Comments on: A bare minimum

By: The lesson of the Celeron « Motho ke motho ka botho

The lesson of the Celeron « Motho ke motho ka botho — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 01:59:32 +0000

[...] I did that purely to see if I could get most, if not all, of my day-to-day tasks done — to the inclusion of watching DVD rips against the framebuffer — on a machine as slow [...]

By: steve

steve — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:11:18 +0000

You’re right, it does seem odd in the wake of your recent purchase.

Maybe it’s time to move on and embrace the GUI ?

By: mrreality13

mrreality13 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:26:13 +0000

hmmm I have a 300mhz p1 mmx with 96 megs ram(32 on board)(satellite 2535cds) and still cant get video play back without “skipping” mind you I only have 1/100th of your knowledge but im trying to learn
(couple years on ubuntu on main pc Im trying other distros on it now)it seems to only like puppy atm

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:52:46 +0000

I seem to remember something about external optical (CD perhaps DVD) drives that plugged into parallel/serial ports… perhaps (if you could source one) such a device would be of use?

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:07:33 +0000

You’re right; I should have been a little clearer when I wrote that. The computer doesn’t have an optical drive, so in that sense it’s not “prepared” to handle it. There was probably a better way to phrase it than to suggest Pentiums can’t use CDs, wasn’t there?

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:44:04 +0000

“and the only things that are missing are CD access and DVD rip playback — both things that the hardware just isn’t prepared to handle in a 14-year-old computer”

Do not blame the hardware when it is most likely a case of software not prepared to handle a 14 year old computer. I remember using a double-speed CD-ROM with a 486 dx50 with 4 meg of ram (using DOS/Win 3.11).