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Hi Rich, fellow recycler :-) ! Apollogies to all for the long post (again).... > And so the journey continues and I am about to embark on a very long leg If you look upwind on the horizon you can just see my storm battered yacht :-) hope this helps ..... For low spec Slackware is nice, I have a Pentium 120 /w 64Mb Ram running slackware 8.1, it works (sort of if you like watching X krank up in slow mo (KDE3 that is) ). This is slowly grinding down the ferrite on my swap partition ! There is always a service & functionality / hardware trade off with older machines. You can use a contemporary distro for the age of the machine, but you are liable to any unpatched vulnerabilities ( which is why everybody tries to keep up to date). Nothing stays still in this game. I have a 486 50Mhz (24Mb) machine this runs Slackware 7.2 comfortably. But then again this is run version 1.9? of KDE. You can improve things by using less mainstream / memory hungry X managers like XFCE and blackbox (or fluxbox ?). bootable CD based distros like knoppix and freeduc might work. Never got them working on my P 120 though Ram upgrades of older machines can be very tricky. Some old motherboards dont use all the bus lines that the new memory sticks use, so for example you can put a 128Mb stick in and find it only uses 32Mb because the 2 highest address lines arent supported. If the motherboard manual says you can populate the mem slots with 4 x 32 Mb then dont expect 2 x 64Mb to work (even if the chips are cheaper ) ! If you have old memory cards lying around then by all means try experimenting, but I have always found researching the right chips for the right board a time consuming business be it new chips for old boards or old chips in the recycle bin, and its not always very rewarding. 30pin simms are practically non existant, 72pin simms are expensive and also dying out, dimms, sdram are current, ddr is the new boy on the block, which means dimms will be expenisve soon, the whole process of memory upgrades (for old machines) is messy. For my recycle project I have found that "if you havent already got it, dont try to upgrade it unless you have a large wallet ;-)" of course most of my machine are 486 / early Pentiums or around that era so the more modern the machine you are recycling the better chance you have of finding the right chips to upgrade and at a (more) reasonable price. There will come a point when adding more memory doesnt make any difference (this is usually a factor of the amount of CPU cache and other hardware attributes). But dont let me put you off experimenting :-) Rember recycle law no 1. "you can never break something thats already broken". <LTSPAdvocacy mode=on> Alternatively if you want to use a "up to date" distro with old kit and you have a high spec server free (ie 1 - 2 Gb Ram /w 1.5GHz++ processor) and a good network, try LTSP. This IMO is a much better way of reusing old resorces because there is less compromise. Your workstations are already out of date, you cant upgrade (distro) without hitting a performace problem, however a well speced LTSP server is more "future proof". Some people in the LTSP community say that, as a work station a P 166 with 32Mb of memory is adequate and that adding more memory gives little or no additional benifit, I have never put this to the test. However I have run a 16Mb 486 workstation off my current LTSP server and it is slow, but the software Im running (via) the Server is OpenOffice.org on RH8.0. Now could you imagine trying to run OpenOffice.org and RH8.0 on an old 486 with 16Mb of ram as a standalone, come to think of it could you imagine trying to install RH 8.0 on 486 with 16Mb ram.? (please dont try this at home!). My server cost under 500 to build from new parts, the workstations where give away, with 4 workstations thats 500 / 4 = 125 per station. The server hasnt reached capacity by a very long chalk so add another 8 stations ( give away again) thats 500 / 12 = 41 per station, and I expect I can drive the cost per workstation down further, just cant test that theory yet. Of course there is a point where the server gets saturated, so you just build another server for load sharing, and so on. Another thing to consider old boxes have old harddrives, eventually these will give up, for LTSP this isnt an issue, it runs diskless ! If you havnt already guessed I am a big fan of LTSP. </LTSPAdvocacy> Which ever course you sail have fun :-) Tom. Information in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is the intended solely for the person ( or persons) to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and please delete the message from your system immediately. The views in this message are personal, they are not necessarily those of Torbay Council -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.