I have an old Dual PIII 750 PC with onboard Fast Wide SCSI and a CD but no DVD drive. It only supports USB 1, so I haven't found any USB that will work. I have Soundblasters with Joystick ports I want to use to play Win/96-98 games under Wine.
I suppose the most important thing is that the OS support the booting from SCSI and one of the soundblaster cards.
Could I install 7.2 from CD and then upgrade it online to 7.6?
Thanks for any ideas...
It generally is not possible to upgrade Knoppix like you stated. Knoppix is made from Debian. Have you considered simply installing Debian? Debian was designed for hard disk install from the start.
Harry,
I suppose its a valid point. The idea of upgrading 7.2 to 7.6 is only because I don't have a DVD on the machine. I suppose I could also try installing a DVD reader so that I could install 7.6 directly, if I have one around that would work in it. I've never had a DVD in this machine before.
The big issues are the SCSI and Soundblaster with Joystick capability.
DVD drives are dirt cheap, I can't argue against simply installing one. About $15 for a burner from a source like Newegg. You said reader; readers may be even cheaper but I can't justify buying only a reader. Get a burner and burn your own DVD at low speed for the best Live DVD experience. And it will be handy for many things. But if you want a fix to your problem that you can start doing right now, you could try installing Debian today while you are waiting for the DVD drive to arrive. If you don't like it you lose nothing and can switch back to Knoppix or some other Live DVD after you have the drive. But you really didn't answer the question of why you seem to be resisting Debian and are focused on Knoppix, which is intended primarily as a Live DVD, while ignoring Debian which is intended for had disk install. You're hardly alone at that, as I never seem to get a good answer to that question.
Oh, one thing to mention. Just about any internal DVD drive that you buy now will have an SATA interface. Your PIII system with CD sounds like it has IDE interfaces. So if you don't have a SATA adapter in that system you'll have to be creative. You can't use a USB external DVD drive, USB 1 or USB 1,1 are not going to cut it. SCSII DVD burners will be very hard to find and you will likely pay such a premium to get one that you would be better off just buying a "new" $100-$200 computer that had a DVD and a lot of other things that you really need. Or find an old computer with IDE that you can pull the DVD drive out of, or simply get something a bit newer. If you decide to try to add an SATA adapter be sure that it has an interface that your motherboard supports, PIII is very old and you might not even have PCI sockets on it.
All of which makes the suggestion of just trying to install Debian from the Internet a much more viable option.
Yes, Harry. I can't justify buying a SCSI or IDE DVD Burner special for the old thing.
Actually, I had never thought of Knoppix as being for run from CD, not install. I always thought it was to "Try it out and TEST from CD", then install, but I guess you would know better than I.
Yes, the USB 1.1 has been impossible to find support for.
What's nice about the old thing is that it has a joystick port and Soundblaster card, which most old games were designed for, and does have PCI as well as AGP and IDE slots.
Debian is loading now. Its only trouble is that in the past its been resource greedy and hasn't been able to run the games either.
Not sure which games you want to run. I'm guessing you want to run Windows games under Wine, as DOS games would be best simply run under DOS. If running Windows games you should be able to use a USB joystick and other soundcards, as the drivers should save you from needing actual SB hardware and an analog JS port. I can't say anything good about the Logitech USB joysticks though, they are poorly made and not durable. Maybe you can find something more suitable.
With PCI you could get an inexpensive SATA adapter and go that route, but it is a very old system to throw more money at.
Not sure why Debian would have any more of a resource load than Knoppix, particularly since Knoppix is made from Debian. Also not sure why you want to move beyond 7.2 CD. It isn't like someone with a PIII needs the latest software. Are you seeing more resource use under wine on Debian than under wine on Knoppix? It might just be that wine under Linux doesn't have the performance that you need on a PIII.
Klaus has always been upfront that Knoppix is intended as a Live CD (or DVD). The install is a compromise. I would advocate, if you want a hard disk install, Debian or other distros intended for hard disk install. You might like the 32 bit version of LinuxMint (although I think it is a 1 gig + ISO), or even Ubintu (rumored to be an African word meaning "I can't figure out how to install Debian").
Good Luck.
The main game I'm trying to get to work is a Windows 95/98 game called Star Wars Episode I Racer.
There is no such thing as a durable joystick, I don't think. The real device I like to use is a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel and Pedals, which I have, but for compatibility purposes, I'm trying to get the game working with the Logitech Joystick, which I picked up for $2, first, just to get things working before attempting the Sidewinder.
I was thinking my odds will be better with the newest Wine I can get. I did find someone with the game working with 1.7.x wine, but other than that Arch Linux was used, I don't know the details of the configuration.
I have installed Ubuntu before and it was not to my liking, being pretty locked down compared to debian, IMO
I don't think a SATA adapter will fix anything
An SATA adapter should get you the ability to use a SATA DVD drive, but isn't going to do anything to address Wine / PIII performance issues.
You make a good point because I haven't gotten any Windows games to work under Wine, so don't know what to expect in terms of performance.
Under Win/98 this was my fastest machine, and that was only using one of the processors and with only 1 gb of memory. Hopefully it will work. I wish I had one windows game that worked to use as a benchmark.
LOL...Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
If the game is able to run on WinNT-based OS and a bit better CPU utilisation preferred, it may be worth to try out the virtualisation route (VBox or alike). The biggest challenge I can imagine is to get the joystick working in the virtualisation environment.Quote:
Originally Posted by thriftee