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Bubba2 server
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Aug '10

08 Aug '10

Has anyone any experience with one of these? We have just bought one out of some grant funding at a small charity, and so far have done no more than unpack it. It is about the size of a thick mass market paperback, very solidly made. Its running Debian, Etch apparently, and the main reason we bought it rather than build our own, one is very very low power consumption, and two, it comes totally set up with web server, NAS, picture gallery app and so on. The suppliers intend for you to use it as a firewall/router in addition, but we will be using it strictly as a server. Power consumption is minimal, its meant to be a plug in and forget package. Came with a 500G hard drive. We could have got a bigger disk, but it seemed like it would probably be smarter to have an external usb for the extra storage and greater redundancy. Ours is the non-wireless version, you can get them with wireless also. Price 240 Euro. Peter

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Linux Mint Help Please
by Simon Royal 07 Aug '10

07 Aug '10

Hi Can someone offer some help on my problems using Linux Mint LXDE? I installed it on my ThinkPad 240x via another machine. Initially I had some X problems, but I have resolved them. However, I am still getting some odd screen problems where it is drawing multiple icons and buttons - like the maximise/minimise buttons - all over the screen. You can 'wipe' them off by moving a window, but they randomly pop up. I found one other person who had this problem, however he was using Xubuntu. I too had the same problems under Xubuntu 9.10, but not under Ubuntu 10.04. He resolved them by 'enabling display compositing' under xfce 4 settings manager, but Mint Linux uses LXDE and I cannot find anything in the menus for this. He also mentioned that when running off battery the whole machine was slower - very noticeably slower - than when it is running off power adapter. Everyone else on the forum said this wasn't possible, but I have been experiencing this too. I would really like to get over this graphics problem without switching distros as I like Mint. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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a deeply puzzling overheating
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Aug '10

07 Aug '10

Any ideas on this? Its a socket 754 machine, something like a 2Ghz Athlon, 1G memory. Debian Squeeze. It has always worked just fine, and in almost all ways except this still does. What has just now started happening however is that the owner has started to read the papers online. Sometimes, it doesn't seem to matter which paper or which browser, there will be a page with 'the wrong kind' of graphics. Its not clear exactly what the wrong kind is, some are fine, others seem not to be. Gradually, the fan will start to speed up. If you now start up gkrell, you can see that cpu temperature starts to rise quite rapidly to the high 50s, and the fan gets very loud indeed. I don't know how far it would go, because one of us closes the browser fairly soon when this happens, and eventually the temperature falls to below 50. It does not do it when displaying pictures. For instance, one can load in a file of a few hundred, and it will display the thumbnails fine, and then one can page through them repeatedly, they come up an display quite fast, and there's no problem. It does do it when rendering some pdfs. Particularly, it did it with a graphics intensive pdf of some sort. I thought about getting a better cpu cooler, this is the stock one, but there is very little space in these smallish cases. And I can't see why this should be happening. I have other barebones of this sort, Asus, and it never does. Another machine is an old 754, and it does not happen on it. I'm not completely sure if this is new, because I'm not sure whether this sort of graphic content was displayed previously. Meanwhile, there's a Novatech small form factor i3 machine at 400 which is looking more and more attractive.... Bought one for someone else, they are fairly compact, quite quiet, and run very cool. 754 is pretty old hat nowadays, so maybe its time. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] Copying SD cards
by Anthony Anson 07 Aug '10

07 Aug '10

Chris Walker wrote: > On 04/08/10 17:05, Anthony Anson wrote: >> Chris Walker wrote: >>> Apologies if this appears twice - I posted it to the wrong address, >>> having already posted it using the wrong email address! >>> >>> I've copied one 2GB SD card to another 2GB card using the dd command >>> (having copied it to the hard drive as an intermediate step). >>> >>> The original card will load up in the desired device - a TomTom sat >>> nav but the second card won't. Is there any way for me to check that >>> the cards are the same? >>> >>> Also, and I realise that it's a bit OT here (although the TomTom is a >>> linux device!) but does anybody have any ideas what might be wrong >>> with the card? >> >> ISTR having a similar promble with a Kingston memory stick - it had a >> separate partition with uselessware in it, and it waas written in a >> (IIRC) NT format. >> >> Using violent methods under Debian, I deleted the contents of this >> partition then the partition itself. (It wouldn't go, all in one lump) >> >> After that, the copy worked as per original. > > But wouldn't the DD command overwrite everything on the SD card > including the partitions? Strangely, it didn't. I also tried reformatting it, and it ignored the partition. I think it's because the partition has a different drive address. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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enable display compositing in lxde
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi I have been having some bizarre graphical glitches in Linux Mint LXDE and so far haven't been able to find anyone else with the same problems nor a fix for it. Until now. 'the minimise/maximise/close window icons appear in random places all over the screen when I roll over them. When I move a window over them they dissapear (as if i was erasing them)' I have this exact problem. He appears to be using Xubuntu - I too had the same problem in Xubuntu last night. Oddly enough it didn't do this in Ubuntu. Anyway, he fixed it by 'enabling display compositing' under xfce 4 settings manager. Great, but I am using the LXDE version of Linux Mint and cant find this anywhere. Can anyone offer help or an alternative way of enabling display compositing? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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Mint Is Working... Few Graphical Glitches
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi Well, I found a work around. It seems xorg.conf was configured for the machine Mint was installed on. Moving the hard drive confused Mint as it didnt detect the new drivers/graphics. Luckily I found someone else who has Xubuntu installed on their 240X and they posted their xorg.conf online. So I nanoed in safe boot and replaced the contents of mine with theirs. This worked and I am not booted into Linux Mint LXDE on my ThinkPad 240X. It has a few graphical issues where it doesnt redraw things properly, like it hangs onto window buttons and prints them all over the screen. But I am sure this is a problem I can get round. Anyone have any ideas what this is and how to stop it. It is quite hard to describe. When you open up a window that has the close/maximise/minimise options sometimes these are repeated lots of times all over the screen. Fingers crossed I can get this sorted. After the long haul of getting this machine to dual boot I am just about there at having a fully working set up. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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Mint Problems
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi I tried installing Linux Mint LXDE on my ThinkPads hard drive via a different laptop. This seemed the easiest way. It went ok and grub works fine. Back in my ThinkPad XP still works fine. Mint boots but then gets stuck. It sits on a black screen with some white text saying: Exporting directories for NFS daemon. Starting NFS kernel daemon. Starting NTP server ntpd. Starting common unix printing system cupsd. This stays on the screen. Every 20 seconds the whole screen goes black then the writing comes back. It doesnt get any further than this. If I do recovery mode then it will boot to a linux prompt. Any ideas? I am assuming this is something hardware related. Something to do with it being set up for the other machine. Is there a way of getting it to redetect hardware? Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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Distro Oddness Possible Driver Issue
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi Bear with me this could be a long email. As you know I have a ThinkPad 240X. It dual boots XP and Linux. I originally had Linux Mint on this ThinkPad as it was already installed on a hard drive, but it had graphical glitches. So I installed XP and then put Linux Mint LXDE on it, via removing the hard drive and installing it in another machine with an optical drive. With the hard drive back in the ThinkPad, Mint would boot properly with all sorts of errors. So I took the drive out and put it back in the other laptop and installed Ubuntu 10 using the alternative installer. I put it back in the ThinkPad and it booted perfectly and ran lovely, albiet slowly. So I thought lets try Xubuntu as it is a bit less resource hungry. So once again I took out the hard drive, popped it in my other laptop and installed Xubuntu 9.10 via regular cd. Once done, I took out the hard drive and stuck it back in the ThinkPad. It worked, took a while to boot and has some graphical glitches, such as repeating window icons (like maximise, close etc). I am assuming this is a driver issue. I had the same problem with Mint, but not Ubuntu. Any ideas how I can get round this annoying graphics glitch. I am currently updating Xubuntu to 10.04 (which is going to take about 5 hours apparently) to see if that helps as I got the graphics problems in both Mint and Xubuntu which are buntu 9 based, yet Ubuntu 10 didnt have this problem. Will running the updater update system drivers too? Simon PS. Where is the System Profiler in Xubuntu? --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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pl2303 Serial to USB problem - /dev/ttyUSB0 not created
by Barry Samuels 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

I have a CurrentCost electricity usage monitor which is normally connected to my desktop via USB. When the unit is plugged in I get a number of lines in syslog like so: kernel: usb 4-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 12 kernel: pl2303 4-1:1.0: pl2303 converter detected kernel: usb 4-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 I am trying to get this same device working on my laptop but this time I see the following in syslog: kernel: pl2303: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver but nothing else i.e no 'attached to ttyUSB0'. Looking in /dev there is no ttyUSBn Whereas the desktop also loads the pl2303 and usbserial kernel modules automatically when the device is connected the laptop does not and when I load them manually I get only the above mentioned line in syslog. Needless to say the software which monitors the device won't connect. Any suggestions? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by mark fernandes (IFR) 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Thinkpad 240 and 240X have PCMCIA network cards so PXE unlikely. And as said by Simon earlier - no USB or CD boot (Windows install by special boot floppy that mounts IBM PCMCIA CD drive and gets the party started). Putting drive in another PC is usually the way to go but for a mixed OS environment I suspect Wubi and it's ilk is the most likely to succeed. Thinkpad wiki http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_instructions_for_the_ThinkPad_240 Regards, Mark (Who used to own and use a TP240) >From: Ricky Bruce <rickybruce(a)gmail.com> > >On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Simon Royal <simonroyal(a)live.co.uk> wrote: >> My next trick is to get Linux installed and this is where you guys come in. I would like to install Linux Mint LXDE or >>possibly Xubuntu. How can I do it without a CD drive, without being able to boot via USB and without messing up my >>Windows installation? >> > >I have never tried it, but would a network based install work? PXE >seems to ring a bell > >Ricky > >*************************

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Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by Simon Royal 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Hi Well, I got my ThinkPad 240X and after a bit of a struggle got the drives partitioned and XP Home installed, all without a CD drive or floppy drive for this machine and it doesnt boot from USB. Long story, but it involved taking the drive out and copying install files across via another laptop. In terms of speed compared to the ThinkPad 600, 600E and Umax I had, this is very quick. XP rips along, but it has no Linux installed at present. My next trick is to get Linux installed and this is where you guys come in. I would like to install Linux Mint LXDE or possibly Xubuntu. How can I do it without a CD drive, without being able to boot via USB and without messing up my Windows installation? I have partitioned the drive. I have XP installed on one, a small one containing the XP installer files which could easily be replaced with the Linux install files, plus a spare partition ready for Linux. So any advice on how to do it. I have googled it and there are plenty of different ways although a lot of them assume you can boot via USB. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Windows XP & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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Re: [ALUG] Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by Simon Royal 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Marcus I looked at Wubi earlier. I got the impression it would install Ubuntu just like any other Windows app a bit like virtualisation rather than a seperate bootable linux on a seperate partition. I will give it another look. Simon ---------------------------------------- > Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 13:57:21 +0100 > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Installing Linux Without CD/USB > From: runlevelten(a)gmail.com > To: simonroyal(a)live.co.uk > > Hi Simon, > > Try Wubi. http://wubi-installer.org/ > > I recently used this in similar circumstances and it went fine. - You > can download the iso to the machine and use that without burning it to > a CD, then run the installer from your windows desktop. > > Another thing you can do is a manual frugal install of puppy by > copying some files into a directory on the windows root - which isn't > perfect but results in a distro that may be appropriate for your > hardware, and really quite snappy. Instructions on their website > (somewhere I don't have bookmarked) - a search for "manual frugal > install" should do it. > > Good luck!

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Re: [ALUG] Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by Marcus Harris 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Hello Simon, Try Wubi. http://wubi-installer.org/ I recently used this in similar circumstances and it went fine. - You can download the iso to the machine and use that without burning it to a CD, then run the installer from a "windows" desktop. Another thing you can do is a manual frugal install of puppy by copying some files and creating a directory on the "windows" root - which isn't perfect but results in a distro that may be appropriate for your hardware, and really quite snappy. Instructions on their website (somewhere I don't have bookmarked) - a search for "manual frugal install" should do it. Good luck!

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Copying SD cards
by Chris Walker 04 Aug '10

04 Aug '10

Apologies if this appears twice - I posted it to the wrong address, having already posted it using the wrong email address! I've copied one 2GB SD card to another 2GB card using the dd command (having copied it to the hard drive as an intermediate step). The original card will load up in the desired device - a TomTom sat nav but the second card won't. Is there any way for me to check that the cards are the same? Also, and I realise that it's a bit OT here (although the TomTom is a linux device!) but does anybody have any ideas what might be wrong with the card? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Awaiting My 240X
by Simon Royal 04 Aug '10

04 Aug '10

Hi Thank you all for your advice and I did take it on board. However, I needed a laptop now and it did only cost me £15. I am awaiting the arrival of a ThinkPad 240X. It is a P3 500mhz model, so not too bad spec and better than my previous ThinkPad and the Umax. It will suffice for now. I dont need to shell out any money on it, I have any additional upgrades I need for it in my spares box. I will begin saving for a newer machine, probably a netbook of some sort. At present I only have my phone for web and emailing so I needed a laptop quick. I have a hard drive pre loaded with XP and Linux Mint LXDE so I will be up and running pretty much straight away. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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Compaq CQ5306uk - good bet for Ubuntu?
by Mark Rogers 03 Aug '10

03 Aug '10

I need a new PC for work use. I'm looking at: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186618 which is: - Core-2 Quad Q8300 - 4GB RAM - Intel GMA X4500 graphics, onboard sound (not sure what chipset, presumably something from Intel) Anyone have any good reasons why this would be a bad bet for Ubuntu? Should I go 32-bit or 64-bit install? Usage is day-to-day stuff (web browsing, email, etc) but also running virtual machines would be good (using VirtualBox). Seems like a good price for the spec (<£350+VAT) but no point if I'm going to have to problems with it. Any good partitioning suggestions for its 1TB drive? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Gnome Panel Problem!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 02 Aug '10

02 Aug '10

Hi Folks (apos for X-posting!) I've hit a problem with the gnome panel. The top panel on the desktop is the Menu Bar. This is OK. The bottom one is where the problem is. Normally, this shows the "workspace switcher" with a little box for each workspace; switch by mouse click or Ctrl-Alt-Arrow. No problem with that bit. It also used to show, for each window that is open in the current workspace, a rectangle with part of the window title in it. If you click on one of these, the corresponding window is minimised; click again, and the window reappears. I don't know what this feature is called. Every time you open a new window, a corresponding rectangle appears; when you close the window, the rectangle dispperas. Suddenly, without warning, this latter feature has disappeared! I have tried right-click + "add to panel" but cannot find anything that corresponds to it. I want to restore this feature. Can enyone tell me where to look? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Aug-10 Time: 20:41:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Used PC hardware for sale (running Debian)
by mick 31 Jul '10

31 Jul '10

I have recently replaced/upgraded some of my kit and I now have two older machines surplus to requirements. Before I advertise on e-bay (or cheapcycle) I thought I would offer then to ALUG members. The machines are both full tower systems and have new clean installs of Debian 5 desktop. (Before OS installation both machines were DBAN'd so I'm reasonably comfortable that I am not leaking any private information.) Specs are: Machine 1 ECS P4M800 PRO motherboard Pentium 4 650 (3.4GHz dual core) 2 Gig DDR2 RAM 1 DVD writer (with integral additional 2 USB ports and multicard reader) 2 * SATA Disks (1 at 200 Gig, 1 at 320 Gig) ATI Radeon 9550 Graphics card 1 additional PCI 10/100 ethernt card Machine 2 MSI 7253 Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2 Gig DDR2 RAM 2 * DVD writer 2 * IDE disks (1 at 150 Gig, 1 at 250 Gig) Nvidia Geforce 7300 graphics card 1 additional 802.11 PCI wifi card Neither machine is blindingly fast by current standards, but either would make reasonable second use desktop machines or file/print/web servers. I am asking £75.00 for machine 1 and £65.00 for machine 2. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300
by Wayne Stallwood 31 Jul '10

31 Jul '10

On 31/07/10 15:39, Simon Royal wrote: > My ThinkPad and Umax both ran XP and Linux Mint LXDE at a reasonable pace even with their low specs and low RAM Heh, I think we might have different expectations when it comes to a machine running at a "reasonable pace". Personally I don't consider XP (with antivirus and being used for anything other than looking at the desktop) usable below 512MB and certainly wouldn't want to spend much time on anything with less than 1GB...on any Processor. Maybe I am just getting old and impatient :)

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ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300
by Simon Royal 31 Jul '10

31 Jul '10

Hi I am looking at two laptops, finishing today on eBay. The two models above. They are both similarly specced, both feature external optical drives, both max at the same amount of RAM. Does anyone have any experience with these and Linux? Ive used Linux on another older ThinkPad and it was pretty easy. Im not sure of the Compaq Armada M300. Any help? Any suggestions? Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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Fwd: Re: ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300
by Simon Royal 31 Jul '10

31 Jul '10

Martin The 240X is higher specced than the 240. The one I am looking at is a P3 500. The size of it is what drew me to it. I do like ThinkPads. I loved the 600 I had, amazing and quite fast for its specs. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i). ________________ Reply Header ________________ Subject: Re: [ALUG] ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300 Author: Martin Collins <mobile.sea(a)gmail.com> Date: 31st July 2010 12:29 I had a thinkpad 240 a long time ago and therefore haven't used any recent distrubutions on it. I think it had a Celeron 300MHz processor. I was using it with SuSE Linux 7.3 and 8.0, possibly up to 8.1 before I sold it. From what I remember it wasn't very fast. The 240 is small and has a small screen so you might be better off buying a 2nd hand netbook as it would be a lot faster and will run such recent distrubutions as UNR, etc. Rgds, Martin On 31 July 2010 09:47, Simon Royal <simonroyal(a)live.co.uk> wrote: > Hi > > I am looking at two laptops, finishing today on eBay. The two models above. > > They are both similarly specced, both feature external optical drives, both max at the same amount of RAM. > > Does anyone have any experience with these and Linux? Ive used Linux on another older ThinkPad and it was pretty easy. > > Im not sure of the Compaq Armada M300. > > Any help? Any suggestions? > > Simon > > --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i). > > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Fwd: Re: ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300
by Simon Royal 31 Jul '10

31 Jul '10

Wayne I see your point. I havent lost any money so far on the bits I have bought on eBay. A P3 500 is quite an improvement over what I have. I know both have a fairly low RAM ceiling. My ThinkPad and Umax both ran XP and Linux Mint LXDE at a reasonable pace even with their low specs and low RAM, so these two machines while being old are still a considerable improvement and for around £20 plus the spares I have kicking around I can have a machine almost twice as fast as I have. My question was does anyone have experience with them. I like ThinkPads and they have a good reputation with Linux but not heard anything about Compaq machines. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i). ________________ Reply Header ________________ Subject: Re: [ALUG] ThinkPad 240X & Compaq Armada M300 Author: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> Date: 31st July 2010 11:45 In all honesty I think you are wasting your time and money. I didn't check out the Thinkpad but the Compaq maxes out at what 320MB ? Even if you go for a distro with a lightweight desktop environment you still probably want to run a modern browser etc, that laptop is still last century's technology and to be honest needs to go in the bin. Another problem with these machines is that nobody is testing the modern distros against them because they are so old they are off the radar now, so you have to expect issues with buggy ACPI etc as the foo that made that machine work might have fallen out of the kernel and nobody cared. At least with modern hardware there is a high chance that someone else has tried to run the same distro on the same machine and reported bugs etc. I mean I know you said you have very limited funds to work with..but what you have spent on that umax plus buying either of these and did you buy the original thinkpads ? You wouldn't be that far off from a 2nd hand Netbook or sommin else a bit more recent. I mean even if you are managing to stuff what doesn't work back on ebay and sell for what you paid you are still losing postage costs and sellers fees no ? I don't mean to sound overly negative here, but I just can't stand seeing someone with limited funds waste more money. I'd say try to save up £100 and see what that gets you...If you dump what you have so far back on ebay you might get halfway there. _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Re: [ALUG] Used PC hardware for sale (running Debian)
by Anthony Anson 29 Jul '10

29 Jul '10

mick wrote: > On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:38:44 +0100 > Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> allegedly wrote: > >> He got a new one - all singing, all dancing. >> >> It won't be long before he wants an upgrade... >> > > Apple fanbois seem to be particularly prone to this problem. Apple pie doesn't hang about either. Don't know if I ever asked here, but my old box of tricks (full tower AMD 900, caddy with 4 trays - Lenny, early BeOS, Win 98SE, Win 2000) suddenly refused to play with Win 2000, Worked perfectly AFAICT with Debian, BeOS and Win 98. Tried to reinstall Win 2000, but it wouldn't do so. Got about halfway through the process then stubbornly refused to play any more. Borrowed an XP disc, and that wouldn't load, same symptoms as the 2000 CD. Put an old NT HDD in the BeOS tray, and that wouldn't work, so tried an old Win 98, and that was OK, as was the 98SE. Tried to creep up on it by installing Win 95 and upgrading to 98, 98SE, Win 2000, but it got just so far, and spat 2000 out. DOS 6.22 works, as does any flavour of Penguin AFAICT - but it won't have anything to do with NT-based stuff. Now, I'd like it to work with XP or 2000, but I have misgivings about trying to run Virtual Box under Debian to host 2000, which I would guess, will fall over. The motherboard looks OK - no corrosion or leaky electrolytics AFAICS, and I haven't guddled about in the BIOS for ages before it had its spat - and that only to change the boot order. Anyone any thoughts? (Apart from buying Machine No 1...) -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Resolve Install Problems
by Simon Royal 28 Jul '10

28 Jul '10

Hi Im still trying to sort out these problems getting Linux installed on this old Umax laptop. Ive tried booting Limux Mint 9 LXDE and it ran the live CD once and part installed. Since then no success in getting back to the Live desktop. It just sits on the boot screen doing nothing. The same thing happens with Lubuntu. I did successfully boot the Ubuntu alterntaive installer and it started installing no problems, but I cancelled it as Ubunut is a bit too heavy for this hardware. I dont think it is a hardware fault as it runs XP no problems. Also I did have Linux Mint 9 LXDE installed on another hard drive and it booted to it and ran, also it has booted to the live CD once and all hardware including sound works. So any ideas? Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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Libretto 50 and 110 & Linux
by Simon Royal 28 Jul '10

28 Jul '10

Hi A mate of mine has a Libretto 50 and a Libretto 110. I have always had a fondness for these pint size puters. The 50 is a 75Mhz Pentium and the 110 is a 166Mhz Pentium. I know which versions of Windows will run on them and how to do it without a CD drive, but what about Linux. I use a lot of older hardware (as you might have guessed), but even this is stretching it for me. I was thinking Puppy Linux or DSL might be good for these beasts. The 50 has 16MB RAM maxxing at 32MB RAM. The 110 has 32MB maxxing at 64MB RAM. Neither has floppy or CD drives. I think the easiest thing would be to pull the drive - I have a 4GB spare sitting here - and either install it via another machine or put the install files on a partition on the hard drive. Any help. I might be able to get these beauties from him. He is moving and doesnt want to take the clutter with him. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Umax ActionBook 347T running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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