Rejuvenating old PC - overhear and software

Owain_Moneysaver

bonzer wrote: »

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 with gnome on an Athlon XP1600+ with 1Gb RAM now largely at defaults with no probs.

If it's sluggish, might be the hard disk is slow or iffy.

Must find out how much ram there is, the bios says 32MB but I hope that's video :eek:.

I know the hard disk is iffy, ubunto live refused to mount the volume saying there were bad sectors, and it stuck on Windoze, so presumably that's why it was chucked. I might have another hard disk from another PC with a dud CR drive and power supply held on with gaffa tape I can implant once I've recovered my data off it.

At the moment I am just enjoying having a free PC to play with that if I kill it cost me nothing (apart from new keyboard mouse speaker cat5 cable mains cables and some baby wipes for the case).

bonzer

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Must find out how much ram there is, the bios says 32MB but I hope that's video :eek:

I would think so. For that era of PC I would expect it to have 256Mb upwards.

If you've got ubuntu running. Just open a terminal and type "free". Top left number is your total RAM in Kb.

spakkker

Why set temp. alarm so low? 70' or 80' would be ok as cpu is rated to 90'.
Doesn't the post screen tell the amount of ram?

tronator

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

I've learned the hard way :mad: don't try and update ubuntu, wipe and start again. Backup your data.

You should always have /home on a separate partition. Makes everything much easier. In case something goes wrong with the update, just reinstall it and all documents and setting are still there. But this doesn't mean that you shouldn't backup your data...

Owain_Moneysaver

spakkker wrote: »

Why set temp. alarm so low? 70' or 80' would be ok as cpu is rated to 90'.
Doesn't the post screen tell the amount of ram?

Temp - Will bear that in mind if it starts alarming again.

RAM - It probably does somewhere, but scrolls too fast.

Owain_Moneysaver

tronator wrote: »

You should always have /home on a separate partition. Makes everything much easier.

I did have home on a separate partition. I don't have that partition any more. :mad:

tronator

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

I did have home on a separate partition. I don't have that partition any more. :mad:

That's (almost) impossible. At no stage of the upgrade is any partitioning or reformatting involved. You must have reinstalled and either chosen to remove existing partitions or you manually partitioned, but chosen "yes, format it"on your existing /home partition or...

But anyway, you should make a backup regularly, especially before an upgrade. I do a daily backup with rsync over ssh to a different PC. Takes less than a minute for my whole home folder...

candtalan

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

I have acquired an old PC (it was in the communal wheeliebins if you must know). Mobo appears to be Albatron KX400+ with Athlon XP1700+ pro. One stick of memory. 30GB ??? hard drive, DVD-ROM and CDRW.

Ubuntu is a full fat modern system and it likes at least 256MB ram. This is mostly relevant for older machines which often had less. In older machines, say a 500MHz PIII, I would always be sure to put 384MB ram or more, it makes a huge difference. Such machines are not the fastest, but I can use them normally. And anyway, I get them FREE.

KillerWatt

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Being a bit out of touch with current hardware, would this run Vista

In theory it should, in practice it will be a dog.

Owain_Moneysaver

KillerWatt wrote: »

In theory it should, in practice it will be a dog.

So no change from the days of Windows 3.1 on a 386 then.