Introductory Post and the Old Computer Challenge
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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.

=>
https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-06-04-old-computer-challenge-v3.html
Solene's Old Computer Challenge 2023 Announcement (web link)
=> gopher://occ.deadnet.se/1/ 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.

=> https://github.com/blmayer/astro Original Astro repository (web
link).
=> https://rcr.io/rirc The rirc homepage (web link).

Otherwise, I guess this is all for now.