Tinkering With An Old 486

Woodsman · 01-25-2009, 04:36 PM

I have been tinkering with my old 486 box. I successfully reconfigured the original Windows for Workgroups (WFWG) operating system. All hardware functions --- CD drive, network card, mouse, video, and the PC speaker for a sound card.

I'm having less success with Slackware 11.0.

With Slackware 11.0 the network card and CD drive function. SSH works too.

Unresolved problems:

1. I see a mouse cursor but no cursor movement.

2. The kernel does not see all of the 16 MB of RAM. The kernel reports only 13.1 MB (/proc/meminfo).

3. Is there a way to configure the PC speaker as a sound card as I did in WFWG?

The mouse is a 400 dpi three button busmouse with no scroll wheel. The mouse port is on the video card. The video card is an ATI Graphics Ultra with 1MB of on-board RAM.

In WFWG I used the 8514/a video driver at 1024x768. The mouse works. Therefore hardware is not an issue.

Running xorgsetup failed to help. I always received a black screen and I could not toggle to other consoles. I then tried xorgconfig. That got me started but I have no mouse cursor movement.

I would like to use a better video driver than vga. If WFWG can use the 8514/a driver, I should find something comparable in X. The system will not load X with the generic ati driver, which xorgconfig provided after I selected the ATI Graphics Ultra option.

For simplicity at this stage I am using twm. I'm using the 4-bit depth.

The /dev/mouse node is linked to /dev/atibm. After starting X, /proc/interrupts shows the atibm at interrupt 5. I tried changing Option "Device" "/dev/mouse" to Option "Device" "/dev/inportbm" because in WFWG the msd utility reported an Inport mouse.

The mouse-test tool does not find a mouse, but the utility warns of being incomplete.

I have a two-button serial mouse that mouse-test does not find either.

Both the atixlmouse and busmouse kernel modules are being loaded and are listed by lsmod.

I'm guessing the problem is a missing option in xorg.conf.

I'm using an old Viewsonic 7 17-inch CRT. Horizontal and vertical specs are straight from the user manual.

Having the kernel see all of the RAM would be nice. Before running X I am using about 11 MB. After loading twm, I am using about 4MB of swap. Reclaiming the missing 3 MB would be nice. The box has 4 4Mx9 30-pin SIMMs for a total of 16 MB.

I added mem=16M to the boot loader options but to no avail. In WFWG, all of the usual memory detection methods (mem, msd, etc.) all find the full 16 MB of RAM. The dmesg log shows the following:

Memory: 12956k/16384k available (1867k kernel code, 3040k reserved, 562k data, 120k init, 0k highmem)
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed

The kernel seems to know the full 16MB exists and the 3040K reserved part would seem to be the missing memory. I understand that the kernel must use some of the 16 MB. I don't understand why /proc/meminfo does not report the full amount.

This is the stock bare.i 2.4.33.3 kernel that came with 11.0.

Here is my xorg.conf:

Code:

 Section "Module"
 Load "dbe"
 SubSection "extmod"
 Option "omit xfree86-dga"
 EndSubSection
 Load "type1"
 Load "freetype"
 Load "extmod"
 Load "record"
 Load "xtrap"
EndSection
Section "Files"
 RgbPath	"/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
 FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/ttf"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
 FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
 Option "NoPM" "true"
 AllowMouseOpenFail
 Option "DontZoom"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier "Keyboard1"
 Driver "kbd"
 Option "AutoRepeat" "250 50"
 Option "XkbRules"	 "xorg"
 Option "XkbModel"	 "pc104"
 Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier "Mouse1"
 Driver "mouse"
 Option "Protocol" "BusMouse"
 Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
 Option "CorePointer"
 Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
# Option "Buttons" "5"
# Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "Viewsonic 7"
 VendorName "Viewsonic"
 ModelName "Viewsonic"
 HorizSync 30-64
 VertRefresh 50-90
EndSection
Section "Device"
 Identifier	"Standard VGA"
 Driver "vga"
EndSection
Section "Device"
 Identifier "ATI Graphics Ultra"
 Driver "ati"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Screen 1"
 Device "Standard VGA"
# Device "ATI Graphics Ultra"
 Monitor "Viewsonic 7"
 DefaultDepth 4
 Subsection "Display"
 Depth 4
 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
 EndSubsection
 Subsection "Display"
 Depth 8
 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
 EndSubsection
 Subsection "Display"
 Depth 16
 Modes "800x600" "640x480"
 EndSubsection
 Subsection "Display"
 Depth 24
 Modes "640x480"
 EndSubsection
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
 Identifier "Simple Layout"
 Screen "Screen 1"
 InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
 InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

This is hardly a mission-critical project. Just doing what Slackers tend to do --- tinkering because I can.

Thanks.

Woodsman · 01-25-2009, 08:24 PM

I was able to get the serial mouse working:

Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"

No bus mouse yet.

rkelsen · 01-25-2009, 08:53 PM

Hi Woodsman,

I did the same thing a few years back - built a Really Good (tm) machine from all the broken ones in the shed. Ended up with a 100MHz 486DX4 with 16Mb RAM, 300 Meg HD and a 512K VGA card. I tried installing Slackware 10.0 on it, with limited success.

Slackware 7.0 worked better on it. I think a distro with the 2.0 or 2.2 series kernel will work best for you.

Of course, after I had configured it, it sat there for months collecting dust until I had to throw it out...

Sorry I can't be more help with your actual problems...

hitest · 01-25-2009, 10:06 PM

I had good success running Slackware 10.2 on a Pll 266 with 128 MB RAM awhile back. Perhaps an older version of Slack is in order? Have fun with your project:-)

http://www2.citytel.net/~gnielsen/snapshot5.jpg

rob.rice · 01-26-2009, 01:39 AM

another one saying get an older distro no later than 7

onebuck · 01-27-2009, 03:25 PM

Hi,

I think the RAM requirements are at least 32MB FOR 11.

Woodsman · 02-02-2009, 03:31 PM

Slackware 11 required 32 MB to install but does not require 32 MB to run.

I was hoping for some thoughts about the busmouse problem as well as the incorrect memory report from the kernel.

At any rate, I posted my thoughts about the project:

Tinkering With A 486

Woodsman · 05-16-2009, 05:01 PM

I thought I'd share another story. I still have Slackware 11.0 installed on the 486 mentioned in this thread. I have played with the box only a couple of times since I started the thread.

Today I updated my machines with the latest patches (all with 12.2), something I do regularly. On a whim I decided I would update the 486 with all the latest patches too. Previously I never had patched any of the packages.

As there were so many unpatched packages, I simply ran upgradepkg *.tgz. The packages are stored on my primary production box and the NIC in the 486 is a SMC EtherCard Plus Elite16T 8013WC 10 Mbps card.

I started updating at 10:30 AM. The patching finished at about 4:30 PM. Six hours! To think the machine once was considered state of the art.