on Tuesday, January 27, 2004 19:07 EST, "Richard Rauch" <rkr@olib.org>
wrote:

> No answers for why you're seeing what you're seeing.  I'd lean towards
> guessing hardware problems.  Can you try putting the 8MB back in and
> see if the problems go away?

I am currently testing my 486's memory with MemTest86. Its on its 3rd pass
without any errors. The hardware i believe the hardware is okay.

> Re. the OpenOffice suggestion: Be advised that OpenOffice is big and slow.
> I don't know if it will work well on a 486.  (Though if your Evil Empire
> machine is more powerful, it might run acceptably there.  On an 800MHz
> Athlon, I found OpenOffice so painfully slow that I would try to avoid it
> if at all possible.)

My tastes run to command lines and old hardware. I like pushing the limits
of what the machines can do. Under the Evil Empire it wasn't to exciting.
But under NetBSD... oh the development possibilities. I have a few ideas
but i need to learn a little more before squawking about them.

> You could dual-boot you Evil Empire box.  (I did that when initially
> converting to NetBSD after a very brief stay in Evil Empire land.
> I found that I very (very) rarely needed anything from the Evil Empire
> side.)

I dual boot my Compaq 586 laptop (which is no longer mobile due to a hinge
defect that makes the screen distort when the machine is vibrate)</tangent>

> If you don't need to extract extensive markup, etc. from an Evil Empire
> office document, you can get the raw text out with "strings" on NetBSD,
> followed by some cleanup.  (Generally, anyway.  Those documents actually
> have a bunch of other junk in them---sometimes literally---and I seem
> to recall reading that they actually use a linked-list structure
> internallky, so that the parts of a large document may conceivably be out
> of order on disk (though that seems unlikely).)
>
> This will probably work about as well as pasting raw text into a telnet
> session.

Yeah. Some of the actual text files i can do that with. Most of my important
word processing tasks i have done in HTML. With that i just remove IEisms
and convert CRLF to bare LF. Cut and paste comes in handy with things like
email and contact list. I don't dare use native exporters. The result gives
me nightmares just thinking about it.

> Next, I doubt that the MS telnet client killed the server.  (^&  (But
> anything's possible.)  Though the telnet server might have died for other
> reasons.

Well ... maybe not. It only seemed to happen under the 95 native telnet
3rd party didn't induce. When i typed 'make' under the other telnet client
the 486 seemed to think that the fetchmail package had already been made.
I typed 'make install' and in a few minutes i had a working binary of
fetchmail. I can't explain the behavior. What ever it was NetBSD shook
it off and got back to running.

> One thing that you might try is configuring NetBSD to support a serial
> line.  For allowing logins, it should be enough to add/modify a line in
> /etc/ttys to allow one or both of /dev/tty00 or /dev/tty01 for logins.
> Then hook up a null-modem cable (or standard serial cable and a null-
> modem adapter) between the two computers.  This is a raw login, not a
> network connection.  No telnet.  (^&  From the Evil Empire side, you'd
> need a telecom program (a.k.a. a terminal emulator or "comms" program),
> which should largely be similar to telnet.
>
> The downside is that a serial line won't set any speed records.  But
> you will be getting away from the telnet server, which may remove one
> suspect---and also ever so slightly reduce your system's memory load.

The boxen aren't in the same room.

> Last: You could install CygWIN on the Evil Empire machine.  From there,
> you can run an X server and use ssh over ethernet to connect to the
> 486.  You might or might not find it bearable to try to run graphical
> X window client software on the 486, over ethernet.  (You can disable
> the encryption, I suppose, if the 486 is too sluggish; I don't know
> how much that will buy you.)

Like i said early GUIs are 'gooey'. ;)

> Good luck.  I hope that the above ramble is of some use to you.  (^&

Every ramble i listen to teaches me something new.

mykalFunk