DSL Talk

The livecd allows you to install apps on hdd not sda. It says it can save preferences on usb. This unit is too old to usbboot I guess, so I would like to run apps(multimedia) from usb and save browser data.

Update June 24,2006
OK, I think I found a place to put the scripts where they will not be altered... You can look at newolduser.googlepages.com

Update June 23, 2006. I've noticed that the code in the fauxCron script is being altered by the blog page. The script will not work as it appears (some important if-statements are missing). Until I can fix this please feel free to email me for a copy of the fauxCron script. newolduser at gmail dot com

I've been poking around the fauxCron script some more. It works fine but I wanted an easier way to schedule weekly repeating tasks. The date +%a command will return the three character day of the week (with the first character capitalized).

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Hai,
Found out DSL for my just secondhand bought laptop.
Windows worked fine on it, but it is very slow.
I searched the internet with my friend, Google, and found out Damn Small Linux. Yes, it is incredibly small and much of linux.

Now I'm trying to install DSL. First downloaded the iso, went fine. Thanks to all these mirrors, which makes downloading via FTP a lot faster. HeaNET (Netherlands) rule.
Thanks to Nero, which smootly installed the iso.

The laptop is a very rare and special thing. And at the same time, very common and normal. It is brandless. The irritating thing about this, no site on the inet mentions this laptop. The top says "Ision" the bottom "Multimedia Notebook." Nevertheless, it is a great thing. Just 200 Mhz of raw horsepower, reliable 80 MB Memory, and even 16 MB onboard (which is very fast). A stunning 2 GB harddisk, for ultimate file storage. Well, it screws, but it is made in 1995 so NOH!

Working on getting some semblance of DSL running on my new IBM/Lenovo T43p Thinkpad. Goal is to have a Linux partition where /home and /opt are housed, but with DSL running in toram mode off of a Live CD. The challenge right now is to resize the existing NTFS partition and create a new one that is EXTFS2 formatted. It appears the tool to use for this is QTParted, for which there conveniently happens to be a MyDSL extension.

I'm seeing a great deal of inconsistency between how DSL 2.0, DSL 2.3 and Knoppix 3.9 recognize this machine. At the moment, my chief stumbling block appears to be that QTParted in DSL 2.3 doesn't appear to support the "resize" operation in NTFS. One has to wonder just how useful this utility is without that functionality. Back to the drawing board, and the DSL forum to see if there are clues there. May have to do this in Knoppix, but that has its own problems, as it does not recognize the drive as "hda1", but rather as "sda1".

Well, I am relieved to find that at least two other people have or have had DSL PCs in their garage. It's good to not be alone.

But this week has been a scavenger hunt for old Dell laptop parts. You see, my wife's Latitude 500Mhz CPx was falling apart and overburdened by too much Windows and too little ram. So I raided the store of old Latitudes stored (for some unknown reason) in the server room at work. Now I'm not the "IT Guy" and it requires special cooperation and skills to "borrow" "dead" laptops "to get a few parts from". God bless my IT guys. I help them out (ie: let them borrow my tools and am generally a low-maintenance user) and they let me part-out old laptops. Symbiosis, pure and simple... Although they have asset tags, old, dead laptops probably don't exist "officially" any more, most of them having last been booted over two years ago. Of course, all of them were under 1Ghz. Two yielded good keyboards, one yielded a PCMCIA slot assembly, one yielded a good touchpad/wrist rest/speakers. Before long I had three whole, working machines and one really dead one and a slow one. One of the repaired ones is a 400Mhz CPi, much like the 333Mhz CPi that was so useful in the garage, but with a LCD panel that stands up straight.

Attaching a Konica Minolta PagePro 1350W to Damn Small Linux

The PagePro 1350W is a low cost (wait for the sale/rebate and it's about US$50) black and white laser printer. I'm attaching it to a laptop computer running DSL version 1.5. It's a frugal install with a persistent home and opt directory.

Here's how I did it.

1) Search the DSL forum to see if someone has already solved your problem. DSL Forum Search Link

2) Go to LinuxPrinting.org and check their Database for your printer.

-- June 26, 2006 update. go to newolduser.googlepages.com to copy the scripts. There is a small problem with how they display on this page

Now that we have a nice script to start recording a radio stations
streaming broadcast it would be nice if we could have that script
start up at a predefined date and time. It would be equally nice to
be able to stop that script from recording at a predefined date and
time.

Lets work on the stopping part first.

Basically we need a script that will search for our recording script
from all the other processes that are running. Then get the Process ID
(PID) and issue a KILL command.

Well my DSL server has been running pretty good for a while now so it must be time to try and break it.

Here's my new passion.... I've been listening to radio stations that broadcast over the internet. You know, the streaming audio type of stuff. I can listen to classical from KUSC.org or jazz/folk/bluegrass from WMUB.org A problem comes up sometimes when I want to listen to a particular radio show but because of the time-zone differences or my schedule I'm not able to be at the computer to listen to it.

Back in the days before I pushed electrons around I had a stereo tape deck that could do timed recordings from AM/FM radio broadcasts. Basically I want to do the same thing but with internet radio. There might be a bunch of programs out there on the market (or maybe in myDSL extensions...I really need to look in there.) to do this but I didn't find any in my not-so-intensive 30 second search, so I decided to build one myself.

Now it's after St. Patrick's Day and I am remodelling the garage. So I have my little DSL-laptop and old Hafler DH-200 and a pair of antique Smaller Advents (purchased in 1978?) in the garage with me to keep me musical company.

Oh yes, I am typing this while standing in the garage listening to the Chieftians.

Do I have he only DSL-equipped garage in North Texas? Maybe.

--jm