Re: BDI hardware requirements?-- was What's a BDI -- was Re: Gekkos

Hi John.

I think that I'm answering your questions in reverse order but here goes.

I've got TNG running here on several machines. The 266 laptop takes a while.
Once it is up and running, the EMC is okay. I use it to demo the EMC but not
much else. TNG is tollerable on the k62-400 but I really like it on the
Cyrix/Via 800. I use 128 Meg RAM and it never swaps out no matter how many
screens and apps I start at the same time. I'd use at least a 4 Gig hard
drive if you can find one that small these days.

A throw out machine would be ideal for a first shot at it. The KDE and Gnome
desktops that ship with 2.16 are really very capable windowing environments.
The 2.16 will load a full developer install and the networking stuff on about
1.2 Gig and a 64 meg Ram will satisfy most needs. You will know in a few
minutes if the motherboard, video card/chip and audio are going to be
recognized. And if you have problems, most of the time I'm just a phone call
away.

As for winmodems -- I'd rather use my outboard anyday. At least I can watch
real lights indicating real things! And I just posted the worlds shortest
external modem setup howto right here on CAD_CAM....

HTH

Ray

On Wednesday 03 July 2002 18:16, you wrote:
> Message: 15
>    Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 16:36:35 -0000
>    From: "jmkasunich" <jmkasunich@...>
> Subject: BDI hardware requirements?-- was What's a BDI -- was Re: Gekkos
>
> --- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., Ray Henry <rehenry@u...> wrote:
> > 
> > BDI is based on the open source Linux operating system but
> > it is more than Linux.  It includes ...<snip>...
> > 
> > The BDI-2 series uses packages mostly from the Red Hat 6 Linux
> > distribution.  
> > 
> > BDI TNG runs with the Red Hat 7 series of Linux
> > releases ...<snip>... This package requires quite a bit
> > more computer than the more stable version.
>
> How much more computer?  Roughly what is needed in terms of CPU
> type and speed, RAM, and disk, for BDI and BDI-TNG?  I understand
> that max step rate, etc., depends on the computer, and more is
> better, but what is the minumum?  Are there any other hardware
> gotcha's for a first time Linux person?  I remember reading
> somewhere that many of the new "winmodem" modems won't work under
> Linux, since they use the host CPU to do much of the signal
> processing.  Are there video cards, CDROM drives, etc., that also
> don't play nice with Linux?  I'm at the tentative "stick my toe
> in the water" stage with Linux, and I'd like to set up a machine
> for experimenting without risking our main home PC, which will have
> to remain a windoze machine.  I'm thinking of salvaging a scrap
> machine from work - it's amazing what they throw out here.
>
> John Kasunich