Topic: What sort of microSD card should I buy to run a SMF Forum?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I guarantee you the configuration on a microSD card version of MySQL really should be quite different to what is done on a hosting grade server, if done properly. The characteristics make it such that you should configure it differently to avoid wearing the SD card out sooner than it should be (and configured differently for performance and reliability)

Good point, and I wasn't thinking "setup" in way of configuration, and only thought of the actual software components.
The resources on a Pi are limited, and the hardware isn't really designed to run at full 24/7, so of course there will be differences.

[Arantor]

Oh, the actual components you can put in and even be close with versions, but configuration is a separate ball of wax entirely

[GigaWatt]

Though not as small and as cheap as the RPi 3 B+, the design is better. More I/O ports, SATA as well (something that the RPi, at least to my knowledge, never had). Good choice . If nothing else, the power connector is not Micro USB based, like the RPi . 3A over Micro USB ... really ... who came up with that design .

What are the load times ?

I'm not into (tbh not even remotely interested in) the hardware, all hardware belongs to my brother. He has interest in those stuff , but since one was laying around we decided to power up and make it work, so far its not frequently used but still its nice to have one around

Themes are RDD & Lunarfall. I don't have any other theme work at this point. If I create another one, it 'll be listed there as well

Cool . Update us if you do any tests, do some changes, etc. .

@Arantor & Lex: Trust me, it's good enough for a small forum ... like mine .

And yes, you can run it 24/7 with adequate heatsinks and coolers. It's been done before .

[SpacePhoenix]

What's the graphics handling like on a Raspberry Pi? If Windows 98 was installed on one, would the Raspberry Pi be able to handle the graphics of any Windows 98 era games?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I highly doubt you'll get any Windows 9x to run on a Pi, without an emulator like qemu, and that will hurt performance.

[GigaWatt]

@SpacePhoenix: Unfortunately, Win98 wasn't compiled for ARM, but as Lex said, you could try to use an emulator, but it will reduce the performance of the RPi.

WINE is also an alternative . You could try that, should have better performance than an emulator .

[Arantor]

WINE suffers from the same problem, you can’t run x86 on ARM without an emulation layer and Wine Is Not Emulation. It just maps syscalls so if you’re on x86 you can get by but not on ARM without some other help.

And I’m well aware you can run stuff like this on a Pi, we have a meeting room at work that runs Google Hangouts on a Pi, and that’s more demanding than a quiet forum on CPU resources.

[SpacePhoenix]

In the early to mid 90s in the UK there was a computer brand, sometimes known as Acorn, sometimes known as Archimedes that used the ARM architecture. It also used an OS called RISC OS, which was stored on a ROM. The Raspberry PIs might be able to handle games from them, using an emulator.

For running Win98 era games looks like i'll have to look into a virtual machine to run on Win 8.1. I assume that i'll need my old Win98 disc which i've got somewhere

[Arantor]

Yeah, I know Acorn, ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine and their machine brand name was the Archimedes as the successor to the BBC Model A and B. Essentially the guts of the architecture at the conceptual level still live on in modern ARM processors, but you'd absolutely need to use an emulator for Acorn stuff, even if it has shared DNA it's enough levels away that you have to emulate it. There's a great emulator for Windows whose name eludes me right now though.

Win98 is a pain to emulate though - it's old enough that it doesn't play that nicely on VMware or VirtualBox, and too heavy to run via say DOSBox nicely.

[live627]

For running Win98 era games looks like i'll have to look into a virtual machine

Could you use dedicated hardware? Something running with Athlon Thunderbird would be good. I have a Duron 750MHz.

[Arantor]

Sure you could if you wanted to! Only thing I'd say about running 98 era games, you don't want a *massively* powerful machine because Windows 98 doesn't like it if it has too much memory and stuff like that. But I think you're probably OK.

[GigaWatt]

WINE suffers from the same problem, you can’t run x86 on ARM without an emulation layer and Wine Is Not Emulation. It just maps syscalls so if you’re on x86 you can get by but not on ARM without some other help.

Ah, yes, I forgot about that .

And I’m well aware you can run stuff like this on a Pi, we have a meeting room at work that runs Google Hangouts on a Pi, and that’s more demanding than a quiet forum on CPU resources.

Hmmm... interesting. Could you get any CPU/RAM/HDD stats on this ? No obligations, of course .

For running Win98 era games looks like i'll have to look into a virtual machine to run on Win 8.1. I assume that i'll need my old Win98 disc which i've got somewhere

The install is free for download, as far as I know . Though, if I remember correctly, it was taken down from Microsoft's site (XP too ). There are alternative sites which offer Win98 SE as an ISO download .