As the germans say, yein, ie yes-no.
It took a good 14 hours, but was back in the gui screen that gives the option for demo to choose, no response from keyboard or serial mouse. Gave up and rebooted. No joy. Rebooted with the live cd, searched the HDD, and ya files were installed, so that part did work, but since I had not been able to install the MBR or passwords, couldn't boot from HDD. Partial install did work on the P166, 64 Meg EDO ram. Have tried to repeat this, so far nope.

There is still the problem of seriial/PS/2 mousing.

drg, thanks for persisting with this.
I'm hoping to write a cli installer script so less RAM would be needed.

This might help to finish off the install with grub, just use an installed antiX grub menu.lst


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Howto/Custom_Install"
linktext was:"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Howto/Custom_Install"
====================================

anti, thanks for the linuxselfhelp.com and wiki.debian.org urls. The custom_install info looks like another worthy attempt, but boyo I've got to jump on the bike and sit in the park for a while. I'm in Canada, and finally got some warmth, 20C in the sunshine.

Oh, tried livecd install on the P200 MMX with only 64M ram. Same result as the P166.

Please, anybody, if you have further ideas, links to websites with their ideas, even out of date, please post them. The mousing problem is driving me crazy, therefore sitting in the sunshine is needed.

Edit:

I'm now guessing that with the P166, the problem is bios and or hardware on that particular machine. Not defective, but ancient and orphaned. As the scots are supposed to say: aye, weell. If I can find more PI's (now rare, they get tossed out as"useless"), will keep up the experiments.
Looking forward to a cli --command line interface, right? --installer.

Question:

Is it possible to automatically startup the command “xkbset mousekeys” on initial bootup of icewm and/or fluxbox ? I’ve looked into the control panel settings, looked for config files, but it is beyond me how to do it. ‘Ctrl-esc’ will bring the icewm menu up, fluxbox I don’t know, then one can use the terminal or ‘run’, but auto would be nice.


For the record, antix-8.5-486 is working on another, even lesser PentiumI, using same methods as for the P166. Works fine, same deficiencies, same virtues, usable. A better video card than the original is essential so far to go beyond a text tty console. No recognition of serial mouse, although another serial device did (namely an external modem, using minicom to test). All orig. hardware works fine in win95.


From a no-name box, Pentium-S cpu at 133MHz, 64 meg edo ram, 12/10/96; Award Modular Bios, v. 4.51PG, 1984-95:
System: Host drg Kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis i586 (32 bit) Distro antiX-M8.5-486 Marek Edelman 11 April 2010
CPU: Single core Pentium 75 - 200 (UP) cache 0 KB flags (-) bmips 266.64 clocked at 133.268 MHz
Graphics: Card ATI Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] X.Org 1.6.5 Res:
1024x768@70.1hz
GLX Renderer Mesa DRI R100 (RV100 5159) 20090101 x86 NO-TCL GLX Version 1.3 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL Direct Rendering Yes
Audio: Card Failed to Detect Sound Card!
Network: Card Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] driver pcnet32 at port e000 BusID: 00:0b.0
Disks: HDD Total Size: 3.2GB (48.5% used) 1: /dev/hda QUANTUM FIREBALL ST3.2A 3.2GB
Partition: ID:/ size: 2.7G used: 1.5G (58%) fs: ext3 ID:swap-1 size: 0.30GB used: 0.01GB (3%) fs: swap
Info: Processes 61 Uptime 3 min Memory 41.0/58.1MB Runlevel 5 Client Shell inxi 1.4.9.


And another no-name P133, 64 meg edo ram:
After same hardware swapping, I expected the same experience, but no. Well a little, but text only, even with the better video card. NB: this PI's bios does not allow cd booting, so maybe this one is the oldest or feeblest of my collection so far. Using Smart Boot Manager floppy, tried damnsmalllinux livecd and it did boot up. Guess what? DSL also would not recognize a serial mouse.
Personal note on this P133: it was my principal hardworking pc about 10-12 years ago, MS Office Pro 97, WordPerfect Suite Pro 10, and Lotus SmartSuite Pro Millenium all contributing to managing a small business, esp. the databases for invoice tracking. Win 95. Still got all the files archived on this thing. Boy, does it ever seem so slow now.

You can put the command in ~/.xinitrc in line 3 just below the xmodmap one. That serves for any desktop loaded from SLiM.
For only IceWM or Fluxbox you can put the command in ~/.icewm/startup and/or ~/.fluxbox/startup.

This is a response to anticapitalista's request for feedback on M8.5-486 on old hardware. It's a test on a 100 MHz Pentium.

While it looks like running it on such old hardware will not make you very happy (plse read below for more detail), I confirm what many people have said before:

M8.5 is splendid if you give it reasonable hardware (say a P2-350 or beyond, but then use -686).

===========



System:
=======
GA-586ATE/P
Pentium P54 (100 MHz, single 3.3V, TDP=10.1W), 256kB L2 (external)
80 MB EDO, 8 MB FPM
126 MB swap
ST34311A (4GB, ~16MB/s if on an ATA/33 channel, which of course this mobo does not have)
Teac CD-532E (32x)
Opti 82C861 USB1.1 PCI card for swap & mouse
STB Velocity 128 PCI (4MB VGA)
SB Live! value PCI
Award BIOS modified for CD-Rom boot --> M.R. BIOS.

OS: Antix M8.5 Base - 486


Results:
========
1.
--
Without a swap file, the system does not work, to the extent that it out-runs my patience. Also, the serial mouse is not recognised, and these systems do not have a PS2 port. So an USB card was used, initially for both swap & mouse, later-on for wireless & mouse*.

2. Live CD
----------
The system boots the Antix M8.5 live CD without structural flaws, i.e. it all seems to work. However, booting the live CD takes a bit (some 20-25 minutes - by comparison, this system boots DSL from CD in less than 3 minutes). Also, I say 'it all seems to work' but I have not actually tested much from the live CD, because the response times are abysmal when run from CD. For instance, the file manager takes a couple of minutes minutes to appear.

3. Install on HD
----------------
'Install' starts up structurally fine (75 seconds after you press the button you're asked for the root pwd, and about 5 minutes after that, the 'Antix Install' screen appears), and I selected 'auto-install using entire disk' in order to speed things up a bit. I had ran gparted earlier but I switched-off the machine for lack of progress.

The first Install quit at 95%, just before installing grub, after running for some 95 minutes. In this attempt APM was disabled in the BIOS and I had to press the 'shift' key regularly to prevent the system from suspending - maybe I had pressed the 'return' key by mistake, possibly activating the 'abort' option.

Anyway, in the the second Install APM was enabled in the BIOS, and the install went much quicker (without APM BIOS throttles before it suspends), and this one completed successfully in just over an hour. After taking-out the USB key with the swap, upon reboot I do not get the gfxmenu, but just a grub command line. Manually instructing to load the kernel gives the response that it's located on a cylinder not supported by the BIOS - I had fixed the Award BIOS for CD-Rom boot a long time ago, but apparently not for big HDDs. Anyway, flashed a Microid Research BIOS (yes, there is one for this board!) which gives you instantaneous POST and big HD support (but no CD boot), and the system boots fine (though I had to do a manual swapon & edit fstab to get it to use the HD swap partition - it still wanted to use the USB key for swap).

4. Using (from HD)
------------------
Much faster than from CD, but still too slow. Boot (from gfxmenu to login screen) = 118 sec, file window now takes just 8 seconds to appear & everything I tried works. In particular the set-up of wireless (an RT2500 USB dongle) worked flawless the first time, & IceApe (whataname...) nicely crawls the web. Having said that, the Ape takes ages to start-up (not timed, but definitely a few minutes), as does loading a site**. Also, after a bit of surfing the Ape fell over & disappeared from the scene.


Conclusion
==========
I see a clear niche for using old hardware for the following reasons:

a) because you can't spare the money for new stuff (anything up to P4-type HW can nowadays be recovered for free from recycling / scrap yards, at least in the developped world);

b) because you want to conserve energy, and save the planet (as well as your wallet).
Note the TDP I quoted for this CPU at the top. The whole rig, with everything in it (and particularly the low efficiency of the old PSU) comes to a measured 45W, and that's a lot better for long-term low intensity use (surfing, torrenting, office use, playing mp3s) than a modern-day Core-zog-extreme (purple edition), which go easily up to 150 Watts for just the CPU alone. Now I know that modern processors throttle and that for low-intensity use the actual power drawn is significantly below the TDP, but nevertheless, if you measure them they consume more power than suitable*** old hardware.

c) because low TDP hardware can easily be made quiet, and older HW is often low TDP. (There is of course also modern low TDP HW, and old high TDP HW. But often old boxes can be made quiet.)

My conclusion on using Antix-M8.5-486-base on a Pentium-100 is that it all works, but that this hardware is too slow to use this OS meaningfully.


================================================

*: I tried the additions to /etc/X11/xorg.conf mentioned elsewhere, but no luck. Maybe I did something wrong. At any rate, I didn't pursue as this isn't the bottleneck.

**: This slowness is not caused by the USB1.1 interface, that limits the transfer rate to 900kB/s and that's no limitation. I've used that card on other computers in a WL interface and it gives no limitation - my ISP limit is about 750kB/s. It's just because the computer is slow. Mind you, it's L1 cache, and certainly its main RAM, are slower than any modern day good HD...

***: I've found a good 'suitable' alternative in a Celeron-800 (Coppermine, TDP~21W) with an ext2 DOM running Antix-Mepis 686, which torents to/from a USB stick near silently at around 38 to 50 Watt for the entire rig, depending on activity (usually towards the lower end). This is much more modern hardware than what is tested here, with a higher efficiency PSU, and it provides ample power for normal internet-office-music-type tasks. (If you want to encode video or play games, go elsewhere.) Modern ULV or Atom-based hardware will draw even less power (a Z500 has a quoted TDP=0.65W ...), at probably comparable performance - but you have to pay to get one of those.

My last review was about testing the M8.5-486 system on what is probably close to the bottom of the spectrum of machines you would want to run M8.5-486 on, and there I basically concluded that it worked, but was too slow to be used meaningfully. I didn't like that, because I definitely believe there is a niche for this OS. So I thought, let's give it a go & try it on something that is probably closer to the top of the spectrum for this OS. This is a test on a 450 MHz K6-2.

I think that M8.5-486 will allow you to make excellent use of such a computer, and it will make you happy that you did not throw it away.

===========



System:
=======
SY-5EHM v1.2
K6-2 (450 MHz, Chompers 2.2V, TDP=18.8W), 1MB L2 (external)
64 MB EDO, 64 MB SDRAM
no swap when run from CD, 545MB swap when run from HD
ST34311A (4GB, ~16MB/s)
LG DRD8160B DVD-Rom
USB1.1 integrated in mobo (for mouse & WL)
STB Velocity 128 PCI (4MB VGA)
Opti931 ISA --> SB Live! 24bit PCI

OS: Antix M8.5 Base - 486


Results:
========
1.
--
I had put in a bit of RAM that seemed nice without checking much. System POSTed fine, but when I tried to boot Antix I got all sorts of gobbledigook. Very conveniently the live CD has Memtest86, which indicated memory problems galore. These were sorted by reducing the timings a bit.

Also, the original video card (an ATI Mach64, 1MB) gave me hassle, so I replaced it with the same I had used earlier. I might have gotten the ATI to work, but a simple swap was easier.

With 128MB RAM, the system runs fine without a swap file, at least initially. If you load enough apps I'm sure you'll need a swap though, but not for a simple install.

This system has both a PS2 port, a serial (com) port, and USB. I did not test the serial mouse.

2. Live CD
----------
The system boots the Antix M8.5 (486, base) live CD in 145 sec, which is pretty good going for a CD boot. Everything works, but starting-up apps from the CD-RW takes a bit (file mngr = 12 sec, IceApe = 95 sec). If you want more speed, install on HD.

3. Install on HD
----------------
When firing-up 'Install', the root pwd screen appears in 10 seconds, and the next Install screen some 25 sec later. The full install took just 10 minutes. That's quick.

However, surprisingly, the HD swap partition did not get automatically mounted after the install. I again had to update fstab. Also conky was off by default initially after the install.

4. Using (from HD)
------------------
This works fine.

Boot (from gfxmenu to login screen) = 40 sec, file window now takes 3 seconds to appear, IceApe = 18 sec & most I tried works.

In first the set-up of wireless (an RT2500 USB dongle) I may have made a typo in the WEP pwd, at any rate it did not work the first time, and when I tried to update the settings I could never find my network back. I could not even do a normal reboot, root had to force a reboot. But the second time it worked flawless, and of course the settings are kept.

Surfing is a bit slower than on more modern hardware, but still quite workable. No crashes or other problems.

I tried to play music, but no luck. Support for multimedia in the base system is minimal (if any?), anyway, I installed the alsa player. However, the OS installation had not made any configuration files for my Opti card; possibly the card is not supported*.

So I put in a SB Live! 24 bit, and after a reboot both playing from CD or MP3 files works fine.

Conclusion
==========
Antix-M8.5-486-base turns a K6-2 450 into a versatile low-end computer.


================================================

* It isn't supported on W2k or WXP either. Pity, as it's a card with an integrated amplifier (like the original SB cards).

Wow! Thanks for that detailed feedback, much appreciated.

The next version of antiX will have a cli-installer so in theory it will install with as little as 48MB RAM. But, as you clearly show, running antiX on a very old box is tedious if you use X. Still installing the soon to be uploaded antiX-core (no X) and installing non-X apps might make an old box useful and usable.

Edit: I posted before your second post.

Thanks for that extra feedback as well.

One system I use Antix with is a PII 192 ram. It run's ok, not blazing fast but useable. Flash video in the browser just sucks, (4 fps), but playing from a file or dvd is fair.

It will not recognize a ps2 mouse unless I use the option with the kernel of acpi=off. I have no power managment, but my mouse works.

Maybe that would work with serial mice, but it does work on this old box with the ps2 mouse. I think I might have read someplace it is an award bios problem, so this might not help with other bios's.

Someone posted they got icewm working but no desktop.

Antix has no desktop by default. Tehre are three ways to add one with the stuff already in Antix:

1. Enable the rox pinboard.
2. Use Idesk
3. Use the pcmanfm desktop.

z80, a beautiful presentation.

Confirming that my experience (for this attempt) is as yours using PI’s with such limited RAM , and I agree with your opinion.


Had to try some more.

Antix-m8.5-486 recognizes, installs and works well on far more:

3 PI, 2 K6, 2 PII, 3 PIII, 3 P4 and an AMD Athlon (rumpty-dum-tee-dum .... in a pear tree).

This has worked even after swapping over the HD with antix-m8.5-486 installed by the P200MMX, from box to box. Be glad to post the inxi -F results on these gadgets, just ask.

Tried a web search with “cli apps” or “cli applications”, and found two sites with good info. There are dozens of such apps out there. Quote: “My effort to show that anything on the Desktop can be done in a console.”
Looks that can indeed be so. The ram"footprint" is very low. So I'm trying some out using antix-core-486-a1, but that's another project. I certainly see good use within antix-m8-486 for really old hardware as well as newer. So far, antix-m8-486 works well on P4 machines, can't tell the difference from 686 version.

I've switched to antiX-M85-486-update, and find, using the P200 MX, 64 M ram :

-The livecd does boot and works as livecd with only 64M, but 128 M is still better

-Installs with 64 M ram with the new cli-installer; have not tried less ram for the install.

-I tried to set up a dual-boot system using this update version and antiX-core-b1. The cli-installer has some sort of glitches re recognizing extra partitions or extra hard-drives. For example, on this gadget, only the master HD on the first IDE cable is recognized by the installer. However, by first installing core-b1 as that master-on-first-cable, then switching it to the second IDE cable, then installing 486-update, got an almost workable setup using mount /dev/... commands, but still haven't got it right, even after fiddling with eg grub/boot/menu.lst and /etc/fstab entries. Mind, this gadgets' BIOS allows HD bootup options.
Other posts in the forum point out that is being worked on. Sorry, can't offer any expertise here.

- I like"xman", which gives a friendly gui method to browse and read the man pages, for those who are reluctant to read the manual (rtfm). And a lot of help, suggestions and links to more are available.

**********************************

I've been playing with cli apps using antiX-core-b1, and so far have a ram"footprint" as little as 10.0/58.1MB (inxi -F) using the default services.

Using"sysv-rc-conf" as root in the console (or terminal) allows control over the services/daemons at bootup, as well as htop to kill them. This sysv-rc-conf is the name of the program available in the control center. Just mentioning this stuff for newbies (that's me!) Knowing this now, I've got antiX-M85-486-update working flexibly as either cli or gui, with control over RAM usage.
Thank you anti for pointing this out.

Booting into 486-update and choosing the"init 3" option, after a bit of services tweaking on runlevel 3, at start I've got 12/58.1MB for cli apps only. Choosing the regular x session gives as little as
26/58.1MB.
Of course, the more you want to do, the more ram usage for either option. Pretty good with only 64M ram to play with, a 3 Gig HD and a P1.

Why do so? Choices. Eg, fancy fonts and formatting in spreadsheet or word processor, no problem here. Eg, the speed of cli apps, and there are dozens available to try out.

As to wireless networking, downloading, and web related stuff, sorry. I'm unable to test that out. A wifi card was recognized, but it couldn't find a signal; that's because of its physical location, and it's not portable.

Considering that, if one is lucky to have eg two matched pairs of 32M edo ram for a Pentium 1, I'm testing what could be done with 128M. My high-end P200MMX can take pc133 sticks, so even 256M. So far, I think 128M will do quite well.

So, in case you are an OOo fan:
-OpenOffice 32 from openoffice.org
-the mysql-connector extension from openoffice.org (not debian, which did not work for me)
-openjdk-6-jre, 19 files needed, from debian
-mysql5.1 from debian.
You do not need eg jdbc, odbc, etc to do this. Use “mysql”, then this"native" mysql connector. Also, if"localhost" doesn't work, try"127.0.0.1", and test.

IMO, OOo's own database is workable, but better used as a graphical front-end to mysql. Using base and mysql together, plus say calc and writer, the ram usage can easily get to about 100M. Waiting for the gui apps to come up fully onscreen can seem tedious at first, but one gets used to that. Hey, it's a 200 MHz cpu on a motherboard more than a dozen years old. It does work.

***************************
There may be a bug here somewhere, but not sure who dunnit.

Beware of installing/using OOo32's"desktop-integration" option in this setup on antx-486 Full. The"openoffice.org3.2-debian-menus_3.2-9472_all.deb" is supposed to set up the menu, with icons, after the OOo32 installation, but what I got was a wiped out Applications section in the menu. Gone. I tried the menu editor for icewm, both auto and manual. Nope. Fluxbox affected too. Had to reinstall, now I've made backups of those hidden .icewm menu and application text files.

Good work-around is edit those menu/application files manually, or with the manual icewm menu editor. Desktop ->IceWM ->Edit Menu (Manual).
The OOo32 executable script files are in /opt/...
Calling the menu entry"ooo32-soffice" I just use “/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice” to get to the rest. Or”/opt/…./sbase”, for base. These commands can be used from “run”, which will remember them.

*************************
Curious about Update Menu (Auto) and Edit Menu (Manual). What are the names of the programs, help or man files? They both have made entries in red, which do not show up on the menu, so I'm doing something wrong here. Ta.

**************************
Edit on Oct 25/10
re updating menus in antiX-M8.5-486/686-update

Thought it good to repeat this here in case anyone missed it, and as a correction.
quoting from “Re: No List in Main Menu 8.5“, Sep 26, 2010

“Some apps don't appear in the menu because they don't have a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications. To make a .desktop app, use the System -> Tools -> Add.desktop Files app.” (From antix)

Then do: “in icewm:go to menu>Desktop>IceWM>Update Menu (Auto) also I like to run as root in terminal updatedb to sync everything, especially after adding packages, etc” (From OHH)

My method works, this is better. It was there all the time, was ignorant then. Thanks y’all.

***********************************************
Oh, yeah, ignore/do not use the openoffice.org3.2-debian-menus_3.2-9502_all.deb (ie from OOo, not from debian). Or just get it all from debian, ignore my method. Just testing anyway.
If you are using Gnome or KDE only this .deb works fine, but I feel you do not need it, as both Gnome and KDE menus can be edited manually, as easily as within antiX.

Edit menu (manual) is icemc
Update menu (auto) is a custom app that I think lies in ~./icewm (and ~./fluxbox). I saw anti posting some fix for it in the chat box (hidden now) like if it was broken in some way so he may answer this (I'm not using antiX now).

In the spirit of testing, here is some tedious data. Nobody asked me for this, so if I’m overstepping some forum rule or etiquette, please tell me.

Re dual-booting on this P200MMX: got it working.

To refresh:
The 2nd HD was at first plugged in as primary master and from there antiX-core-b1 was installed. Then transferred this HD to the secondary IDE cable as secondary slave.

Then the 1st HD was plugged in as primary master, and from there antiX-85-486-update was installed. The trick was to mount /dev/sda1 (flash drive) and /dev/hdd1 (2nd HD) from the antiX-85-486-update (full) livecd, then install.

Since the 2nd HD is no longer /dev/hda1 but changed to /dev/hdd1, I tweaked its grub menu and fstab to show that and to allow its own swap being used.

************************************************************
Grub menu on 1st HD, leaving out some entries, the second option boots 2nd HD:

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title antiX at hda1, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=/dev/hda1 nomce quiet nosplash vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis
boot

title antiX 8.5
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=/dev/hdd1 vga=normal quiet nosplash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis Default
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=UUID=fd613a31-03d9-4cb8-a561-3039f88e293e ro nosplash quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img

title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis Default (init-3)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=UUID=fd613a31-03d9-4cb8-a561-3039f88e293e ro nosplash
quiet 3
initrd /boot/initrd.img

title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=UUID=fd613a31-03d9-4cb8-a561-3039f88e293e ro nosplash quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis

title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis (init-3)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=UUID=fd613a31-03d9-4cb8-a561-3039f88e293e ro nosplash quiet 3
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis

title antiX-M8.5, kernel memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fstab entries on 1st HD:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
# Dynamic entries below
/dev/hdd1 /mnt/hdd1 ext3 noauto,users,exec,relatime 0 0
/dev/hdd2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat noauto,users,gid=users,dmask=002,fmask=113,relatime 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

************************************************
************************************************

Grub menu on 2nd HD, note the small change I made (what’s with msdos1?):

title antiX 8.5
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=/dev/hdd1 vga=normal quiet nosplash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis
###following line is the original one###
###kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=/dev/hda1 vga=normal quiet nosplash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis###
boot
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis
root (hd0,msdos1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=UUID=c8f4e935-a5ec-4b82-af02-703e61fc7168 ro nosplash quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis

title antiX-M8.5, kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis (init-3)
root (hd0,msdos1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-1-mepis root=UUID=c8f4e935-a5ec-4b82-af02-703e61fc7168 ro nosplash quiet 3
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-1-mepis

title antiX-M8.5, kernel memtest86+
root (hd0,msdos1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

fstab on 2nd HD, note small change:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
/dev/hdd2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
###below line is the original one###
###dev/hda2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0###
# Dynamic entries below
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat noauto,users,gid=users,dmask=002,fmask=113,relatime 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

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inxi -F from 1st HD, with all default services plus mysqld enabled, roxterm, abiword running:

System: Host antiXp200 Kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis i586 (32 bit) Distro antiX-M8.5-486-update 26 July 2010
CPU: Single core Pentium MMX (-UP-) cache 0 KB flags (-) bmips 401.61 clocked at 200.454 MHz
Graphics: Card S3 86c325 [ViRGE] tty res: 98x32 Gfx Data: N/A for root user
Audio: Card Failed to Detect Sound Card!
Network: Card VIA VT86C100A [Rhine] driver via-rhine at port 6400 BusID: 00:09.0
Disks: HDD Total Size: 13.0GB (29.9% used) 1: /dev/hda FUJITSU MPB3032ATU E 3.2GB
2: /dev/hdd WDC AC11200L 1.3GB 3: USB /dev/sda Flash_Disk 8.4GB
Partition: ID:/ size: 2.7G used: 2.3G (90%) fs: ext3 ID:swap-1 size: 0.30GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
ID:swap-2 size: 0.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
Info: Processes 89 Uptime 1:03 Memory 78.7/248.5MB Runlevel 5 Client Shell inxi 1.4.12

With roxterm running ,without abiword gives:
Info: Processes 87 Uptime 1:10 Memory 70.1/248.5MB Runlevel 5 Client Shell
At start up, all default processes plus mysqld gives about: Memory 60
and without mysqld about Memory 50. This with 256 M ram.

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Edit:
To enable mounting of 1st HD (sda1) from 2nd HD (hdd1)
1. /etc/fstab line on hdd1 changed from “/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1“ to “/dev/hdd1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1“
2. also added fstab line under Dynamic Entries at bottom “/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ext3 noauto,users,exec,relatime 0 0“
3. made sure that hdd1/mnt/ includes folders “hda1“ and “sda1“, if not, add them.

I'm not an expert, just tryouts. It works tho'.