Introductory Post and the Old Computer Challenge

I guess this is the introductory post: the first post on a new blog/gemlog/phlog. Feels daunting...

I plan to use this blog over the next while to at least initially talk about Solene's Old Computer Challenge, which I intend to attempt to participate in this year.

Solene's Old Computer Challenge 2023 Announcement (web link)

Information on the Old Computer Challenge (Gopher link)

The computer I intend to use has a fairly low specification; far lower than the specifications given in the announcement.

The computer

The computer in question is a 2001ish Dell Inspiron 8000 with the following:

128MB of RAM (100MHz speed)

Pentium III processor (Don't know the speed: I don't have it booted right now to check -- Update: about 998MHz)

20(?)GB hard disk drive

High Density floppy disk drive

CD/DVD ROM drive (though I suspect DVDs won't work with the installed OS)

802.11B Wireless card via PCMCIA (the only networking I could get working)

It originally came with Windows ME, but I replaced that with Linux (I have the disks to put Windows ME back if I need to). Therefore, software-wise, it's running TinyCore 6.4 (specifically the CorePlus variant to get the WiFi working). Why such an old version of TinyCore? I initially got the laptop and set it up in 2017 and while I looked at upgrading it to TinyCore 10 at one stage, it turns out that later versions require more memory than the machine has (even with 6.4 I'm pushing at the boundaries). I have, however, attempted to upgrade the software I'm using on it to newer builds (by compiling the new builds on a virtual machine within a faster computer - I tried initially on the laptop itself and I ended up cancelling an otherwise 3-hour build 8 hours in), so, for instance, it's using OpenSSL 1.1.1t now instead of the circa 1.0.0 version that's the latest the TinyCore 6.x repository provides.

Preparations

I've been spending the past few weeks (and will continue to spend the next few) making preparations for the challenge by porting across the software I will need. Basically all software is installed "on demand" as I need to maximise the amount of memory and storage I have available at any one time. This does mean that any time I need to unload an extension to save memory I have to reboot, sadly, but at least it's a fairly fast reboot cycle. I have had to reject a lot of software for its footprint size, so at the moment, I plan to be using the following:

links2 for web browsing

Lynx for gopher

A modified version of Astro for Gemini (there are some bugs in the original as well as adjustments needing to be made for getting it to work on ash instead of bash)

Mutt (if I can get it running in the space) for email

Some custom ash scripts with cURL and jq for Mastodon

git for some development

nano (yeah, I know) for most writing

OpenSSH for uploads etc.

rirc for IRC (everything else was too big)

Tor with links2 and TorSocks if I need it (though it is very slow on that system).

A customised version of smolpub.sh for publishing this.

Mutt will certainly present some challenges given my main home email inbox contains 3.75GB of messages and Mutt has to cache the headers somewhere (and I've found out I can't even limit that cache in the configuration files)! Tor works already (though barely) and the others have at least been tested in the virtual machine if not all on the laptop itself. I guess I'll update this page as I go. I should also probably publish my changes to Astro. Eventually I'll put my ash scripts for Mastodon up somewhere as well. The rirc IRC client is lesser-known so I'll put a link to it below.

Original Astro repository (web link).

The rirc homepage (web link).

Otherwise, I guess this is all for now.