[Sugar-devel] Soas on legacy PC's
Art Hunkins
abhunkin at uncg.edu
Tue Sep 15 21:15:07 EDT 2009
I've done considerable testing of SoaS Strawberry on legacy PC's: 1 Pentium II laptop, and 3 Pentium III desktops.
First of all, Caroline was correct about CD and floppy boot assists; I was wrong. It takes *at most* a minute more to boot from a floppy. Occasionally, the floppy is even a bit faster. (I set timeout = 0 on my floppy assists.)
All these systems have non-bootable USB ports, but do boot from either CD or floppy.
My Pentium II (IBM ThinkPad, 233MHz) is a complete disaster either way. Anywhere from 8-9+ minutes to boot up. Won't make it through an Activity. More than 2 minutes to instigate an Activity from its icon. Bottom line: don't even consider Pentium II's.
The Pentium III's included one running at 500MHz and two at 1GHz. The former limped along, barely useable (an IBM Aptiva). Boot times for the Aptiva = 4.5 to 5.5 minutes. Kids would get highly frustrated by the pokey Activity runs.
Of the 1GHz machines (a Dell Inspiron and an HP), the Dell did somewhat better. Boot times = 3-4 minutes for the Dell, 4-5+ for the HP. Activity running was adequate, if a bit sluggish.
I certainly understand Caroline's limiting her donations to Pentium IV's. They run SoaS satisfactorily - similar to the native XO. (Native XO is noticeably faster than SoaS on the XO.) I do think, however, "higher end" (i.e., 1GHz) Pentium III's would work "OK" with SoaS where necessary.
One disappointment: two of the three Pentium III's did not have their on-board audio recognized by SoaS: they were silent (though their sound works fine in Windows). Only the Dell played - well, and without sonic stutter. This potential lack of audio would seem a real problem for SoaS. It's certainly a major issue for my music Activity.
Art Hunkins
----- Original Message -----
From: Caroline Meeks
To: Art Hunkins
Cc: iaep ; Sugar-dev Devel ; community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org ; Walter Bender
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Bill Bogstad's floppy disk boot (Soas)
some idea of what is going on.
I've tested CD helper vs. floppy helper on Pentium III generation computer. On these, floppies take *way* longer than CD's: 5 minutes (minimum) to 1 (actually, more like 10:2). Even though boot times are significant, the actual *Activity* executions are satisfactory (though hardly "peppy"). Overall performance is similar to the XO-1.
Wow, thats very different then the results I've gotten. I found that it took a minute for the floppy to boot, then it starts the USB boot which takes the same amount of time as it does without the floppy. Thus we add about a minute. I wonder what the difference is.
Art Hunkins
----- Original Message -----
From: Caroline Meeks
To: Art Hunkins
Cc: Walter Bender ; community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org ; iaep ; Sugar-dev Devel
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Bill Bogstad's floppy disk boot (Soas)
I tested this on the GPA computer lab computers. It takes about 1 more minute (4.5 vs 3.5) to boot. I think that it will take more then a minute on average to give all the students CDs, have them open the CD drawer, turn off the computer, turn it on again and collect all the CD at the end of class so that the next class boots into Windows. My plan is the floppies can just live in the machines, not pushed in all the way.
The current version requires the user to press enter 1 minute into the process. Can we get a version that we just start the boot, then goto the rug for our lesson and 4.5 minutes later the machines are booted?
Thanks!
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Art Hunkins <abhunkin at uncg.edu> wrote:
With regard to Bill Bogstad's floppy boot disk project for SoaS: it works
flawlessly for me. (I've tried it successfully on both an older Windows
laptop and desktop - vintages: Pentium II/III.)
I've one suggestion for Bill: for use by children, I'd make everything as
automatic as possible. Either delete the display where the user needs to
make a choice (it's *way* technical and *I* didn't know what to do), or put
a (10"?) auto-timer on it so that it goes on through (the usual way) without
user intervention.
For Windows people: I suggest creating the boot disk with RAWriteWin. It's
simple, user-friendly and efficient.
Great job, Bill.
Art Hunkins
----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com>
To: <community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Cc: "iaep" <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; "Sugar-dev Devel"
<sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 9:55 AM
Subject: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2009-09-11
=== Sugar Digest ===
7. Bill Bogstad has been working on a floppy boot disk for Sugar on a
Stick. See http://people.sugarlabs.org/~bogstad/floppy/ for more
details.
-walter
--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
--
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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