I verified to see that this PC actually has 150Mb ram approx. I haf 16Mb on my first pentium a long time ago and was focusing on that somehow. Puppy Linux is using just 50Mb or so of this RAM. I am quite happy with this PC now for what it does. Will see if I feel the same way a week and a month from now. To be sincere, I have other PCs but prefer not to throw older ones unless they can't be really used. Rasberry pi is best used as a kit which is a lot more expensive. However, in 3 years all these will also become old and drop further in price as newer similar come. Goodwill is a good idea also.

I am using a special browser called Links that is much simpler, faster but can type only so much on it. So adding this here, unless something seriously changes, I will use this old PC as my primary PC for now. There were a lot of challenges and disappointments in this path. However, I am happy and the end result was well worth it. Any further suggestions are greatly appreciated as usual and will assist my learning experience.

xchat still doesn't work on this, connects only to freenode. Same with attym. However, this is more of a distraction, so I will live without it for now.

There were challenges but I am glad to get this PC working. I have better PCs if needed. Will keep an eye out for older PCs also. In a few years, the Rasberry Pi etc., will also be a lot cheaper.

I deleted a lot of unwanted startup processes. Now ram use is at 27Mb only, startup also seems faster. It will be a good idea to backup the puppy personal file as it has a lot of useful settings at this stage. Will not be good to have to do this all over again.

There's links2 although I'm not sure if links isn't just a symlink to it. W3m and irssi for console level versions of browsers / irc. Even an xirssi if xchat doesn't want to play ball. A bit of a learning curve, but mostly functional.

Outside of the peripherals like an LPT1 port, or 1.44MB floppy drive, the old comps are disposable in my opinion. At least where I live since if you don't have it well protected, critters tend to move into their well constructed bird / mouse houses of metal. Or pretty much anywhere the cat can't get to them at.

Will try irssi and see how it goes. It looks interesting. As an aside, I tried to get the latest audio/video drivers for this PC and they simply don't exist on the net. Not even the old ones. This was a limited edition Mobo with onboard sound and graphics card. No one cares for it anymore. This is all the more reason to collect all the needed software for your PC when it is still current, better to collect more than lesser. I am glad that I atleast tried this, another eye opener.

Tried irssi when trying to connect to server it says Temporary failure in name resolution.

Nicoedit is a lot better on this PC for sure. It doesn't capture CPU like abiword.
I can do main work on this via Nicoedit and use Abiword whenever needed specially.
Nicoedit can also be used to read Gutenberg eBooks on this PC when I feel like it.

Xchat issue was solved on this PC. I had an older version with bugs in it.
Got a better version and it works fine now.

This thread also got me interested in using linux from the command line. This can be learned
slowly and with time will be profitable as lesser system resources will be needed.

More Basic Related info.:
Kernel: Linux 2.6.31.14 (i586)
PCI Devices
Host bridge Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5597 [SiS5582]
ISA bridge Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS85C503/5513
IDE interface Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
USB Controller Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller
Ethernet controller Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
Multimedia audio controller Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]
Serial controller Rockwell International HCF 56k Data/Fax Modem
VGA compatible controller Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5597/5598/6326 VGA

Questions:
1. How can I make Links browser the default in Puppy Linux (using Puppy Quirky 1.4) ?
2. Sound Problem
This PC plays streaming music, net radio ok. However, it doesn't play sound files. I tried both mp3 and ogg vorbis. How can I get drivers for the sound card below:
Multimedia audio controller Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]

3. Playing Video Files
This PC doesn't play video files. I tried to do a Video upgrade, it tried to get this file from ibiblio but failed saying link broken. It also said that I have the needed drivers, but getting this may help improve performance: Mesa-5.6.2-W5.pet
I tried to look on the net for this but all links are old and don't exist.
VGA compatible controller Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5597/5598/6326 VGA
Display
Resolution 1024x768 pixels
Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Version 1.3.0

I was able to do 2 and 3 above with Win 98. I found install disks for this. However, Win98 has no support and being on net with it is real insecure. Hence, I prefer to use Linux for this.

Thanks.

I'm sorry this isn't related to your problems but your mention of the command line. Are you aware of mpd, which allows you to use the mouse in the terminal?
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-...operation.html
Also, I find screen is good for carrying out more than one task at a time in the same terminal:
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html
I did get video working in the terminal using mplayer through the framebuffer but unfortunately I forgot where I saw the tutorial and now only have it partially working.

Thanks for this info. I will check into this in the future. For now, I am still learning the CLI. This thread has me greatly interested in learning to use Linux via the command line. With time I will get better at this and in the future will use mostly CLI and use X for tasks that can't be done using CLI alone. Then this will help me use FreeBSD, NetBsd even well. Also, this will be a good preparation getting into LFS also.
This old PC from 1999 is presently my main PC and it fully satisfies my computing needs.
For the present, I feel I have enough computing power to last my life time and perhaps
even more. I am glad I decided to learn more about older PCs.
Due to mp3 player, eReader and tablet PC use, I am able to reduce greatly desktop PC use. This will further increase the lifespan of the desktop PCs that I have. The eReader if charged weekly will allow the battery to last for 10 years. mp3 player batteries last a few years atleast. The earlier ones I got even take rechargeable batteries. So, all this greatly helps minimize my PC use and increase their lifespan.
This PC is unable to handle youtube and crashes soon after I click on a video to view.

Main problem with that PC: only 32 MB RAM. That's horribly small. The 333 MHz could be somehow lived with, but a desktop on 32MB, that's really too little for a desktop. The thing is, you will be swapping like hell, and that will make the machine freeze to death. If you could get your hands on more RAM (128MB+), things would change a bit.

Smallest thing i know of: TinyCore Linux. marginal Kernel, uClibc to begin with. I would try netsurf as browser, not even midori. Only one program at a time. Otherwise empty desktop, maybe a tiny launcher, better just an OpenBox context menu for the desktop and nothing more.

Actually I recollect lated that I have 150Mb Ram on this one. I had 32Mb initially but then added another 128M later back then. I feel that the issues I am experiencing has something to do with the A20 fail which is failure of access to high memory. I even opened and cleaned inside carefully to remove dust etc., Even cleaned inside CPU. Nothing helped. I am unable to even see weekend sales flyers on this thing. I will use it the way it is as long as it lasts. Will also try to learn from this as much as possible. It appears that desktops are dying anyways. I learned about icecast yesterday. Due to this thread, I also started using CD player in my stereo more, I examined my life to see other places where I am wasting stuff myself and be creative where possible.

This thread encouraged me to try a dosa Mod. Dosa is like a pancake, folks like it perfect usually. I tried making it with non traditional ingredients and it came out ok. Variety is interesting.

Tiny core was already tried on this and doesn't boot, it comes to a blank screen and hangs. Same with DSL, also tried tiny core plus.

Presently, out of every three start attempts, it is giving the A20 failure twice and is also not playing streaming radio that it did just yesterday.

So will monitor and learn more from it.

Also, I have some pet parrots and one watches me when I work on my PC sometimes. I started using commandline yesterday for sometime and she tried to bite me a little. Appears she also likes graphics and didn't want the command line.

Have you tried to do a memtest86+ ? Maybe something is wrong with one of your RAMs? Just guessing..

Oha. Now that's serious. I doubt that even the most famous Linux geeks here would be able to solve that one.

Maybe you lend her a tablet while you do your's.

This PC does a memtest everytime I start it, it passes but then it keeps on repeating it itself, no way to stop this permanently and it is annoying. I just hit the ESC key for it to stop.

A lot of the issues on this PC will be solved by having a boot floppy and installing grub to it. This was a standard feature in older PCs. This older PC still has a floppy drive. Unfortunately, I threw away 20 floppy drives I had with case a few months ago in an effort to declutter. Now I deeply regret this. I will check with folks I know to see if anyone has an old floppy disk lying around.

This PC was not free, I paid $1000 or so for it back then. It still works good for many basic tasks, so I will continue to use it as long as it is practical to do so.