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Ask Slashdot: Is It Feasible To Revive an Old Linux PC Setup?

Posted by Unknown on from the when-real-hackers-used-fvwm dept.

Qbertino (265505) writes I've been rummaging around on old backups and cleaning out my stuff and have once again run into my expert-like paranoid backups and keepsakes from back in the days (2001). I've got, among other things, a full set of Debian 3 CDs, an original StarOffice 6.0 CD including a huge manual in mint condition, Corel Draw 9 for Linux, the original box & CDs — yes it ran on a custom wine setup, but it ran well, I did professional design and print work with it.

I've got more of other stuff lying around, including the manuals to run it. Loki Softs Tribes 2, Kohan, Rune, and the original Unreal Tournament for Linux have me itching too. :-)

I was wondering if it would be possible to do an old 2001ish setup of a Linux workstation on some modern super cheap, super small PC (Raspberry Pi? Mini USB PC?), install all the stuff and give it a spin. What problems should I expect? VESA and Soundblaster drivers I'd expect to work, but what's with the IDE HDD drivers? How well does vintage Linux software from 2003 play with todays cheap system-on-board MicroPCs? What's with the USB stuff? Wouldn't the install expect the IO devices hooked on legacy ports? Have you tried running 10-15 year old Linux setups on devices like these and what are your experiences? What do you recommend?

176 comments

  1. try it in a VM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it's just to dink around with the old software, why not try it in VMWare or VirtualBox? It would probably be less of a hassle to get to where you want to be with the setup.

    1. Re:try it in a VM? by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      If it's just to dink around with the old software, why not try it in VMWare or VirtualBox?

      Not a bad idea, especially considering that the old PC setup would take only minimal resources on a modern VM.

      OTOH, if you want the whole old-school experience, why not just trot down to the local Thrift Shop and snap up an ancient box for like $20 or so, and maybe spend $10 more for an old tube monitor, keyboard, and suchlike? At those prices, you could buy a second one for spare parts.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:try it in a VM? by mlts · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have a machine of a similar vintage running an age-old copy of RHEL. I keep it, but the chances of me firing it up are slim to none, because I can fire up VMWare Workstation with an older OS release. Plus, even if the hardware is rock stable, it uses more energy than a modern computer and OS. Running a VM from a SATA SSD consumes a lot less power than an older 3.5" IDE HDD which might have at most 128 or so gigs.

      It is fun to fire up old hardware, but other than having the right stuff to play a game (DOSBox is good, but some older MS-DOS games won't work correctly unless they are on bare metal, and don't sound "right" unless they are played on an antediluvian FM-synthesis sound card), there isn't much of a point to it.

    3. Re:try it in a VM? by qpqp · · Score: 1

      antediluvian FM-synthesis sound card

      Roland was teh siht!

    4. Re:try it in a VM? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1

      I have a machine of a similar vintage running an age-old copy of RHEL. I keep it, but the chances of me firing it up are slim to none, because I can fire up VMWare Workstation with an older OS release.

      I still have an Intergraph TDZ 2000 workstation that I used for 3D/video editing back in the late '90s. It cost around $15,000 new, with dual PII 300MHz CPUs, 256MB RAM and dual 80GB 10,000rpm SCSI drives in RAID 0. It's still set up to dual boot NT4 and Debian 2.2, and I occasionally fire it up (if only to to remind myself what it was like to hear the jet-engine whine as those those drives spool up to speed).

      It still feels very responsive with that old OS/software combination, so an old version of Linux on a cheap SBC should perform well enough. It will need to be an x86 based box to run OP's software though, so the (ARM based) Raspberry PI is out. Some of the Vortex86 based kits could be worth trying, though I suspect they'd fall over on driver support. They can be had for less than $40, and can run contemporary Linux so worth trying just for the fun of it. It's hard to say how well it would cope with drivers though

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    5. Re:try it in a VM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got a 1989 OS running, but I've had to do it by running Win7 (either 32 or 64 bit) as a guest in VMware workstation, then running Virtual PC 2007 in the guest. The hardware is obscured enough that the XT/AT (even Micro Channel architecture) will run.

    6. Re:try it in a VM? by Ghaoth · · Score: 1

      Anyone got a SWTPC 6800 computer running Flex?

      --
      Nos Morituri te salutamus
    7. Re:try it in a VM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two problems:
      1) Energy use
      2) Compatibility

      For example, DosBox is lighter weight than VMware or Virtualbox, and the latter two do not emulate old computer hardware, only the current system divided by the RAM and CPU core count. Dosbox on the other hand explicitly emulates old hardware.

      Ironically the way to emulate an old PC, is to find an old version of VMWare (version 3.2 to be exact) https://www.vmware.com/support/ws3/doc/ws32_vidsound4.html
      OPL3 is not emulated in any version that I know of. If you want OPL3/MPU-401/MT-32 support, you need this version of Dosbox http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ , note that it will not let you install linux on it.

    8. Re:try it in a VM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OTOH, if you want the whole old-school experience, why not just trot down to the local Thrift Shop and snap up an ancient box for like $20 or so, and maybe spend $10 more for an old tube monitor, keyboard, and suchlike? At those prices, you could buy a second one for spare parts.

      That's okay *if* you have the space for all that bulky old stuff- e.g. an American in a sprawling McMansion and not a European in a pokey house or a Japanese person in an even pokier flat. And also assuming that you *have* the inclination to hold on to it (and a tolerant other half where applicable).

      Also, while the computer itself will probably be okay, the tube monitor is likely to be used and worn out and won't last as long as a new one. Sure, you could get another for little, but they're bulky to acquire and get rid of, and many have probably been thrown out by now- there are probably still more than enough out there, but you have to find them.

      There's also the issue of electricity to bear in mind as well; an authentic vintage PC is likely to need a lot more than a Raspberry Pi or whatever.

  2. I recommend by infernalC · · Score: 4, Informative

    VirtualBox

    1. Re:I recommend by kbrannen · · Score: 2

      VMplayer would work too

    2. Re:I recommend by pla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously - This.

      It will take you far less effort to configure a PC emulator to look like stereotypical 15YO hardware, than it will to actually put together that hardware.

      About five years ago I had a similar personal project, to find a way to replay some of the great DOS games I had lying around, most on floppies nearing the edge of unreadability. After screwing around with various compatibility modes in Windows and even going so far as to set up a multiboot system with real live DOS installed, I ended up just putting together half a dozen Bochs images running DOS under emulation with slightly different memory management configs (remember the bad old days of extended vs expanded memory and segmented vs flat and real vs protected vs unreal (flat real)?). Once I set up one image, I cloned it and reconfigured it to the rest in under an hour, then just had to remember which games needed which styles of memory management.

      We tend to forget how much old hardware sucked. If I never have to manually hunt for an available base address, IRQ, and DMA channel again, I will consider myself blessed.

    3. Re:I recommend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You clearly do not remember how to use batch files.

      You have wasted probably 50 megs of space with what a couple of 5k autoexec.bat's and config.sys's files could have occupied.

      Bastard...

    4. Re:I recommend by rujasu · · Score: 2

      Bochs? Surprised you didn't just use DOSBox.

    5. Re:I recommend by pla · · Score: 1

      You have wasted probably 50 megs of space with what a couple of 5k autoexec.bat's and config.sys's files could have occupied.

      I didn't want to recreate all the "joy" of rebooting six times to figure out which configuration would best run game-X, I just wanted one-click playability.

      And I actually wasted more like 10GB, since I gave each instance its own 2GB partition image. ;)

    6. Re:I recommend by pla · · Score: 1

      Bochs? Surprised you didn't just use DOSBox.

      I did end up resorting to DOSBox for a few games that used seriously funky video modes, but for the most part, I prefer Bochs as more flexible overall. For one thing, I had a few Win95 games in the mix, and at the time getting that to work on Bochs took no effort at all, while getting it to run under DosBox took an act of god, and I hope you liked 640x480x16 color.

      That said, I realize DosBox has gotten a lot better since then... But, so has Bochs, so, I honestly don't know which one I would pick trying it again today. But since TFA specifically asked about Linux, that would tend to make Bochs the likely better choice.

    7. Re:I recommend by Nimey · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've gotten Debian 2.2 to run reasonably well in VMware Player. Network and SCSI worked pretty well, don't think the sound did due to a missing driver, and I had to do some work to make X use the VESA framebuffer:

      0) In lilo.conf, add "vga=791" (or another value) to the kernel invocation. May have had to compile a kernel with fbdev first.
      1) install the xserver-fbdev package
      2) copy /usr/share/doc/xserver-fbdev/examples/XF86Config.fbdev to /etc/X11/XF86Config.
      3) edit XF86Config to reflect the color depth chosen in the vga= stanza in lilo.conf; with vga=791 it's 16 bits.
      4) Same file, edit mouse information to reflect what VMware provides (device is /dev/gpmdata (I have gpm installed, otherwise probably /dev/psaux) and protocol is Microsoft).
      5) Edit /etc/X11/Xserver and replace first line with the path to the FBDev X server, e.g. "/usr/bin/X11/XF86_FBDev".

      Now you should have a functioning X desktop, assuming you installed the packages. It won't be fast, since it's just the VESA framebuffer, but it's probably the best you can get with VMware and the ancient XFree86 stack in Debian 2.2.

      Note that the VMware guest utilities will /not/ work.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    8. Re:I recommend by bluelip · · Score: 1

      The original post was confused. 2001 was not the "back in the day". Why waste time? If you want to pretend you're cool, boot an early kernel.

      --

      Yep, I never spell check.
      More incorrect spellings can be found he
    9. Re:I recommend by Keyboard+Rage · · Score: 1

      15 year old hardware is approx. 1999. In 1999 most hardware was starting to become plug-and-play, working well in general. 1999 is also a period that you can generally still find manuals and drivers online for. It's not 1995, when playing with jumpers using shitty manuals and solving IRQ conflicts was a major part of hardware installation that could be a total pain in the arse.

      Pick up an old Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 box from a reputable manufacturer, maybe update to the latest BIOS, install a good OS, and off you go. Besides, some people like tinkering with hardware...

    10. Re:I recommend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Having tried a 1997 Mandrake distribution last year for some research, if you're going to build a guest OS I would recommend the VMware family of software. Virtualbox tends to start with more recent network card emulators. VMware still has some old virtual network cards that should work straight away with your software.

    11. Re:I recommend by Nimey · · Score: 1

      I tried setting up the above VM with VirtualBox a couple years back and it kept having problems with the mass-storage emulation; it would get so far in the boot sequence and then freeze. IIRC it happened with both IDE and SCSI.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    12. Re:I recommend by bzipitidoo · · Score: 2

      DOSBox is good.

      I recommend against a native DOS setup like FreeDOS, unless you don't care about graphics and audio. FreeDOS actually works fine on modern hardware. The problem is that there are no drivers for modern video and audio. As far as I know, there are no emulation layers either-- no way to glue a Soundblaster interface to a modern audio interface with a DOS driver that DOS games can use. Graphics are worse. Without drivers, you're stuck with 320x200x256 color VGA or 640x480x16 color EGA/VGA. Ever try to use Windows at 320x200 resolution? Many old DOS games had their own graphics drivers for the most common graphics hardware, and simply will not run if the hardware they're built for doesn't exist. An emulator like DOSBox takes care of those issues.

      As to well aged Linux, there's a huge dividing point at the change from libc5 to libc6 which happened in the late 90s. Binaries compiled in the days of libc5 are going to complain and crash because they can't work with libc6. Expect lots of library hell. Another big change is the still ongoing shift from 32bit to 64bit that reached a tipping point in the mid 2000s. Nearly everything from the early 2000s is going to be 32bit. Although 64bit OSes include many 32bit libraries, you'll likely find it easier to just install a 32bit OS. There are extensions for using more than 4G of RAM in 32bit mode, but it may be easier to just work within 4G.

      Digging out and installing an old Linux distribution is going to be more trouble. If it's from the days of libc5, X won't have drivers for GeForce or Radeon graphics hardware. You'll have to settle for slow performance and low resolution from standard VESA modes, or even VGA modes. 1024x768 is nice to have, but don't be too surprised if you have to settle for 800x600 or even 640x480. Another problem is USB. An old Linux probably can't read a USB keyboard and mouse, must have the old PS/2 connectors. Then there's the hard drive. An old Linux may not be able to handle SATA let alone SAS. Has to be SCSI or IDE. The hardware may be able to help here, as the BIOS may have options to run an emulation layer, provide the old bus interfaces that the software expects. To install vintage Linux, likely need a CDROM drive, or even a 1.44M floppy drive.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  3. Misguided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    There was no ARM support in 2001. Hell there was no 64 bit support for x86 in 2001. No SATA support. No PCIe support.

    Best bet, load a distro *that works* then try to run your game.

    The only way your old disks will work is if you're using hardware they supported, meaning hardware that is 13 years old (or can emulated hardware that old).

    1. Re:Misguided by armanox · · Score: 1

      If the games used SVGA lib, he's out of luck on a modern Linux setup. That broke with the introduction of KMS to my understanding.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    2. Re:Misguided by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      plenty of virtual machine tech can emulate old video, old hard drives, etc.

    3. Re:Misguided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      svgalib is not about old hardware. Its about old software, meaning OP can't use an ARM box to run his old games. OP will have to use old hardware, or modern x86 hardware and customize it to use a PCI graphics card and IDE HDD. He will not be able to emulate an x86 with the correct specs using an ARM processor.

    4. Re:Misguided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah but the license does not allow it though.

    5. Re:Misguided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Debian had an ARM installer in 2000.

    6. Re:Misguided by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      Not to mention a RPi would already be considered an old, slow machine even by 2001 standards.

    7. Re:Misguided by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      That's a very good point, the P3's of the day did more work per clock and were up at 700mhz by then

    8. Re:Misguided by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Unless the SATA drive is accessed in IDE emulation mode device.
      PCIe can be accessed just like PCI.

    9. Re:Misguided by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      That's when SDL was developed. More than likely, any of the interesting games used that.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    10. Re:Misguided by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      By 2001, Athlons were running in the 1GHz+ range, and P4s were out up to 2GHz. The RPi is closer in performance to a low end Pentium II.

    11. Re:Misguided by link-error · · Score: 1

      Unmod...

      --
      -Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
    12. Re:Misguided by wed128 · · Score: 1

      True, but not for under 10 watts...
      it's all about trade-offs.

    13. Re:Misguided by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Power consumption was not a requirement. Running his old software is.

      The ARM CPU in the Raspberry Pi is pretty shit. It's an old ARM11. I suppose it was considered a good design back in 2003...

  4. Use a VM. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    super small PC (Raspberry Pi? Mini USB PC?)

    I don't think x86 binaries will run very well on ARM CPUs. :-)

    You could try something like VirtualBox and run the stuff on your modern desktop.

    1. Re:Use a VM. by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      In my collection of turn of the century VMs, I've got a similar Deb setup, and it runs just fine in VirtualBox. I've also got YDL running in PearPC, but that's probably further than you want to go.

  5. Shouldn't be a problem by javajawa · · Score: 3, Informative

    You should be able to run a modern linux distro, but you may need to install some old libraries to get those games working.

    --

    Meh

    1. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by javajawa · · Score: 3, Informative

      You will, however, need to be on x86 hardware.

      --

      Meh

    2. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure Q's asking the opposite. Q wants to run old linux on a new machine.

    3. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by javajawa · · Score: 1

      Unlikely... the driver support just wouldn't be there - there really isn't much point to doing so.

      --

      Meh

    4. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably not, but that still is actually what he is asking. I do not see how the summary could be interpreted in any other way.

    5. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by Mack428 · · Score: 1

      Which rules out Raspberry Pi

    6. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by rnturn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The OP seems to have all the HW and SW he'd need. I'm not even sure why he's worried. Aside from the possibility of bit rot having degraded his media, I would be more concerned that the hardware would be a problem and become a major time sink -- bad capacitors on the m'board, etc., that have you chasing your tail.

      You might be able to run a modern Linux on hardware of that vintage but you might have to borrow memory from another, similar motherboard to get the installer to run. Back when I was running Linux on a 486, I had to borrow memory from another system to get the installer to run during an upgrade. Then I returned the memory and Linux itself ran fine with only 16MB. The oldest system I currently have running -- an old Pentium MMX system with only 127MB installed (it used to only have 80MB before I stumbled across some more memory in a box of parts) -- hasn't been updated to anything really recent because I no longer have any systems that use the same kind of memory that I can borrow to perform an upgrade and the older RAM, while still available, is not something I want to invest in. (Yeah... I do have plans to phase that system out in the not-too-distant future.)

      --
      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    7. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by khellendros1984 · · Score: 1

      It sounds like the end goal is to run their older software, though. That should be possible, provided library dependencies can be worked out (and emulation of any direct hardware access).

      If the goal is to run a complete older system on new hardware, emulation in some form is the best bet. Running the old OS directly on modern hardware isn't likely to be feasible (without extensive modification to the old OS).

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    8. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by H0p313ss · · Score: 1

      Which should have been obvious.

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    9. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not just use a system with a sane installer? Slackware of any era right up to the present would have no problems there, and that's just an example, there are others. Only that particular flock of distros that always do stupid shit could be involved here - why do you use them when good, functional, sane alternatives not only exist but are available for free?

    10. Re:Shouldn't be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should be able to run a modern linux distro, but you may need to install some old libraries to get those games working.

      Whoa! Not necessarily. Some software requires certain kernel versions in order to run, in this guy's case the custom Wine implementation for his Corel Draw 9 would be one. Some of the games may also require specific kernels or library versions that would be either incompatible or unpatched vis-a-vis latest security concerns.

      I would go VM or find some old hardware to run this on. I would NOT give this box network access at all. Other than that, it's a labor of love. Have at it in your free time! Not sure what the value of that time is, but hey, whatever blows your hair back! :)

  6. Old software... by just_another_sean · · Score: 2

    Why not use older hardware? Is it really so hard to find an old IBM think center or Dell computer that still has IDE, etc.? We have a few at work that I keep around because I keep telling myself that one day I will have time to throw an old Slack distro on them or Windows 3/3.5 and show the kids what it was like "in my day!"

    A quick google turned up this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3...

    But I only quickly looked at it, I am not recommending it or anything...

    --
    Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
    1. Re:Old software... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Off-lease junk shows up by the pallet on fleabay and the like.

      The biggest problem for OP is that 'junk' is now probably a PCIe motherboard with a P4, maybe even an early core/core2 system, rather than something that is afraid of 64-bit address spaces and rocks AGP.

      In fact, based on a quick look, late-P4 to Core2 era corporate castoffs appear to be cheaper, at least on ebay, than the really elderly stuff (though it looks like the new gear has actual prices, while the old stuff has optimistic starting prices 'or best offer').

      They'll still be around in the various dusty closets of the world; but you may or may not have an easy time finding one in person, even Goodwill and similar have to put more saleable stuff on the good shelf space, though they may (since recycling often isn't free) have a few stashed in the back that they'd be happy to see the last of.

    2. Re:Old software... by just_another_sean · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I see your point. I guess thirteen years might as well be a century in the computer industry!

      --
      Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
    3. Re:Old software... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      It's mostly the same stuff, just a lot faster(a latish PII should be mostly familiar, just 32bit and more parallel busses); but 'mostly' is a very, very dangerous word unless heroic patching of a wildly aged kernel is your idea of fun, which it doesn't sound like is the case here.

    4. Re:Old software... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Why not use older hardware? Is it really so hard to find an old IBM think center or Dell computer that still has IDE, etc.?

      Yes it is hard to find an old IBM think centre that is as the original poster has stated as a criteria "super cheap and super small" The powersupply in that IBM machine alone is about 10x the size of the example (Raspberry Pi) and simply the power wasted during inefficient energy conversion while the PSU sits there idle is more than the entire consumption of the example (Raspberry Pi).

    5. Re:Old software... by asimons04 · · Score: 1

      Fleabay. HA! I'm going to have to use that from now on.

    6. Re:Old software... by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Just find something with PCI... Then you can use a fairly modern motherboard with easily obtainable ram in useful quantities, and use PCI cards for everything else - video, sound, and find an old SCSI controller instead of IDE.
      The board/cpu itself should be fully compatible with the older software, and using pci cards solves the problem with lack of drivers for the older hardware.

      --
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    7. Re:Old software... by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

      That reminds me, I still have my old 733MHz P3 in a closet at my parents' house, along with possibly a 350MHz K6-2 and maybe a couple of others too, I can't remember. All of them started out as desktop machines and eventually did duty as firewalls, routers and so on, until they were eventually each replaced with a dedicated piece of hardware. With a lightweight OS, they would still do great as basic machines for writing and email etc., I wonder if I can find some place that will take them.

      --
      Eat the rich.
    8. Re:Old software... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a 486dx4 133 that i still boot occasionally with win3.11 or DOS to let the kids loose on some old educational games etc and so they can see old OS :-)

      Works fine and boots quicker - even if settlers2 requires booting into DOS with a specific floppy that does correct memory mgt - It has a 120MB HDD that touch wood is still chugging along fine

  7. an ARM and a Leg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Definitely don't expect any kind of results running those compiled game binaries on a Raspberry Pi. If you're going to try this, start with Intel architecture at least.

  8. Feasible on Intel x86, but not ARM by naris · · Score: 2

    Since the Raspberry pi an dmany other "Micro PCs" utilizes an ARM processor, none of the Intel x86 software binaries mentioned will be usable on them. However, if the MicroPC in question utilizes an Intel x86 CPU, it should at least be feasible.

    1. Re:Feasible on Intel x86, but not ARM by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      http://www.fit-pc.com/web/prod...

      --
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    2. Re:Feasible on Intel x86, but not ARM by naris · · Score: 1

      or an AMD chip running the Intel x86 32-bit ISA will also work...

  9. Mixed advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't suggest running old distros on new hardware, just because the old code may not support essential features or even just the underlying standard (if you were planning to use something based on an HDMI output with a build that predated the HDMI standard for example).

    Still, I'm not sure what price range you have in mind, but for less than $300 you can get a fairly passable little box that runs modern Linux builds at a comfortable speed with some power to spare. I used a Zotac model for a project at work recently, but I'm sure there are other options. It was designed to serve as a mediaPC, but don't let that stop you from putting the software of your choice on it (DVI, USB, and standard audio plugs were present and are enough for most PC-like uses).

    1. Re:Mixed advice by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      plenty of machines can be put into legacy device mode in BIOS, I've run os/2 warp on modern machines for business reasons

    2. Re:Mixed advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      os/2 can't do anything, that's probably why it works...

    3. Re:Mixed advice by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Newer GPUs are very, very, likely to be unsupported except in whatever fallback VGA mode they offer; but HDMI is actually pretty decent at pretending to be DVI (which is actually pretty ancient, even if you couldn't afford it at the time since LCDs were still $100 per nominal inch, in smaller sizes) so long as you don't expect sound or HDCP to work.

      Even if nothing freaks out and dies, if you want to go back in time 13 years, you are probably going to be adding quite a few PCI IDs to assorted bits of kernel.

    4. Re:Mixed advice by dotgain · · Score: 1

      Linux doesn't use those BIOS I/O calls though. The bootloader (grub/lilo) uses them to load the kernel into memory, and then that's it, the kernel uses its own I/O routines after that.

    5. Re:Mixed advice by dotgain · · Score: 1

      (sorry, please disregard my previous reply, I misread you and addressed a slightly different point)

    6. Re:Mixed advice by EvilJoker · · Score: 1

      The BIOS settings do have an effect though - back when PATA drives were assigned hdx and SATA/SCSI drives were assigned sdx, setting the BIOS to legacy mode would make a SATA drive show as PATA drives in Linux.

      Of course, this was on older systems, and that legacy option was a bit different than the modern IDE/AHCI/RAID option. YMMV

    7. Re:Mixed advice by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      except run phone systems, point of sale systems, accounting systems,ERP, medical office management systems...yeah, other than that it can't do anything

    8. Re:Mixed advice by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      your old bootloader might crap out without those legacy settings

  10. Use a new Linux setup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Many (if not all) of the Loki games run on current platforms, with minor amounts of tweaking. There's even a "community" of people who are keeping these things going, although they are not always committed to making them run better than they originally did. I still run Alpha Centari on my Fedora 20 box, with a small wrapper around the launching executable (to set environmental variables and correct path entries specific to the game).

    1. Re:Use a new Linux setup by jandrese · · Score: 1

      Do you have a link explaining how to do this? Maybe a link to the community? I wouldn't mind getting Kohan working again.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  11. don't have systemd yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They're all stoneage. Decent linux _has_ binary logging enabled.

    1. Re:don't have systemd yet by naris · · Score: 1

      They're all stoneage.

      Well -- yeah -- that's kinda the point of this thread.....

  12. Let's see... by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was wondering if it would be possible to do an old 2001ish setup of a Linux workstation on some modern super cheap, super small PC (Raspberry Pi? Mini USB PC?), install all the stuff and give it a spin. What problems should I expect? VESA and Soundblaster drivers I'd expect to work, but what's with the IDE HDD drivers? How well does vintage Linux software from 2003 play with todays cheap system-on-board MicroPCs? What's with the USB stuff? Wouldn't the install expect the IO devices hooked on legacy ports? Have you tried running 10-15 year old Linux setups on devices like these and what are your experiences? What do you recommend?

    Raspberry Pi is probably out of question as it is an ARM device. I do not think any current systems offer SoundBlaster hardware compatibility either. VESA is fine, IDE HDD should be fine in ISA mode, but you won't get UltraDMA and there's probably other limitations. USB requires a specific driver, I guess you might get some kind of OHCI/UHCI USB1.1 support if you are very lucky.

    All in all, there will probably be too many missing drivers and all sorts of weird errors to solve. I recommend that you get some vintage hardware from the same era to go with the Linux distro that you have.

    1. Re:Let's see... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      there are sound blaster 16 emulating drivers for windows, and various VM technologies have them

    2. Re:Let's see... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Of course, but those are out of scope for his plan.

    3. Re:Let's see... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      he was asking us for the plan

      of course on ebay old stuff can be had where the shipping cost is more than the item

    4. Re:Let's see... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Huh? This is what he writes:

      I was wondering if it would be possible to do an old 2001ish setup of a Linux workstation on some modern super cheap, super small PC (Raspberry Pi? Mini USB PC?), install all the stuff and give it a spin.

      But OK, if we change the rules and using a virtual machine is allowed, that pretty much solves all of the problems.

    5. Re:Let's see... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      He's trying to run native Linux games. DOSBox would not help here.

    6. Re:Let's see... by khellendros1984 · · Score: 1

      OP specified old software, new hardware. Sticking a VM (and accompanying modern OS) as a compatibility layer between the two seems sensible, and not necessarily in contradiction of "the rules". OP also mentioned using ARM-based hardware to run their X86 software. My guess is that they're just throwing words at the wall to see what sticks, and that they'll be happy with whichever solution will let them run their older software.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    7. Re:Let's see... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      That could be, of course.

    8. Re:Let's see... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      what he writes is impossible to do (run intel code on ARM), so we gave him the possible and easy

  13. Debian-3 by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 2

    You've got mix of incompatible requirements here. IIRC Corel's support for L:inux ended with the introduction of libc6 and kernels in the 2.0 series. These linux binaries will not run on Debian-3, which had both. I know, I tried to keep WordPerfect for Linux going on RH-6.2 till about the time Debian-3 was introduced but it became a losing proposition.

    Worse still, source code for Linux-kernel series 1.x will not usually compile on later kernels which require an incompatible libc.

    YMMV

    1. Re:Debian-3 by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      No, Red Hat 6 series used kernel 2.2 and libc6, and Corel definitely ran on it, I remember doing it. Don't know what the problem with Debian was, but it may have been a Wine issue.

  14. Re:Dear OP.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An anonymous insulting message does not show much wisdom either.

  15. Next steps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Relive 2001 legit -- buy the hardware and tinker. A Raspberry Pi or BeagleBoard can be had for $100, often with all the necessites, like power adapters, video cable...

    If I had to guess where stumbling blocks might be: USB, HDMI, maybe even SD card support were pretty shitty if they even existed back then. There are others (wifi), but those three are probably the most useful to a general hobbyiest.

    You might be better off running current Linux and trying to get that other stuff working on there. Full hardware support would provide better performance (thinking mostly from a stability perspective).

    Recently got a BeagleBone Black Rev. c.. By recently I mean last week. I haven't done much with it yet, but load up Debian and copy over some favorite dotfiles. Definitely felt a wave of nostalgia. I think I'll be plugging that back in tonight.

    1. Re:Next steps? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      eh? beagleboard and raspberry pi can't run x86 software, those are different ARM based systems

    2. Re:Next steps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      eh? beagleboard and raspberry pi can't run x86 software, those are different ARM based systems

      bochs

    3. Re:Next steps? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      haha, that's way too slow (and still buggy beta grade to boot) to run games

  16. duh: arch by vinn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Obviously architecture is the biggest hindrance to what you proposed.

    You could get away with some modern hardware, as long as it's x86 based. Or, maybe what you really want to consider is virtualizing an old distro on other modern hardware along with a modern distro, assuming the other modern hardware supports it.

    There is some novelty in running old stuff, and I suppose everyone goes through that phase (along with the "I'm going to build a massive home network with multiple servers and run my own email" phase). But, I suspect you'll tire of it so you're just better off keeping it at a small budget and use hardware you can repurpose when you get bored with that little experiment.

    --
    ----- obSig
  17. raspberry pi is out by epyT-R · · Score: 3, Informative

    That stuff will only run on x86 anyway. You're better off with virtualbox or vmware. You might get lucky and get a distro from that era running on modern hardware too. You'll have to set the disk controller to ide compat mode and live with unaccelerated vesa video unless you've got a PCI slot and an nvidia vid card from that era. The drivers that ship with X back then won't validate the PCIIDs from today's cards, nevermind use them properly.

    Another option would be to install the software on your modern x86/64 install and see if it runs. If it's missing libraries, copy them as needed from the old distro (or symlink current ones to the older names) to an oldlib directory and set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to it. Just don't dump them in your system's lib dirs or leave the environment variable set globally. Use ldd and grep to examine what libs are missing from the binary you're trying to run. YMMV.

    The kernel guys guarantee ABI compatibility back to 2.0, but that's just the kernel. Today's userland has changed a lot from 1998-2001. It could also be that your glibc is not compiled with the compat symbols from previous glibc 2.0-2.2 versions common then, in which case you'll need to bring that over to your oldlibs dir too. That can get messy but it is doable.

  18. keen to see how this turns out. by pinkushun · · Score: 2

    I for one am keen to see how this turns out. Will you keep us updated if you do try to get the rig running?

    Oh and for the record: if I was someone who strives to be the first to say "use a vm!", I would recommend qemu / kvm :)

  19. Shouldn't be too hard by sootman · · Score: 1

    The easiest way would be to just get an old machine. 15 years ago was the birth of the Pentium III, so with not much work you should be able to find a perfectly fine 10- to 12-year-old 1 GHz PIII with 512 MB RAM for next to nothing. (I'm personally a fan of Dell OptiPlex GX corporate desktops and HP Pavilions -- generally well-supported hardware and durable.) Otherwise, try VirtualBox on the modern computer of your choice.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  20. Time+Effort = yes (usually) by mindcandy · · Score: 2

    With enough time and effort (money being #3, but two outta three is generally all that's needed) .. yes, you can make it work.

    If it's just an academic exercise then go for it, try and find hardware from the same (or earlier) era than the disks.

    If you really want to flex an embedded device you'll be better off using recent distributions as those are customized for the hardware. Just because it's old software doesn't mean it'll run fine on newer (but underpowered) devices.

    BOTH hardware and software have improved over time.

  21. Virtual Machine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Should also be able to load the software in something like QEMU or Virtualbox and emulate IDE if neeeded.

  22. What's the difference between a sheep and a... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quit asking so many questions and just do it.

    1. Re:What's the difference between a sheep and a... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Exactly. This is another Ask Slashdot where the asker wants some kind of "confirmation" for his plans, instead of just going for it.

  23. Why ask? Tell us. by houghi · · Score: 1

    You know what hardware you have around. So just go for it and see what happens. Then tell us what happened.

    If you want to avoid problems, use a current version. And don't use wine. Run it in e.g. VirtualBox. Also just do all that other stuff you proposed.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  24. De-clutter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would suggest professional help. Go forward and stop obsessing. I used to be like you, but I am getting better. I got rid of my NeXT's. Threw away dated textbooks, and got a NEW hobby. Bees. :)

    1. Re:De-clutter. by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      talk about hobby with archaic systems, honey bees are found in fossil record 30+ million years ago

    2. Re:De-clutter. by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      Sometimes forward is better. Not always.

    3. Re:De-clutter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I got rid of my NeXT's.

      My heart skipped a beat.

  25. find old hardware by davydagger · · Score: 1

    If you find peroid hardware sure.

    As far as the rasberri pi, its ARM cpu, If you can find old stuff ported to ARM from back then sure, but otherwise no. old x86 software won't run on ARM.

  26. Don't ask, do... by ZeroPly · · Score: 1

    What do you want, step by step instructions with screenshots and Youtube tutorials for the hard parts?

    Throw some junk together. Try different hardware configurations. Dabble with the source code. Amaze us and everyone else.

    --
    Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
    1. Re:Don't ask, do... by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I would love to see this funky project documented and another post in Slashdot which links to it. :)

    2. Re: Don't ask, do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you want, step by step instructions with screenshots and Youtube tutorials for the hard parts?
      Judging from the idiocy of some parts of his question, it's pretty clear that some sort of step-by-step guide is the only way he managed to get things running in the first place before. So, yeah, I can assure you that's exactly what he wants.

  27. Re:come on slashdot, I come and visit and this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And every ten months we're reminded why we don't miss you.

  28. What makes this project interesting? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    I do not want to be too judgemental, but what makes this project interesting? I could kinda-sorta understand a DOS machine with a big collection of games to try them on bare metal with that Roland MT-32 you just got from eBay. Even that I would personally do with DOSBox. But to install a wonky Linux setup with terrible hardware support and maybe get a handful of games working...meh... Where's the beef?

  29. UT99 Linux client issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I seem to recall that the linux version of ut99 had serious problems with dynamic CPU frequency. I don't remember if governor tweaks used to fix it or not, when I ran it on period hardware I had to disable in BIOS to make it work.

  30. KVM or VMWare player by DarkOx · · Score: 1

    I think you want to go KVM or VMWare player. You will have just tons of problems finding diver support for new hardware on a kernel that is 10+ years old. While its true that 2.4 has been patched and maintained its been mostly fixes not nearly as much in terms of driver back-ports etc.

    Much of the software you mention the Loki games and Corel will need older libc(s) to work, and they won't work with recent kernels. You are beyond the point where a chroot tree is likely to do it for you.

    Rather then spend weeks fighting to get software that old working on new hardware I'd just install a distro from that era in VM and take my spin down memory lane.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  31. Will be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In 2001, SATA drives were not around. Odds are that the old Debian distribution would be unable to find hard drives on modern hardware.
    Using a modern Linux system would get beyond those issues, but you would then be in library dependency hell. You may, for example, find that they are expecting lesstif instead of openmotif or expecting XFree86 instead of Xorg or expecting libstdc++-2 instead of something more modern. Although they should work alike, minor differences may appear and the package system may not be forgiving of dependencies. Modern OS features may also become troublesome (64-bit, DEP, ASLR, SELinux, etc).

    1. Re:Will be a problem by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      If you're worried about hard drive access, turn on IDE mode in the BIOS.

    2. Re:Will be a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except Linux has since nearly the beginning only used the Bios to load the boot loader, then replace the bios calls with it's own wonderful resource manager.

    3. Re:Will be a problem by EvilJoker · · Score: 1

      That's not unique to Linux. Windows has done the same thing for a very long time.

      Besides, it's not the connector that matters, it's the chipset. IDE mode works as a compatibility mode, so the OS should fall back on generic calls. Early SATA support was a problem because it required a separate chipset, and thus different drivers.

      HDD access will definitely have to be set to IDE mode, since software from 2001 will not have support for AHCI/etc

  32. Overkill by jtara · · Score: 1

    Most of the suggestions here are overkill, and trying to solve a non-problem.

    I'd expect most modern Linux distributions to work just fine on your old 200-era hardware. In the Linux world, that is not ancient hardware.

    Just try it. Don't bother rummaging through the closet, modern releases should work.

    1. Re:Overkill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You got it wrong way around. He wants to run 2000-era software on modern hardware.

    2. Re:Overkill by jtara · · Score: 1

      Whoops, sorry, mea culpa!

      OP wants the opposite - he wants to run an old Linux on new hardware.

      But, why?

  33. Intel Atom might help a bit. by Ilarih · · Score: 1

    It is all about drivers, and it might help if you are using Intel Atom and not ARM CPUs. Still all the drivers will make problems. It would be easier to use modern programs made for those machines. Maybe it would be more in style to use old computers with those old distros. It is quite easy to find older Debian source code, but I do not know if it so easy to get those old programs to work.

  34. Old hardware... by LoRdTAW · · Score: 3, Informative

    Old hardware is your best bet. Anything new would be unsupported by the older 2.2/2.4 kernels, PCIe, SATA, chipsets etc.
    *Slot 2 Pentium II or III CPU's and Socket 370 CPU's are perfect. If you want multiprocessor, a Tyan or Supermicro dual slot/board is a good bet but stay away from any board with RDRAM using the i820 or i840 chipsets. They did however realize how big a mistake RDRAM was and Intel made SDRAM->RDRAM bridge chips so those chipsets could use PC-100/133 SDRAM. Tyan made a dual processor i840 board with dual slot 1 and SDRAM using the bridge chips.
    *At least 256 meg of ram, 512MB - 1GB is ideal. Make sure your board supports the RAM you have.
    *An AGP Riva TNT card or better yet, a Geforce 1, 2 or 3 graphics card. 3D support may not be available*
    *Sound Blaster Live!, Ensoniq, Turtle Beach or Aureal sound cards should all work. Though the Sound Blaster Live! is probably your best bet.
    *You are also going to need an ATA hard disk (2+GB) and CD/DVD rom drive, I am unaware of any P2/3 board that supported USB booting so you need the optical drive.
    *If no onboard LAN card is present (most common scenario) you want a PCI 3Com 3c905B/C, or any PCI card based on the DEC Tulip chipset (21040/21041/21140/21142/21143). Many older Netgear FA311 cards also worked flawlessly, based on a well supported National semi chip that I think was a tulip clone)
    *Bonus: decent 19"+ Trinitron CRT monitor. I still have a 21" Sun Trinitron.

    Stay away from ISA cards as much as you can. I had a hell of a time getting my old ISA Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold sound card running under Mandrake back in the day. And that was a "plug and play" card without jumpers. As for why to use Pentium 2/3 boards and not a pentium 4, the p4's after socket 432 willamette generation might not run a 2.2 or early 2.4 kernel. Socket 478 gained things like SATA and PCIe so its a crap shoot. Pentium 2/3 is a guarantee.

    *Nvidia hardware 3D support does not appear to be supported on 2.2 kernels. I checked the README for the oldest Linux Driver and 2.4 and 2.6 kernels were mentioned. Have a look here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-71.86.15-driver.html and check the hardware issues section in the README!

    Have fun kickin it old school.

    1. Re:Old hardware... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      some newer hw has modes for emulating older crap. like sata as ide, onboard sound as sb..(plenty of stuff from the 2000-2010 era iirc do this)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Old hardware... by Keyboard+Rage · · Score: 1

      If you buy an old box and plan to upgrade the RAM, it might be worthwhile to update the BIOS to the latest version to get more memory options. I had a vintage PC that would work with double-sided SDRAM modules but not with single-sided ones, until I upgraded the BIOS. After that the machine went from 64Mb to 320 Mb RAM quite easily, using one double-sided 64 Mb 100 MHz module and two single-sided 128 Mb 133 MHz modules.

      Another source for compatible hardware (harddisks, memory, and DVD-players) are Macs up to about 2005. The 'specialised' Apple hardware used in these are just rebranded off-the-shelf components that will work fine in a Pentium II/III PC.

    3. Re:Old hardware... by toddestan · · Score: 1

      I think I've got at least one of everything you mentioned laying around.

      If power consumption is a concern, I would try for an early Coppermine P3 processor. These usually have the 'E" suffix, such as the 600EB. These processors usually used less than 20W, which was pretty good compared to the P2 which were more like 45W chips.

      If you get your hands on a Dell Optilex or XPS from this era, these are generally good, solid machines but keep mind that the while the motherboards use the ATX power connector, the pin out is not ATX, so don't mix and match or you'll blow something up. HP Vectras aren't bad machines either.

      Keep in mind that a lot these P2/P3 boards won't accept 512MB SDRAM modules (these modules seemed to be primarily for the early socket 478 boards that used SDRAM). You can try, but unless you find documentation that says otherwise assume the max memory is 256MB times the number of memory slots.

      Hard drives are kind of a crapshoot. I've found a lot of drives from the era that have been sitting for the past few years will still start up and run and seem to work fine for a few days, then will just crap out. Usually just long enough for you to get everything set up :) You may want to invest in a IDE to CF adapter, or possibly one of the IDE to SATA adapters, or seeing if you can find a new IDE drive rather than trusting a 15 year old drive. If you do go with an old drive, run it through one of those burn-in programs for a few days before trusting it.

    4. Re:Old hardware... by LoRdTAW · · Score: 1

      I had shelves of that P2/3 stuff. Threw a lot of it out as giving it away or selling it was a non starter. Pained me to do so but being a pack rat isn't an option anymore.

      Though I did keep a lot of my more interesting hardware: Dual Pentium 233 on an Tyan
      Tomcat IVD w/128MB EDO RAM, Abit BP6 w/dual Celeron 333's OC'd to 450 MHz and 768MB RAM. And my First real PC, a Micron 486DX2 66 w 16MB RAM. I replaced the 486 Motherboard with the Tyan Tomcat but I still have the 486 Board with a pentium overdrive and the 486 chip stuck on some ESD foam. I also have some interesting vintage systems and hardware I got from work, mainly 286/386 hardware.

      Really cool stuff: MITS Altair 8800b, Franklyn ACE 1200 (Apple IIe clone), NeXt Station (no monitor), Sparcstation IPC, ATT PC7300 and 3B2 (Unix PC's, I got a video on Youtube of one booting), IBM System 80, SGI Octane 2, SGI Origin 300 rack and a non working SGI Origin 2000. Also a few Vintage dumb Terminals namely an old ADM 32 and two VT100 terminals who's mfr escapes me. I am also starting to collect some Apple Gear as well, have a dual G5 tower which won't boot due to a bad motherboard/CPU (boots only when the 2nd CPU is removed). Now I realize I have too much crap lol.

  35. Cool but better do something else. by elgatozorbas · · Score: 2

    This is the type of stuff I used to find cool and tinker with 10 years ago. Nowadays, I value my time (a bit) more and prefer to dedicate it to other, more useful projects. Why waste time trying to run an old version of an OS that has been improved over the years? Processing power and RAM are dirt cheap. Even the small systems, like the raspberry pi support modern distros. It was cool to struggle with a slackware installation 10 years ago and succeed. Given enough effort and time, it can also be done on recent hardware but what does it prove? I would prefer to start a more useful and challenging project.

  36. Smallest boards by jkonrath · · Score: 1

    You won't be able to get away with an ARM system like RasPi as others have mentioned, but you might find a few semi-small x86 options.

    Minnowboard has a 4.2" square board based on the Atom 640, but no IDE, and it's maybe $200. (http://www.minnowboard.org/technical-features/)

    The best combination of cheap/small is probably Mini-ITX, at 6.7" square. An average mboard is maybe $50, plus a processor, RAM, power, and everything else. But you also won't have IDE, and you'll run into all of the usual driver support issues.

    There are Nano, Pico, and Mobile-ITX, but you're going to raise the price almost exponentially with each jump down. Pico-ITX boards are at least $200-300.

  37. Galileo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm pretty sure you could do this on the intel Galileo but you would have to buy a video interface for it.
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8864490&SRCCODE=WEBGOOPA&cm_mmc_o=mH4CjC7BBTkwCjCV1-CjCE&gclid=CNPJp5yimL8CFUcV7AodPBQAnw&gclsrc=aw.ds
    I HAVE done this on my lippert coolLightrunner Lx800.

  38. Beat it n00b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm still playing Roadwar 2000 on my C=64. You ain't nothing.

  39. Use a VM. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have some chips in front of me that would beg to differ :) ARM licenses their designs to other people who actually tweak and fab them (or pay someone else to fab them). There's ARM, THUMB, ARM64, and Jazelle (which executed JVM bytecode directly). Those are all pretty well known, but I worked on a project that added a 486 core to ARM about 15 years ago. Like jazelle, not *every* instruction was implemented in silicon -- some were handled in software. But then again, that's true of x86 as well. Performance was decent enough but we couldn't find enough buyers to continue on with it. Too bad. At the time, remember, pentium was king so who wanted an ARM with a 486 attached to it? Some of my former coworkers are at AMD and AMD is getting into the ARM scene so maybe now's the time.

  40. It is possible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To run on x86 binaries on ARM, you will probably need QEMU and a kernel with binfmt_misc. You may also need to run chrooted with an appropriate tree from some x86 Linux distribution. It will be slow and miserable. I have done something similar for device emulators before, such as running MIPS or ARM toolchains, built for MIPS/ARM on x86. It will be much slower to do x86 on ARM, particularly an ARM as utterly horrible as the Raspberry Pi's. Ultimately, I built proper GCC cross toolchains with crosstool-ng, but emulation is ok for simple stuff.
    The soundblaster drivers certainly won't work with anything modern. Modern sound cards are not ISA, and do not have much in common with soundblaster. It will likely be possible to get graphics working in some fashion, but it will be limited to VGA modes, and it will be slow. You can probably recompile half the OS to make various parts work. It will likely even be possible to build and use a more modern kernel, eliminating many driver issues, and to rebuild X11, mesa, and many components that didn't exist at the time the original OS was built.
    To run on a more modern os, you will probably need the glibc compat / libstdc++.so.5 packages to run anything substantial on an x86 distribution. There may also be issues with old LinuxThreads software, that was pre-NTPL. I have run software from this era, developed by my own company, on modern 64-bit Fedora. Sometimes it was necessary to copy libraries, and it is obviously necessary to install legacy 32-bit libraries. I also have, on the odd occasion, had to make a shared library containing some missing symbols, and LD_PRELOAD that into the to make it run. Standard techniques for debugging such issues apply. It is not difficult, but why bother for things like soffice, and you can likely get coreldraw to work without any problem on a recent wine? If the symbols that are missing are functions, rather than just things like errno, then you might have to actually implement function wrappers that call the modern versions of the same functions.
    I have never come across an old piece of Linux software, that couldn't somehow, be coaxed into running on a modern system. The question is, how much effort is too much? If there is a modern equivalent, just use it instead, particularly if no data files are being taken forward, or if import of old data is of good fidelity. In my view, commercial software is a dying trend. There is very little that can't be done better and more efficiently with open source, particularly if you know how to put the pieces together.

  41. Throw It Out by crackspackle · · Score: 1

    Delete it. If you haven't used it for years you never will. You're only buying yourself a mountain of lost time trying to recover and look at the same files you probably already elsewhere. Instead focus on how to stop creating the problem in the future. You've already taught yourself the lesson the hard way that there is such a thing as too many backups, at least when making them all over the place inconsistently and without scope.

    Get a CM for your notes and miscellaneous cstuff. Wikimedia works great for this and you can be sure will be around a while. Use git to manage source code, scripts and text files. I find a common repo and one for each host works best. Keep large binaries in a single big software folder, Do the same for images, movies, whatever but keep them all grouped together. Back all of it up as a unit. Put all new stuff in there in the future. Do not let yourself deviate from using whatever scheme you come up with because it's the only practical way to insure you keep your stuff without having a million copies of it later.

    I understand deleting it may be hard, but if you're like me, you probably have accumulate millions plus copies of files if you're including whole copies of OS's in your backups. You might try md5sum over important file types but checking and deleting by hand will take an incredible amount of time.

    1. Re:Throw It Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you even read what he wrote?

      Wow you completely missed the point.

    2. Re:Throw It Out by crackspackle · · Score: 1

      Yes I read it, and I've been there too, hanging onto a pile of old crap because I though I might want too look at/use it again one day. Having not done so for years, I tried exactly what he did and realized after a couple of times the effort is not worth the reward, particularly if he is trying to figure out he still should keep it.

    3. Re:Throw It Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you clearly haven't read it. He is not talking about restoring personal files, he wants to play around with an old Linux distro and some old Linux games.

    4. Re:Throw It Out by crackspackle · · Score: 1

      I've been rummaging around on old backups and cleaning out my stuff and have once again run into my expert-like paranoid backups and keepsakes from back in the days (2001).

    5. Re:Throw It Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Duh. :) You might read a bit more than the first sentence of the summary. Because the backups and stuff hardly were his main point.

    6. Re:Throw It Out by crackspackle · · Score: 1

      My point is I've been there and done that. The between the lines problem is the paranoia about losing something you might want some day and the point of rebuilding systems like this is to see if you can delete it. It's fun once but beyond that a time blasting exercise when it would be better spent coming up with a preservation scheme so you don't end up with even more junk in the future.

  42. Let's see... by ntropia · · Score: 1

    Not sure about the x86 issue.
    DosBox runs just fine on Android and RaspberryPi.
    Indeed, I've tested several ol'times masterpieces on the former, and it worked all very well (with Genuine Tears(TM)).

  43. In a nutshell... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you try to run turn of the century Linux distros and softare/games on newer hardware from today you are likely to run into many frustrating, archaic dependancy and compatibility errors (if you are even able to boot at all). The list of problems ranges from no-longer-supported disk standards to Audio and Video driver compatibility issues and possibly many other hardware based issues (network card, chipset, etc). Sure you could try to run all of this in a virtual instance (VMWare, etc), but even then you would have to get the virtual hardware settings to play nice with what the software you are trying to run expects.

    Why bother with all that when you could probably find (within the space of a few hours to days) some perfectly working beige box from 2000/2001 at your local thrift store for possibly under 20 bucks (or less!). You could try Value Village, but a better bet would be the Salvation Army, or even garage sales. I've seen lots of old, crusty hardware from that era just begging to be sold for dirt cheap or given away. There is nothing like running old software on native hardware, where it belongs. (The same can be said for old games running on their original consoles/arcade hardware vs. being run on emulators).

    In any case, enjoy your foray back to the year 2000. Those were the days!

  44. I did something similar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I had an old computer, a mythtv box, that died. Replaced it with new hardware. Tried to boot up the old Linux OS on the new motherboard, and it failed horribly. Trouble was, I didn't have a recent backup of the old mysql mythtv database.

    SO I booted off a new fedora disk into "rescue" mode. Chrooted to the old drive. Went into /etc/rc.d and started up mysqld. Old harddrive (well, dd'ed copy), old mysql software, all running under the latest fedora kernel. Worked perfectly. From there I could backup the database.

    Really old Linux kernels won't play nicely with the latest hardware. However, new Linux kernels can run your old applications just fine.

    You might try something similar by copying your old hardddrive over (dd is your friend), booting under a recent Linux distro, chrooting to your old harddrive copy, and running your applications from there. You have your entire old environment, just a recent Linux kernel.

    Oh, and don't tell your windows-using friends about doing this sort of thing. They get really bent out of shape over it.

  45. It's spelt A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E by Arkan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Ask Slashdot" from someone confortable enough using Linux in 2001 for productive work and not knowing that a Raspberry Pi or a "mini USB PC" are not running on the same architecture as the PC from 2001?

    How low have we stooped?

    1. Re:It's spelt A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm really glad somebody else called him out on this. It's almost as if he doesn't really understand what he's been doing all these years.

    2. Re:It's spelt A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did they have Google in 2001 cos he could have found out what a raspberry pi was and grokked that it wasn't going to run x86 code out of the box.

    3. Re:It's spelt A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E by greenreaper · · Score: 1

      But "Ask Slashdot" is all about pointing out your superiority to others. Why not the OP?

    4. Re:It's spelt A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it weren't for dumbasses there would be no /. Don't complain, you suck at making profit.

  46. x86 emu for Rasberry PI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you realy want to run it on a Rasberry PI you could find an 32bit x86 emulator/vm that runs on ARM hardware and then maybe implement it that way but I think you will run into a lot of compatibility/performance problems. It would be cool if you could get it to work though.

  47. Don't need an old PC by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 1

    I have all those games (except tribes... don't have linux tribes) plus a few extra like Railroad Tycoon 2 and Neverwinter Nights running native and great on my Athlon 64 X2 6000+ on Debian Jessie 64-bit. There are a few howtos to get the old libraries you need. Then to run them for best compatibility, have them run on 1 cpu with the frequency locked to something like 1ghz. Runs great, runs native. The only downside from the windows versions is you don't get EAX effects.

    If you want to run the old software on old hardware, work on building a "dos box" with parts from the appropriate era. I currently have an older P2 machine with an AWE64 and a voodoo3 I am enjoying dos games on. Its been fun buying games of GOG and throwing them on there. Been thinking about putting an old Linux distribution on it. I have a Corel Linux disc I was thinking about running. I also had OPENSTEP on there for a day or two before I had the sound card.

    --

    ==================
    Hippie Logger Jock
    ==================
  48. You'd need to update the kernel etc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I tried running my SuSE 8.2 install DVD on not-very modern hardware and didn't get anywhere. Old kernels can't run on modern hardware.

  49. Only one way to find out... by globaljustin · · Score: 1

    try to make it happen...

    if you're not motivated enough after an "Ask Slashdot" then maybe you're over the whole "i can do teh Linuxes" phase

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
  50. XFree86 is a pain to get working under VirtualBox by logicassasin · · Score: 1

    I managed to get 320x240 working on a Red Hat 6.2 VM I tried to stand up for nostalgia. Tried a variety of drivers and kept screwing around with the config but ended up just giving up. I cobbled together a P3 from parts I had laying around and installing it there.

    --
    Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
  51. Not if you work for the IRS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Doh! Yeah, close enough.

  52. Oldtimerz setting in by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 1

    I just checked and you're right about the kernel being in the 2-series, 2.2.x. Thanks for that; apparently it wasn't the change to the 2-series kernel that caused the incompatibilites, but to the 2.4- versions from 2.2.

    I was right about the libraries, though.

    IIRC Debian 3 was released about the same time as RH 7, which makes using anything Corel doubtful.

  53. Ooops! How do I Delete Posts? by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 1

    On further checking, Debian 3 seems to be in the 2.2 kernel series with the right libraries for Corel.

    All my posts on this subject were wrong and should be ignored.

  54. New Linux Distros by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    There are several Linux distros that are current that will run on old 386 pCs.. I don't know if Pi can do what you seek to do without add-ons etc..

    1. Re:New Linux Distros by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't believe how confused people are in this discussion. It almost seems like half of the people have not read the summary properly.

  55. Re:I recommend VirtualBox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I had a Win98v2 (so circa 1999 software and needs some 3rd party drivers) running on VirtualBox awhile ago and also managed to get RedHat 5.1 without X also running, so that is even older system.

  56. Re:I recommend VirtualBox by Nimey · · Score: 1

    Win98SE works a lot better in VMware Player because VirtualBox doesn't have guest utilities for such an old OS.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  57. Yes its possible - kernal version 2.6.8 or greater by erexx23 · · Score: 1

    1. Image the drive 2. Move image into VM 3. Stabilize the VM 4. Move VM to other hardware of choice Tools: acronis universal restore for linux kernal version 2.6.8 or greater -this is all i know

  58. Still works, but new stuff works better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the really nice things about Linux is that development is continuous. Older versions of the software are clean and run (very) well, but newer versions of the software offer functionality on new hardware, and may use improved algorithms to permit better performance. You can still run it, but you may also be exposed to security issues discovered and fixed years ago.

  59. VMware, then the trash can by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    1. It's not as good as you remember. We actually have made progress in the last 10-20 years.

    2. You'll have to try old, legacy software once to believe (1). Been there, done that :-)

    3. Life is too short: throw it away...

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:VMware, then the trash can by goarilla · · Score: 1

      I concurr, don't hoarde ! Nostalgia is an overrated emotion.

  60. Early 2000ies HW still running fine by luc.roadrunner · · Score: 1

    I'm still running an ASUS with Pentium 4, 1.8 Ghz, 768 Mb or RAM , 80+40 Gb IDE drives & early USB 2.0 ports (BIOS upgrade). Ubuntu 9.04 with KDE desktop 3.5 and plenty of recent drivers for my MFP. + Hercules TV card, + FireWire board for my old sony handycam HC40E I'm still using it as : - Video capture TV, handycam, webcam - Distributed Home security - NAS for my RASPI audio streamer - HIFI & Bluetooth - NAS for my TVBox - Web Proxy for the kids. - Mailserver (fetching) / hosting mailboxes. - Web Browser with Early Chrome & Firefox versions when kids & wife have highjacked all the tablets, laptops and TV. - Dev platform for my Roomba - Gimp based + Image Magic for processing of astro & panoramic pics. Performance is not an issue when everything is properly scripted to run in background and a minimum of mouse/keyboard clicks.

  61. Re:XFree86 is a pain to get working under VirtualB by donaldm · · Score: 1

    I managed to get 320x240 working on a Red Hat 6.2 VM I tried to stand up for nostalgia.

    I hope you realise that Redhat 6.2 release/update came out on the 6th Dec 2011, which IMHO is fairly recent since 6.2 is still under "Production 1" support. Will it run on older hardware well yes it will providing you have checked what hardware is supported. I have actually upgraded (well reinstalled) from Redhat 3.1 to 6.1 on Proliant hardware with graphics support without issues.

    I never have recommend upgrading (not just Redhat but all version of Linux/Unix) from one major release to another, preferring a fresh install. In fact I have found this to be far quicker with less problems.

    As far as VM's go I have always used VirtualBox and have never had issues with Redhat. CentOS, Ubunto, Fedora and even Solaris.

    --
    There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
  62. Re:XFree86 is a pain to get working under VirtualB by Mdk754 · · Score: 2

    You do realize that Red Hat 6.2 was released in April of 2000? I presume he is not talking about the more modern RHEL.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

  63. Old software... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IDE is old? what does that make RLL/MFM/ESDI disks?

  64. CorelDraw by Reziac · · Score: 1

    Dunno about the rest of it, but I'd love to take the CorelDraw for linux off your hands, box, manuals, and all!

    The truth is, I can't live without the included PhotoPaint, and I prefer the older versions (I use v8 on Windows).

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  65. good copy of debian-30r0-i386-binary-1.iso ? by Michael_Paoli · · Score: 1

    Debian 3 CDs - do you have a good copy of debian-30r0-i386-binary-1.iso ? If so, I'd like to get a copy of that (or at least the blocks I'm missing), or perhaps you'd have the additional needed .deb files to create that ISO. Though the Debian Archive does have back into 3.0 "Woody", they don't have all the way back to 3.0r0. They do have jigo files for building the ISOs, but alas, they don't have all the necessary constituent .deb files to create those ISOs from the jigdo files. I do have good verified copies of all the other CD ISOs in that set (debian-30r0-i386-binary-[2-7].iso). Anyway, I'd be interested in obtaining/assembling a good debian-30r0-i386-binary-1.iso, and Debian itself may then also be interested in getting from the debian-30r0-i386-binary-[1-7].iso set, the missing needed .deb files for the archives, so the ISOs could then be reconstructed by anyone desiring to with the jigdo files they do have available.

  66. chroot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can use your older Linux system in a chroot, using kernel and X server from the host system. It works as long as you don't need hardware-accelerated OpenGL*.
    I already ran a Slackware 4.0 (released in 1999, 2.2.6 kernel, KDE 1, libc5) chroot on a recent non-multilib 64-bit Slackware. It works; you just have to specify the DISPLAY environment as 127.0.0.1:1.0 instead of :1.0 as the shm protocol seems to have changed since.

    *The setup will make the chroot system use its own OpenGL drivers. But you could still try to install proprietary drivers, both on the host (for the kernel module) and on the chroot (for OpenGL libraries).

  67. UT / OSS by AntiSol · · Score: 1

    One thing that I can say is that if you're running a modern distro you'll likely run into problems with Unreal Tournament's sound support - it only supports OSS, and it expects that /dev/dsp exists.

    On my Ubuntu 12.04 box, I have to use padsp when launching UT to get any audio, and when I do use padsp I get a ~500ms delay on the audio - it's unplayable. A real pity.

    I think that this could probably be fixed by ripping out pulseaudio and installing the real OSS, but I don't know for sure and didn't want to get that drastic on my everyday machine. Also, you might find that the UT binary has old OSS libs compiled in statically, so it might not work even then.

    I'd be really interested to hear anybody's solutions to this dilemma - I miss UT!