space, but it'll run on a 286 and up with 640kB or RAM (but it won't be pleasant). All the applications can deal with documents too big to fit in memory.
It is, unfortunately, payware. But it's 100 USD, it's a complete integrated solution containing everything from high-level apps to printer drivers, it's easy to use --- the user interfaces are all customisable; for experts you can rearrange the toolbars, for newbies you can turn most of the buttons and menus off to make something dead simple --- it's an excellent choice for low-end systems. It'll run like a storm on your machine.
(I did my fourth-year project writeup at university on it. 300 pages in a single document. No problem whatsoever. The built-in word processor is a hell of a lot more flexible and powerful than a lot of commercial products I've seen. For ease of use it beats Word into a cocked hat, and it's got most of the useful features --- frame-based text flowing, built-in vector drawing tools, built-in bitmap drawing tools, rotatable & transformable & editable text, wrapping text around graphics, spelling checker and thesaurus, hierarchical paragraph styles...)
You will have to support them, including installing it on the empty machine. However, they'll need much less support than Windows or, heaven forbid, Unix will. It won't run Windows apps, which is a plus. It will run third-party GEOS apps, but you probably don't want them to.
It's ideally suited for a turnkey system, which I think is what you want here.
Re:GEOS (Score:1)
Re:GEOS (Score:1)
LinuxJournal article (Score:1, Informative)
Try YeahWrite (Score:1)
Drawbacks include only one font per document, although is does support various font sizes for headings and titles. The program does not support hyphenation, endnotes, footnotes, a table of contents or an index. A document can have only one margin setting. But, I'd bet your relatives probably don't need these. There is a full spelling check, thesaurus,etc.
I've used YeahWrite for kids as they don't have to remember to save the document (a big problem). It also takes almost no instruction.
You can download the free version and try it, you can enable the full version for 15 days, and it's only $29 to buy anyway.
Yeahwrite was written by former WordPerfect programmers under Pete Peterson, one of the founders of WP.
I've got a P100 laptop... (Score:1)
40MB ram, 800MB hard drive, P100. Runs pretty well.
Linux and OS/2 also performed very well on it,but the battery time in both were awful.
Shouldn't be a problem (Score:2)
Also, 3GB is an infinite amount of space for what you are planning to do. My full SuSE 8.0 install on my desktop at home is barely over 3GB, and it's about as bloated as a Linux install can be, as I figured I'd start with everything and slowly par it down to what I want.
QNX would be almost lost on a drive that big. It's designed for embedded systems, and in that world a system like yours is quite luxurious. The QNX4 demo fits on a 1.44M floppy. I actually have several systems running QNX4 within spitting distance at the moment, and none of them have hardware significantly different from yours, and they are quite responsive (they'd better be, that's what real-time is all about after all). They're single-board "industrial" computers, all with Pentium 90s or 100s, embedded VGA, and anywhere from 32M to 128M RAM, depending on their specific purpose. With a full QNX install, plus all of my companies proprietary software, plus the usual cruft (saved log files and core dumps, system upgrade sources, etc) only one of them is managing to use up more than 500M of disk space. I haven't tried Neutrino yet, but I'd be surprised if it were much more demanding.
It's a little hard to find info about 3rd party apps for QNX, so I don't know what kind of word processing apps might be available, but hey, it'll run Quake3 and Unreal Tournament, and what more do you really want?
The real bad news is that the Lexmark Z11 is not listed on their supported hardware page. There are a ton of Epsons and Cannons listed, though, so you may be able to swap with someone who has one of those. That could be an issue for Linux as well. Lexmark has put out Linux drivers for most of their newer printers, and I think the Z11 is new enough to be one of them, but they don't include the drivers on the install disk and they make them difficult to find on their website (unless you start at the Linux driver page, but only the printer setup wizard in YaST seems to know where that is).
Anyway, good luck. You shouldn't have too much difficulty, but I do recommend a RAM upgrade if you've got a few extra bucks.
Get them a typewriter (Score:1)
Re:Get them a typewriter (Score:1)
VIRUS WARNING:
Attention: Computer Labs Inc., makers of Virucide antivirus software have identified a highly dangerous new Trojan worm, MONKEYPOO. It will usually appear in an e-mail with the subject, "Congratulations.You have won!" it will then prompt you to click a link to collect your cash prize. It can also freely spread across networks.
Monkeypoo will read your address book, and mail a copy of itself to every address it finds, and it will look like you sent it. It will then invoke the secret self-destruct command held over from the original IBM PC's
8086 command set. This short line of code will cause the processor, ram, hard drive and any floppy drives to spin out of control and overheat until key components melt together, and will most likely cause a fire.
James Winklee, a former IBM programmer had this to say. "We developed the self-destruct code so government agencies such as the FBI and CIA could quickly and completely destroy compromised computer systems before an enemy could get their hands on classified information. When we saw how violently a PC executing the command burst into flames, we decides not to publish it's existence. It has been kept a secret successfully until now. If you get infected with the Monkeypoo Trojan worm, you may notice your computer going completely haywire. Physically unplug it from power as fast as you can, and send it in for repair. Only a professional can remove this one."
While Computer Labs Inc and other antivirus software makers are working on a solution, they haven't got one a home user could successfully run yet. "This is the worst kind of malicious code I have ever seen." said Marcus Polan of Computer labs Inc. Use extreme caution.
It is important that as many computer users as possible receive this warning, so send it out to as many people as you can. The entire Internet and every PC connected to it is at risk.
DOS + Framework (Score:1)
The first ( only?? ) useful, truly **integrated** office suite. The word processor module is WYSIWYG as you 'need'.
Ran at a decent speed even on a 486.
Its still being developed, but its a bit pricy for the latest version...
Integrated (Score:2)
In 5.x, if you wanted to draw a picture in StarWriter, it used the StarDraw program within writer to do it. If you wanted a table in your email, it used the spreadsheet program to do it.
M$ Office isn't that tightly integrated; you want a table in Word, it uses a tables module that has nothing the power of Excel. Drawing capabilities are rudimentary. OK, so you can use Word as the editor for Outlook, but Outlook has other problems (IMAP support sucks the big fire hose, for ex.).
IMHO, the best DOS wp ever written was WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS. The current Win versions are better than Word, I think.
Re:Integrated (Score:1)
total DOS application. pretty fast, though. and, as was previously mentioned, completely integrated. not a bad text editor. i'd think the only downside would be the lack of printer support.
Onboard Video (Score:2)
If the references to S3refresh.exe here [compaq.com] are anything to go by, your machine probably has an S3 8xx video chip (my guess is that it's an 805). XFree 4.2 doesn't support those [xfree86.org] (yet), so you'd need 3.x if you want to run Linux/*BSD with X on it.
Done just that. (Score:2)
So I put MS-DOS 6.2 on it, loaded up WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS. WP6 is WYSIWYG and has its own graphics, mouse, and printer drivers.
Set it up so when she turned it on, it would automatically go into WP.
Sweet thing about WP is it's incredibly customizable. I allowed my Grandma access to two shortcut keys: F2 printed, F3 quit. (Well, really what it did was to run a macro that would save and quit so I could recover the file if needed.) There were no menus, the alt key did nothing. Anything with the remote possibility of confusing her was removed. Of course, I did leave access to Shift+F1 (Setup) but I didn't tell her that.
You might have trouble getting a Lexmark Z11 to print from WP6, but you can try some of the drivers [corel.com] on Corel's [corel.com] support [corel.com] site.
You know, WordPerfect gives you the power to do everything, including limit that power to do almost nothing. I use WP10 now, I hate M$ Word.
As for OS, I've successfully run WP6/DOS in graphical mode under dosemu in Linux on a 486DX2/66. It was slow, but it worked! I think it should run under just about any free dos version.
Win 3.1 + Calmira (Score:2)
Peace of Cake (Score:2)
Bah. Slashdot's acceptance notification sucks.... (Score:2)
A couple of the caveats to this entire process that I didn't get to put in the intro are rather limiting. The first one is the fact I have absolutely no money, and neither do my family (an aunt and uncle in this case). They -will- be buying a new computer in a few months, but any investment over fifty bucks is probably out of the question. This is largely a temporary situation, unless I somehow get something on there that gives them no hassle at all. The next one is that they're totally and utterly religious. If they even get a hint that anything isn't legal software-wise, they'll tell me I'll burn in hell, because God knows I did something wrong.
Since I'm broke, and they're broke, I'm stuck with what I have. I'll try and address some of the ideas I saw posted to the thread, just to make things clear. Just in case.
1: I got the machine used, for free. No software, no nothing. So I'm limited to Win98:SE and anything I can download.
2: FreeDOS would be great. But I can't get WordPerfect. Bleah.
3: I have no problems with giving them a locked-down Linux. I'd probably set it up to be so limited they couldn't get any more than a solitaire game and a word processor. They're using it to replace an old, broken word processor, and not really expecting to get a computer out of it. Eventually they will get a new system, probably an eMachines.
4: The printer will very likely be replaced if I can find an OS that'll support the new one. QNX is so far the frontrunner, but if I can find BeOS that'd overtake.
Again, I just want to thank folks for replying. Sorry I didn't notice before.
Re:Run Win95 (Score:1)
I bought a computer new that was a 133 MHz with 16 megs of ram, and a 1.2 gig HD. It came with Lotus SmartSuite. I thought it was pretty snappy for the day, and it worked pretty well.
My daughter is currently using it to play Little Bear and Jump Start CD's. I bumped the ram up to 32 megs at some point.