OLD P4 BOX needs some fine tunning – Experiences from a new comer to Antix.

[Member frtorres]

I have had a very good impression with Antix with 2 of my old boxes I was going to leave on this pandemic times.

Please review at the end one of my boxe shardware specs. That box was working very good with a 2.6 kernel kanotix debian distro.

All is working relatively fine. My main Issue seems to be hard disk performance when trying to capture/play TV signal from a saa7134 TV analog card.

Lots of frames are dropped, same happen when trying to play music using the sound blaster card.

Is there any possible hard disk fine tunning / customization of my install? Thanks in advance for any tip or advice in that direction.

Francisco

hwinfo --short
cpu:                                                            
                       Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.70GHz, 1693 MHz
keyboard:
  /dev/input/event0    AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
  /dev/input/event5    saa7134 IR (Kworld Plus TV Anal
mouse:
  /dev/input/mice      ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse
monitor:
                       LG ELECTRONICS LG TV
tv card:
                       Philips Semiconductors SAA7134/SAA7135HL Video Broadcast Decoder
graphics card:
                       XFX Pine GeForce FX 5200
camera:
                       OmniVision OV511 Webcam
sound:
                       Creative SB0240 Audigy 2 Platinum 6.1
storage:
                       Floppy disk controller
                       Silicon Integrated SiS5513 EIDE Controller (A,B step)
network:
  eth0                 Realtek RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
network interface:
  lo                   Loopback network interface
  eth0                 Ethernet network interface
disk:
  /dev/sdb             MAXTOR STM316021
  /dev/sda             Maxtor 6Y080L0
cdrom:
  /dev/sr0             HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B
usb controller:
                       Silicon Integrated USB 1.1 Controller
                       Silicon Integrated USB 1.1 Controller
bios:
                       BIOS
bridge:
                       Silicon Integrated 650/M650 Host
                       Silicon Integrated SiS961 [MuTIOL Media IO]
                       Silicon Integrated AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge)
hub:
                       Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
                       Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
memory:
                       Main Memory
firewire controller:
                       Creative SB Audigy FireWire Port
unknown:
                       FPU
                       DMA controller
                       PIC
                       Timer
                       Keyboard controller
  /dev/lp0             Parallel controller
                       Creative SB Audigy2 MIDI/Game Port
                       Silicon Integrated SiS961/2/3 SMBus controller
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Unclassified device
                       Serial control

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Not enough RAM? How much do you have?
Maybe an older 4.4 kernel might work better?

Posting inxi -Fxz would be better.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by anticapitalista.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member frtorres]

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Thanks anticapitalist for your quick answer.

1GB RAM, that all I have 🙂

$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        1024768 kB
MemFree:           69408 kB
MemAvailable:     714324 kB

Sorry, I am walking in the Antix learning curve. Please review inxi -Fxz output. Thanks in advance for your help.

inxi -Fxz
System:
  Host: Antix-Noe Kernel: 4.9.212-antix.1-486-smp i686 bits: 32 
  compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Desktop: IceWM 1.6.5 
  Distro: antiX-19.2_386-full Hannie Schaft 27 March 2020 
  base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: MICRO-STAR product: N/A v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: MICRO-STAR model: MS-6524 serial: <filter> BIOS: Award v: 6.00 PG 
  date: 11/08/2002 
CPU:
  Topology: Single Core model: Intel Pentium 4 bits: 32 type: MCP 
  arch: Netburst Willamette rev: 3 L2 cache: 256 KiB 
  flags: pae sse sse2 bogomips: 3386 
  Speed: 1693 MHz min/max: N/A Core speed (MHz): 1: 1693 
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] vendor: XFX Pine driver: nouveau 
  v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: nouveau 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1360x768~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NV34 v: 1.5 Mesa 18.3.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Creative Labs EMU10k2/CA0100/CA0102/CA10200 [Sound Blaster 
  Audigy Series] 
  driver: snd_emu10k1 v: kernel bus ID: 00:07.0 
  Device-2: Philips s SAA7134/SAA7135HL Video Broadcast Decoder 
  vendor: KWorld driver: saa7134 v: 0, 2, 17 bus ID: 00:08.0 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.9.212-antix.1-486-smp 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter 
  driver: 8139too v: 0.9.28 port: e800 bus ID: 00:0f.0 
  IF: eth0 state: unknown speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 225.39 GiB used: 4.24 GiB (1.9%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Maxtor model: 6Y080L0 size: 76.34 GiB 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Maxtor model: STM3160215A size: 149.05 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 9.78 GiB used: 3.82 GiB (39.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
  ID-2: /home size: 9.71 GiB used: 425.3 MiB (4.3%) fs: ext3 dev: /dev/sda3 
  ID-3: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 16 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda5 
  ID-4: swap-2 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb5 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 21.8 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 149 Uptime: 21h 30m Memory: 1000.8 MiB used: 330.4 MiB (33.0%) 
  Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 
  inxi: 3.0.36 

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi frtorres, as you are already at maximum ram for the board apart from a kernel change as
suggested by anti an ssd as boot and system drive is the best option for optimizing performance
from your hardware.
I does make an appreciable difference, now some good cheap drives are available not too
hard on the pocket. Good (in my experience) IDE SATA adapter model is mentioned in another thread.

Your drives are already 7200 RPM types so no point in looking for faster rotating disks.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Once upon a time a system with these capabilities was great. It’s been a while though since systems worked well with 1 GB of memory or less.

There is no way that you can use a current generation desktop environment with this system but with great care and very lightweight applications it’s possible to get some more use out of it.

The Web Browser is almost certainly going to be the most difficult app to run with 1 GB memory. Using one tab and as much text based browsing and limited image and video browsing you can make it work.

Around twenty years ago I got by for several years with a Dell Dimension 4100 desktop and only 256 MB of memory, a quarter of what you have. antiX worked great with it for several years. At least a few distributions, Debian, MEPIS and antiX worked until around 2909. By then the system would swap out processes unless you kept everything running under 256 MB. With some swapping it’d still work up to somewhere between 1-2 GB, at which point the swapping was too extreme. I had to at least be able to load a program into memory for it to work properly.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member frtorres]

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Thanks Brian. I really am very satisfied with this box performance with Antix. It is not a Ferrary but taking some precautions as you mentioned…I can use it…

I have seen some interesting scripts, programs in this distro aligned with the target hardware using command line.

I am using PaleMoon browser 5,6 tabs opened while I monitor RAM usage in the conky desktop.. not too bad.

I am going to install an ssd to improve performanc as advised by @moddit, good advice.. maybe I am leave this box as a server at home/.

Congratulations @Anticalitalista and @AntixTeam for this very interesting distro.

I will keep posting my progress.

Thanks all x your support.

Francisco.

[Member frtorres]

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Many thanks @moddit! Good advice!.

This box has USB2 slots.. but anyway worth trying.

If SSD works, should I use only SSD for the install. I mean, NO mix with current hard disks?

BTW I downgraded according to @anticapitalista advice to the highest 4.4 kernel version, as follows. I could not install linux-firmware I do not if it is necessary in my case.

System:    Host: Antix-Noe Kernel: 4.4.221-antix.2-486-smp i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Desktop: IceWM 1.6.5 
           dm: SLiM 1.3.6 Distro: antiX-19.2_386-full Hannie Schaft 27 March 2020 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 

Thanks for any additional advice.

Francisco.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by frtorres.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hallo Francisco,
All my own computers are running a mix of SSD as boot and installation drive with HDD as long term storage. You can decrease swappiness and/or setup swap on hdd only to reduce ssd writes. i also do not format SSD to full capacity so as to leave the controller some free room to use if any memory cells go defective.
I setup the same way for others I help, rescue older computers mostly for schooling usage.
Have good experience with the drives below, 7 purchased, up to now no failures. Read and write pretty fast even with bigger files which is not so common. Most ssd slow down to a crawl when the cache fills. Cheap and 3 year warranty.
Patriot Burst SSD 120GB SATA III Interne Solid State Drive 2.5 Zoll – PBU120GS25SSDR
Patriot Burst SSD 240GB SATA III Interne Solid State Drive 2.5 Zoll – PBU240GS25SSDR

To connect to my SATA SSD drives I am using
CSL – IDE zu SATA SATA zu IDE Adapter Konverter – HDD CD DVD – bidirektional. Maybe other good adapters around,
I had a dud buying from China directly so wanted the warranty on a more local purchase.

I use one of these adapters to connect my Lite On IDE DVD RW drive to a modern system too with excellent results.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by ModdIt. Reason: clarity

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