Why does FAQ say "a 486 with 14MiB RAM"? How about a 386? :D

[Falcon4]

I can't find an ISA video card that actually works right in this thing... ugh. I've got two - one with 1mb VRAM and is capable of 1024x768 @ 256 colors and high performance, but the drivers won't work right (hence 16 colors), or one that has working drivers and hogs every last bit of bandwidth on the already cramped ISA bus. I chose the 1mb 16 color one... bah.

Yeah, I use 1.5 because it's the only version that works properly with my router. I guess Ludde will never have the chance to fix the UPnP code in 1.6 :(

Specs?

40MHz AMD AM386-SX

16mb RAM (the 30-pin variety - I don't know HOW I pulled 16mb out of this thing in 4 strips...)

Some kind of slim ISA HDD/FDD/COM/LPT controller

4gb Maxtor HDD (using Ontrack Disk Manager's DDO for the 504mb barrier - Windows can access all 4gb but DOS can't, hence no boot!)

Some kind of Coax/10baseT ISA network card using an "AT/LANTIC" chip. It really is pretty fast (around 250K/s on a LAN transfer)

Tseng Labs ET4000 chip on a "Groundhog Graphics Shadow" VGA card

Windows 95B

The major hangup in this setup is the hash checking, surprisingly. It seems that this CPU, lacking a math coprocessor, can only hash-check at a rate of around 70KB/s. It took all day to hash check this 1gb torrent and start seeding. I tried torrenting it to the box from my laptop (over LAN) but the speed was incredibly slow - I thought it was the ISA bus being hogged by the LAN and HDD controller, so I used a USB adapter to dump it straight onto the drive. I then had it hash-check and BOY... THAT was slow.

It's got absolutely no use but it can seed at my internet's full speed (50K/s) so it may be a decent seeding box.

Only with µTorrent!!

[Ultima]

Probably because 486 was as low a processor type as µTorrent was tested on when the FAQ entry was written

Any reason you still use 1.5 on a Win95 computer? UPnP doesn't even work at all on anything below WinXP for 1.5 and below (so it'd be in the same situation as if you were using 1.6 anyway), and IIRC, 1.6 fixes a bunch of bugs with Win95, like the ugly toolbar (though there were some other things I'm forgetting).

[Falcon4]

Yeah, it turns out that it (1.6) also gives a nasty crash on a 386 saying "illegal instruction" or something like that. First comes the "uTorrent has crashed!" dialog, so I hit Cancel, then comes the "illegal operation" classic Windows 95 box, and the rest of the GUI finishes loading. The whole thing seems to work until it decides to lock up about 5 minutes later and that "Close" button comes in handy...

It does seem to hash quicker though... I was getting about 160KB/s on it before it died.

UPnP doesn't work in 1.6 with my router anyway, so what'd it matter?

edit:

edit edit:

Actually it looks like it may be the hashing code that threw it the final punch in 1.6. Hashing gets stuck at 0.0% and when I stop a torrent and re-check it, it totally locks up. That would explain the fast download speed (while nothing was written, cache just filled up) and why it randomly crashed.

[Ultima]

I suppose that'd be another reason the 486 requirement stands

[Falcon4]

Well, if it works, I'll also be running a tracker from that box too... can't wait to see how THAT'S gonna work out! Hopefully programs are still compiled with the 386's marginally-limited instruction set in mind

The 16mb RAM is its only limitation... since it's a 386SX, apparently I can't install any more than 16mb RAM if I wanted to, so if it works, it works, and if it doesn't... well... I'm SOL.

I could, though, hit up eBay for a DX or 386+387 board... then I could still technically claim I'm doing all that on a 386! Equally impressive, even if I would be bending the rules... ;-)

Oh, and for what it's worth, here's the setup... I built this box in 2004 and it's been sitting in a closet for the past few years... now I think it actually has a purpose!

edit: Well, BNBT is running very well on it along side uTorrent... but it's damn late and I'm not staying up to customize and "populate" it now, so... I'll do that tomorrow. Meanwhile, that old 386? HAH! IT IS NOT OBSOLETE!

[Lord Alderaan]

Did you try the 1.6 Beta?

[Falcon4]

Yeah, that's the only version I tried.

[Paulk501]

dude, its time for a new torrent computer, you can get a billion times faster machine trashpicking.... i actually found an 800mhz AMD duron machine last night. and that doesent count my 1.3ghz p4 1.2 ghz AMD atholon, 1.150 ghz AMD XP and various other machines

[Falcon4]

I have a 1.4GHz Pentium-M laptop (XP Pro SP2 + nLite), a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 (same as 1.4 OS), a 1GHz Duron with 5-drive RAID (same as previous), 200MHz Pentium-MMX (Win98 w/ 98Lite), and the 40MHz 386.

It's a thing of choice. FWIW my 2.4 and 1.4 both run BOINC processing in the background and the 1.4 runs my larger torrents. The 200 does many large torrents as well. The 386 runs my small torrents.

All systems have file sharing enabled so I'm able to move files between them with great ease =)

edit: Well, file transfer to the 386 at 250K/s, so I keep it reserved for small torrents. The 200-MMX rolls at about 2 MB/s, and the P4 rolls along at a whopping 15MB/s over the 1394/Firewire LAN I have between the faster PCs.

[Ultima]

@Paulk501: lol I actually laughed (not at you, but) at the idea that if Falcon4 weren't doing this out of choice, you'd be so right xD