Belkin USB 2.0 5-Port PCI Card.
I am using one of the add on Belkin USB cards on a Gateway 2000 computer, the G6 266 m.
This computer has two USB ports on the motherboard, but they will not reliably run my SanDisk Cruzer USB drive, mentioned in previous posts. This computer is a Pentium II, and I have installed 192 MB of RAM, (simms). The processor has a 512 KB cache, and measures 530.84 bogomips, (overall speed), fairly good for a computer this old.
So, I installed the Belkin USB card, plugged in my optical mouse, and the 2 GB SanDisk drive, that has Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux installed on it. (See previous posts on this subject).
Runs just fine now, not running from the hard drive at all, except to boot up the SanDisk drive. Beside saving some power, assuming that the USB card and SanDisk drive do not require as many watts as the Hard Drive does. The hard drive is still connected to the motherboard, it is no longer running as it does when I boot Rapidweather Remaster from the hard drive. I can access any of the partitions on the hard drive, if I want to, usually easily done with the file manager, emelFM. So, if I wanted to move some files back and forth between the SanDisk drive, and the computer's hard drive, I can do that.
According to the KDE info center, the USB ports are able to transfer data at 12 Mbps, so that's what I get when the system runs from the SanDisk drive. It seems to be fast enough for me, but perhaps it is a little slower than when the Remaster runs from the computer's hard drive, an old 4.3 GB Quantum Fireball.
So we wind up with a balance between trying to get some speed out of an older computer like this Pentium II Gateway 2000, and having everything work, and having the security of running from a removable USB drive. It's pretty cool to be able to take all of your personal files with you, and leave nothing behind in the computer. I can run an ATI Radeon 32 MB graphics card on this computer, but decided instead to use an older S3 Virge card (uses less power), since I can't tell the difference with the Gateway EV900 monitor, running 1024x768 at 16 bpp. Both cards can do 24 bpp, but I have to manually edit the configuration file and restart the X server to do that, still cannot tell the difference on this monitor. So I leave it at 16 bpp, that's what the system will always use on both graphics cards.
In other news, I am testing the Flock 9.0 beta web browser, it is installed on this very same SanDisk USB drive. Flock 9.0 is OK, but I'll wait until they finish their testing phase, before I see if I need to replace Flock 7 now in the Remaster, with the new browser. Eventually, I'll have to, but for the time being, I find Flock 7 unbeatable, and I would hate to let it go.
The RSS feed setup that I have for Flock 7 looks and performs much better than what I am able to get Flock 9 beta to do, considering that the browser needs to run in a livecd setup.
Stay Tuned!
This computer has two USB ports on the motherboard, but they will not reliably run my SanDisk Cruzer USB drive, mentioned in previous posts. This computer is a Pentium II, and I have installed 192 MB of RAM, (simms). The processor has a 512 KB cache, and measures 530.84 bogomips, (overall speed), fairly good for a computer this old.
So, I installed the Belkin USB card, plugged in my optical mouse, and the 2 GB SanDisk drive, that has Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux installed on it. (See previous posts on this subject).
Runs just fine now, not running from the hard drive at all, except to boot up the SanDisk drive. Beside saving some power, assuming that the USB card and SanDisk drive do not require as many watts as the Hard Drive does. The hard drive is still connected to the motherboard, it is no longer running as it does when I boot Rapidweather Remaster from the hard drive. I can access any of the partitions on the hard drive, if I want to, usually easily done with the file manager, emelFM. So, if I wanted to move some files back and forth between the SanDisk drive, and the computer's hard drive, I can do that.
According to the KDE info center, the USB ports are able to transfer data at 12 Mbps, so that's what I get when the system runs from the SanDisk drive. It seems to be fast enough for me, but perhaps it is a little slower than when the Remaster runs from the computer's hard drive, an old 4.3 GB Quantum Fireball.
So we wind up with a balance between trying to get some speed out of an older computer like this Pentium II Gateway 2000, and having everything work, and having the security of running from a removable USB drive. It's pretty cool to be able to take all of your personal files with you, and leave nothing behind in the computer. I can run an ATI Radeon 32 MB graphics card on this computer, but decided instead to use an older S3 Virge card (uses less power), since I can't tell the difference with the Gateway EV900 monitor, running 1024x768 at 16 bpp. Both cards can do 24 bpp, but I have to manually edit the configuration file and restart the X server to do that, still cannot tell the difference on this monitor. So I leave it at 16 bpp, that's what the system will always use on both graphics cards.
In other news, I am testing the Flock 9.0 beta web browser, it is installed on this very same SanDisk USB drive. Flock 9.0 is OK, but I'll wait until they finish their testing phase, before I see if I need to replace Flock 7 now in the Remaster, with the new browser. Eventually, I'll have to, but for the time being, I find Flock 7 unbeatable, and I would hate to let it go.
The RSS feed setup that I have for Flock 7 looks and performs much better than what I am able to get Flock 9 beta to do, considering that the browser needs to run in a livecd setup.
Stay Tuned!
posted by Rapidweather | 5:15 PM
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