After multiple attempts to install Fedora Core 3 on the thinclient, including upgrading from a 1gb card(Transcend) to a 2gb card (riData), frying a cdrom trying to use the onboard molex, and an install bug that would send me in a loop if I was just a bit over the space limit, I finally got it installed(Yay!).
Then I found that there really is no margin to the processor requirements for skype and SkypeMate. Even though fc3 on the 266mhz Pentium Netvista with 256mb of ram is actually quite usable, Skypemate seems to take most of the cycles. Skype alone seems to do ok when up and running. I imagine that the overhead to use the B2k adapter as an audio device is just too much. It is also possible that if WikiPedia is correct about Skype doing constant writes to the hard drive, which in my case is a CompactFlash card, that could be slowing it down as well. I managed to call my cell phone and roughly get connected, but the sound was more than choppy. Either way, the results kept me quite bummed.
I still like the idea, and if nothing else, it satisfies my curiosity temporarily. I had never used Fedora or RedHat before, and it's a simple, if not too simple, setup (minus recurring bugs). I would like next to see if it is possible to bump up the systems processor, using an AMD K6. I just happened to find someone who has already done this and recorded it. Back to eBay!
No comments:
Post a Comment