laptop to media player

[bopdude]

Hi all, quick daft question, I have just 'saved' my in-laws old laptop from the scappy ( good move or not, we will see ) There's no make on the outside but that's not important, it's has a 233mhz intel processor, 32 mb ram, 2 gig hdd and a cd rom ( no dvd ) I want to use this as a portable media player for films ( CD ) now I've tried a couple but playback is jerky, I thought it might be WMP not liking the discs so tried VLC player, still no joy. I was thinking it could just be the age and spec ( lack of ) of the machine, and OS, it had ME on it, now it's got '98.

So what I'm looking for is an OS with a minimium install, resource friendly, just enough to have a media player that works, anything out there ??

TIA

[Paul K]

Windows 3.1? Probably a lightweight linux style distro would be a good idea since any windows install will need a fair bit of resources to run smoothly. Can you not get some more RAM for it at least?

[bopdude]

Originally Posted by Paul

Windows 3.1? Probably a lightweight linux style distro would be a good idea since any windows install will need a fair bit of resources to run smoothly. Can you not get some more RAM for it at least?

Yeah, I was thinking Linux but I've never used it before, Gareth may happen upon this thread, I know he uses it a lot, as for upgrading, I didn't want to spend any money on such an old piece of kit, unless it cheap, I don't think it would justify the cost, given the age of the machine

[Aragorn]

With only 32Mb of RAM vitually any OS/program is going to swap to disc which will make things very slow.
One of the Linux distro's is probably your best bet - try a minimal Ubuntu install (just X and the media player) and see how that performs.
Might just be too old!

[punky]

I would say its the computer spec. Back when they laptop was built, it played videos because compression was simple, easy, and not memory intensive. However, as they get more and more fancy like DivX and XviD, older computers would struggle.

Like Paul, the best option is to try a very streamlined Linux distribution that will switch more resources from OS over to decompressing.

[bopdude]

Thanks for the tips, looking at Bonzai atm, any good, as has been said, might just be too old a lappy

[handyman]

Originally Posted by bopdude

Yeah, I was thinking Linux but I've never used it before, Gareth may happen upon this thread, I know he uses it a lot, as for upgrading, I didn't want to spend any money on such an old piece of kit, unless it cheap, I don't think it would justify the cost, given the age of the machine

If you can extract the ram type etc I have a bit of laptop ram kicking about that might fit.

[Halcyon]

Good luck with it, but running any films on a machine with so little RAM and probably a standard built in graphics card might struggle.

[bopdude]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Good luck with it, but running any films on a machine with so little RAM and probably a standard built in graphics card might struggle.

Well I was thinking along the same lines, then thought, what sort of hardware does a personal dvd player have over an old lappy I know I'm probably flogging a dead horse, just couldn't send it to the knackers yard before I tried

is dma enabled on the rom drive? tired copying the film file to the hdd? could be rom spped to slow to buffer enough frames
Perhaps windows 95 with klite codecs?

[popper]

Originally Posted by bopdude

Hi all, quick daft question, I have just 'saved' my in-laws old laptop from the scappy ( good move or not, we will see ) There's no make on the outside but that's not important, it's has a 233mhz intel processor, 32 mb ram, 2 gig hdd and a cd rom ( no dvd ) I want to use this as a portable media player for films ( CD ) now I've tried a couple but playback is jerky, I thought it might be WMP not liking the discs so tried VLC player, still no joy. I was thinking it could just be the age and spec ( lack of ) of the machine, and OS, it had ME on it, now it's got '98.

So what I'm looking for is an OS with a minimium install, resource friendly, just enough to have a media player that works, anything out there ??

TIA

its not totally impossible but your not going to get much of anything playing thats not low bitrate mpeg2 on the 233, you MIGHT be able to find the info and clock it at 333 and so be in a slightly better position.

the memory is the killer though, you could try slax but i dont think it will work with only 32meg
http://www.slax.org/requirements.php
you can make your custom slax cd from windows if you like
http://myslax.bonsonno.org/

it may work with a puppy linux but iv never tryed that tbo.

the main thing is getting the ram up, but it will also depend a hell of a lot on the built-in GFX chip in there, if its a first gen 3d chip that doesnt even have a directX 3d driver available ,its unlikely to be any better on any linux for playing mpeg2 or small divX/Xvid for instance.

does the lappy even boot a live cd or have that ability in bios, thats one of the first things to check, it might be just fine for wireless messageboarding though so it might not be a total loss.

i find MPC better for dvb-T ts playback (upto about 3mbit/s without stalling) on my 450mhz intel lappy (96meg)than VLC , but vlc is better for some other stuff,jtvlan etc.

[bopdude]

Thanks for all the info, really is starting to sound like too much of a project, I'll have a proper look at the tips when I get a couple of days to myself