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Ask Slashdot: Is It Feasible To Revive an Old Linux PC Setup?
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?
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?
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.
VirtualBox
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
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
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
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
plenty of virtual machine tech can emulate old video, old hard drives, etc.
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
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.
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 :)
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.
eh? beagleboard and raspberry pi can't run x86 software, those are different ARM based systems
They're all stoneage.
Well -- yeah -- that's kinda the point of this thread.....
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.
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.
Yeah but the license does not allow it though.
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.
talk about hobby with archaic systems, honey bees are found in fossil record 30+ million years ago
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.
And every ten months we're reminded why we don't miss you.
Exactly. This is another Ask Slashdot where the asker wants some kind of "confirmation" for his plans, instead of just going for it.
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.
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?
Not to mention a RPi would already be considered an old, slow machine even by 2001 standards.
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.
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
Sometimes forward is better. Not always.
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.
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.
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.
That's a very good point, the P3's of the day did more work per clock and were up at 700mhz by then
Unless the SATA drive is accessed in IDE emulation mode device.
PCIe can be accessed just like PCI.
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.
If you're worried about hard drive access, turn on IDE mode in the BIOS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unmod...
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
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)).
True, but not for under 10 watts...
it's all about trade-offs.
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.
"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?
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.
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Hippie Logger Jock
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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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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..
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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
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.
haha, that's way too slow (and still buggy beta grade to boot) to run games
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!