0.4.12 on Real real old hardware and VirtualBox 6.0.12

Here you can discuss ReactOS related topics.

Moderator: Moderator Team

Post Reply
walnutspice
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 27, 2020 5:02 pm

0.4.12 on Real real old hardware and VirtualBox 6.0.12

Post by walnutspice »

Just wanted to share my experience messing with the latest non nightly build.
First installed on my ol' Toshiba Satellite 4000CDS. 64MB RAM, 2MB Chips&Tech65555 2MB and a 4GB (But great condition) old drive.
Well, the performance is god awful. Just bad. XP most definitely usable on this machine while ReactOS is currently not. Not going to knock it as, cmon, it's some oold hardware. But I did expect it to be usable. The second it took any load (Load being simply input from the mouse or keystroke) the entire system would just chug. Couldn't get a single driver installed.
It did however, install and run first go super stable with no crashes. So that alone is a win for ReactOS in my book. I did notice this chugging largely calmed down when not using Explorer and navigating via command prompt. Maybe something in there chugging resources?
-Just remembered first install I attempted to use the new file system, Toshiba had no clue how to boot from that. Before this install I ran WinNT 4.0 on an NTFS partition so I know the PC itself can support it.

Now for the VM, This is mostly going to be bugs and issues I've encountered.
First one thats probably out of anyone's control, VBox Guest additions will not install passed "VBoxDrvInst". It'll just hang here. Vbox version 6.0.12r133076 ReactOS 0.4.12 9/20/19 build 3790.
Secondly on my first VBox install, it rebooted after setting up the install and asked for me to insert a ctrl alt del to unlock, it would not accept ctrl alt del at all. Not from my keyboard or taking it from the "Insert" menu. Had to reinstall.
Other than that it's performance under VBox is pretty nice and with what I can do with it without drivers, it seems much more stable then previous versions.
A weird issue I came into testing compatibility with batch scripts, I made some test batch files, one where it used a "set/p xx=" to enter user input taking you to a ":abc" or ":123" (Not sure the lingo here). I typed in the command to take me to ":abc" and it instead took me to my ":inv echo Invalid" spot. Pressed the up arrow to enter the exact same command and that time it took me to the proper ":abc". Sorry if that sounds like a mess, but that's the best way I can explain that hiccup.
I also found command prompt doesn't support adding a file type after dir to filter down to just those files, ex "dir /w .exe" just won't find anything.
Lastly when moving software around off of ISO images into ReactOS, I noticed I had one specific folder that really didn't want to copy or move into another specific folder until I relaunched Explorer.

That's my wrap up, enjoyed using it and seeing where it's at. Hope this can help somewhat
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 21 guests