Hi, I didn't see an answer to your question, so I'll throw in my thoughts. I'll assume here that on the low memory machines that you don't care about running Gnome. If you want Gnome, I would say 512 MB is the absolute minimum but I don't have anything to confirm this. If you just want to run a basic console without any memory intensive programs, I would say 256 MB is probably good enough. I think the Wheezy installer now requires 256 MB at a minimum if I remember the release notes correctly. For audio recording, more memory is almost always better to avoid the machine locking up and audio dropping out, stuttering in the recordings, etc. Then again, with a console system only not running X, it might not matter as much. If you're just connecting to other systems with ssh, 128 MB might be enough, but I would still suggest 256 MB to be safe. I ran an old version of GRML on 256 MB and it ran fine, albeit a little slowly. X locked up when I tried to start it, but I suspect that was the software, not the machine. I now have 4 GB and Gnome seems to work fine. I guess I would say 256 MB is a good starting point and more wouldn't hurt if you can get it. You didn't say what sound card is giving you trouble, but Wheezy might not fix it. I've noticed that for some old cards, the drivers haven't changed in many years. The Sound Blaster driver for my SB Audigy hasn't changed in at least three Debian releases as far as I can tell. Besides, the issue would have more to do with ALSA and the kernel and not so much with the Debian release. You might be right that a new release might help, but I wouldn't assume it. Also, remember that kernel 3.X doesn't seem to support hardware speech with Speakup, so you'll need more memory for ESpeak. I would suggest trying to upgrade to a new kernel (maybe just try updating to Wheezy directly) and seeing if that fixes your sound card before doing anything else, assuming you can connect with ssh. Also, if you can boot a live CD, you could just try the Wheezy CD and see if it works. Note that the Wheezy live CD doesn't come with ESpeak, so you would have to either connect with ssh, use a serial console or install it without speech. Of course you could try any number of other live CDs as well. I'm not sure how helpful any of this is, but based on my experience, I would say 256 MB is good and I might try to find a different sound card. You can still get SB Audigy and the like for almost nothing nowadays. There are probably surplus computer stores which would have old memory. On 2014-07-24 04:04 AM, Martin G. McCormick wrote: > What is the bare minimum of RAM that will boot Wheezy > with speakup? I have a pair of Dell Optiplexes whose mother > boards contain 3 slots each and can address up to 768 megs but > presently hold 128-megabyte SIMS. > They are currently talking just fine but the OS in > present use is Vinux2.0 from 2009. > I did build a system at work from Wheezy that holds 514 > megs and does run present Debian wheezy with speakup and no > gnome. It really works quite well so I would like to get these > two optiplexes to be able to upgrade to today's world. > > I did copy the system at work to a boot drive and tried > to boot one of the Dells but it just sits there and I suspect > that there isn't enough memory to handle the boot process. > Are there still places around where one might buy > 256-meg sims? Since both systems presently work properly, the > memory issue is probably the only thing holding things back. > I use one of these old boxes as a talking terminal to > reach other unix systems and the other contains two sound cards > that record audio from radio receivers. I am thinking that these > sound cards and the operating system would play more nicely > together under wheezy. I discovered that I can not adjust record > volume on one of the cards no matter what I tell amixer. A more > modern OS probably contains a better driver for that card plus > udev most likely works better. > After you finish laughing, I do have two newer systems > that do have 1 G of RAM, each, but they do more general work. > One runs gnome fairly well and the other is used for PIC > microcontroller development projects and general audio > tinkering. > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > -- Have a good day, Tony Baechler tony@xxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
