27 Jul
2010
27 Jul
'10
1:12 p.m.
On 26 July 2010 20:03, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Oh dear.
Haver you considered getting one of those Chinese Godson2-powered
(MIPS-compatible) Linux laptops? It's what Richard Stallman uses now.
All open-source: the CPU, hardware, firmware & all software is Free
and open source.
http://www.osnews.com/print/21530/The_Loongson-2_MIPS_Lemote_Yeeloong_Netbo…
Product page:
http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html
I don't know anyone directly selling it in the UK but very similar
devices are about, and they're cheap, too - under ?150. Not
powerhouses - the Longson CPU is only about 400MHz - but I believe
they're pretty usable.
I think they are generally regarded as *the* most open modern computer
in the world, but I don't know if they'd be Duell-compatible.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile & links: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
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TBH, I
don't know. I'm sure you're right, though. I improvised a
solution involving a couple of instances of DRIVER.SYS and DRIVPARM or
something like that to persuade DOS that a 1.4MB drive was actually a
1.2MB drive, I think.
In which case you may have onl;y 15 valid sectors on each track (1.2M
format) not 18 (1.44M format). This could end up similar to the strange
disk image that I received... Mine started out as a challenge. As is well-known, I
am forever moaning
about lack of real service data -- schematics and the like -- for
computer equipmetn. So, about 15 years ago I was set a challenge -- to
make a machine capable of running linux but which was 100% docuemtented
(not necessarily 'open' -- the scheamtics could be copyrighted, etc, but
they had to be avaialble). I had to be able to get full schematics and
source listings of all software involved (that included the ROM BIOS
needed to boot linux -- the linux sources took care of that requirement
for the OS).
I didn;t maanage it -- because I couldn't get a scheamtic of the hard
disk. But that was the only part I couldn't get. The guy swho set the
challenge acknowledged that I'd certainly met the spirit of the
requirements :-).
I am not so much impressed as awed.
I'm
impressed that you managed not only to get such a thing running,
but to be using it still. For any kind of contemporary usage on the
21st-century Web, it must be incredibly slow.
It is slow. Very slow. And the video output is an origianl MDA text-only
card and monitor (I have a CGA card in there too, X doesn't support that
either, and I find text on the 5151 a lot easier to read than on any CGA
monitor I've tried (I have the original 5153 and an NEC TTL RGB monitor
that I modified to have RGBI inputs -- I did that before I amanged to
obtain a 5153). So not much hope of accessing most web sites. But it runs
gcc, it runs LaTeX, and things like that.
To be honest, on the few occasions that I need to look at graphical web
sites (mostly to read data sheets, technical manuials, etc) I go to an
internet cafe.