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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?

26 of 176 comments (clear)

  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.

  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 rujasu · · Score: 2

      Bochs? Surprised you didn't just use DOSBox.

    4. 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
    5. 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. 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 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
  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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
  9. 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.

  10. 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 :)

  11. 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.

  12. 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?

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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?

  16. 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...