reviving old notebooks
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: reviving old notebooks
started by: sampleinajaarr
Posted by sampleinajaarr on Sep. 14 2005,16:30
This OS is awesome. Thanks to the programmers, and anyone else involved with this project. You've helped me to revive an old notebook. Here's the specs.amd k6-2 300mhz
96MB ram
floppy drive
CD-rom 32x
USB port broken
Hard drive totally corrupt, unusable
Battery is no good
this notebook was a paperweight.
I used an iso editor to add files to my DSL, and a re-writable disk. plenty of room on a 800MB disk to make good use of this notebook. I can't run DSL in ram, so I have to keep the CD mounted, but if I really needed to I can save to a floppy, LOL
Next step is to get a pcmcia wireless card for this thing.
IS NDISWRAPPER included in DSL???, if not I can add it i'm sure. I know there's some wireless support, but as always we never know if it will work, until we try.
I am amazed at how fast this old machine runs with DSL, much better than win98, which i can't use anymore because the HD is corrupt, I've got bad sectors on the first five tracks, and can't figure a way to change the geometry of the drive to make a formattable partition.
Thanks again, DSL
Mike
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Sep. 15 2005,00:29
Can I trade you my laptop for that one?The battery works good, hard disk is okay, and it's maxed out on ram.
And yes, DSL has ndiswrapper.
System >> Net Setup >> Ndiswrapper
-J.P.
P.S. it's a 100mhz lappy with 40mb of ram. DSL rocks on it. :P
Posted by AwPhuch on Sep. 16 2005,16:52
Mine is a 133Mhz Compaq LTE 5300 133Mhz 32Meg RAM, 2.1Gig HD, dual booted with win98 and DSL makes Win98 look like its sitting still!I need more RAM and a freeking ac/dc adapter for the laptop part as the dang docking station suxors!
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by Iainm2 on Sep. 19 2005,12:18
I am using DSL on a Dell Latitude 200MHz with 64Mb RAM. Fan Dabby Dozy as we say in Glasgow. Got it printing EZ on a Wondoze served network printer and can get to Windoze shares with ease. For info, I did the apt enable thingy and then downloaded and installed Gimp. It is blazingly fast even on this little box. It is also very light on battery it would seem. I am excited about computing for the first time in ages again and thank you all for your hard work. 1.5 is a dream.
Posted by dare2dreamer on Sep. 26 2005,19:04
I got a toshiba 440 CDT here. Added 64 megs of ram, and am planning on converting it over to compact flash sometime soon.For all the tech toys I play with, I keep coming back to it as the most reliable machine I've ever used. Only thing I had to do was add some modprobe info to bootlocal.sh to get the sound going.
Posted by AwPhuch on Sep. 26 2005,19:51
| Quote (dare2dreamer @ Sep. 26 2005,15:04) |
| I got a toshiba 440 CDT here. Added 64 megs of ram, and am planning on converting it over to compact flash sometime soon. For all the tech toys I play with, I keep coming back to it as the most reliable machine I've ever used. Only thing I had to do was add some modprobe info to bootlocal.sh to get the sound going. |
That usually is the biggest issue...having to activate one or more drivers for preriphrials..other than that..I have never had DSL *NOT* run on a machine
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by DSCrome on Sep. 26 2005,23:24
im on a dell server laptop....128MB RAM
20Gig HD
DSL On drive
32x Cd-Rom
Floppy
10-100-1000 PCM Card (Ethernet)
I couldnt find the display driver through windows for it...Windows wouldnt even tell me what the card was in it....im glad i ddint throw it out....
IT HAS A ATI-Rage Mobility in it! I had no idea!
Anyways, This is the best distro since.........ever!
DSCrome
Posted by brianw on Sep. 27 2005,00:21
I'm running a Compaq Armada 7800, pII 266, 96M ram, SOHOWARE pcmcia card (that I could not get to work under win98 or XP). Hard drive partitioned with Ubunto, swap, DSL and /home. I can log in to Ubunto or DSL and I have the same home directories for both (had to go into Ubunto and make sure the User IDs were the same so the owner would be the same under both), I didn't have to but I created a DSL user on Ubunto just to keep everything sync'd. Using Ubunto I set up XDMCP and used my laptop as an app server for a pI 200 runing Basic Linux. I am eventually going to have a server running with DSL (once I can get XDM to work) and have my kids log in with their 486 and 133 laptops as X-Terminals (running DSL of course). DSL is so much faster than other OS's I have tried.Regards,
Brian
Posted by AwPhuch on Sep. 27 2005,16:22
| Quote (DSCrome @ Sep. 26 2005,19:24) |
| im on a dell server laptop.... 128MB RAM 20Gig HD DSL On drive 32x Cd-Rom Floppy 10-100-1000 PCM Card (Ethernet) I couldnt find the display driver through windows for it...Windows wouldnt even tell me what the card was in it....im glad i ddint throw it out.... IT HAS A ATI-Rage Mobility in it! I had no idea! Anyways, This is the best distro since.........ever! DSCrome |
What exacly are you serving with that laptop??
Seems sweet, how well does it work for you...and what application do you plan on using it as??
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by Delboy on Sep. 28 2005,13:32
133mhz Digital Hinote, 40MB ram, 12.1"TFT 800x600 res., no battery, no CD-Rom drive, old PCMCIA Zircom creditcard modem. Made a big upgrade yesterday from v0.93 to v1.5 (HD installed) which really seems more polished and reliable. Abiword, Jpilot are my main extension add-ons plus a load of Fluxbox themes I put together.The display quality for these two .DSLs is great, and they both seem to work a little better. Modem seems to work better with my dial-up ISP now - very few broken Sylpheed connections. Marvellous.
Posted by doobit on Sep. 28 2005,15:35
I've trying other distros, even the big, famous, ones, but I keep coming back to DSL because it works so well (Hey I made a poem)!
Posted by doobit on Sep. 28 2005,21:54
You got me so excited reading about reviving old notebooks that I bought one for $100 on ebay. Toshiba 480CDT Pentium 233MHZ with 64MB RAM. I can't wait! 
Posted by AwPhuch on Sep. 28 2005,22:23
| Quote (doobit @ Sep. 28 2005,17:54) |
| You got me so excited reading about reviving old notebooks that I bought one for $100 on ebay. Toshiba 480CDT Pentium 233MHZ with 64MB RAM. I can't wait! |
That should be a pympin rig using DSL!
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by brianw on Sep. 29 2005,00:07
| Quote (AwPhuch @ Sep. 28 2005,18:23) | ||
That should be a pympin rig using DSL! Brian AwPhuch |
Yes, that should be very good. my 233 has 96M but when I have Firefox (with several tabs open), Synaptic open and a CD playing with XMMS I think the highest I have noticed on my ram usage is 32% (probably higher at times but it is not very high most times). My CPU usage is very reasonable and using a SOHOWARE pcmcia card connected through a Freesco setup (p200 32M ram with 33.6 modem, 3C905B PCI card 10Mb/s and a 5port switch) I have pretty good download speeds (at least for dialup, especially compared to <well you know>).
Posted by doobit on Sep. 29 2005,12:50
| Quote (dare2dreamer @ Sep. 26 2005,15:04) |
| I got a toshiba 440 CDT here. Added 64 megs of ram, and am planning on converting it over to compact flash sometime soon. For all the tech toys I play with, I keep coming back to it as the most reliable machine I've ever used. Only thing I had to do was add some modprobe info to bootlocal.sh to get the sound going. |
What driver did you need to modprobe for the sound to work?
Thanks!
Posted by doobit on Oct. 05 2005,23:34
I got it working with the AT&T wireless lan card! I had to download the syslinux version of DSL-1.5 because the regular isolinux wouldn't load completely. The syslinux version loads with no burps and all of the drivers for athos load automatically. All I had to do was plug in the values in the wlan control panel. I also had to set the router to open system for now. I couldn't get it to work with wep or wap yet.
Posted by dare2dreamer on Oct. 06 2005,05:48
| Quote (doobit @ Sep. 29 2005,07:50) | ||
What driver did you need to modprobe for the sound to work? Thanks! |
To get sound working on the Toshiba 440 CDT, you actually have to remove and reload the driver with options for the appropriate DMA, IRQ, etc. I messed around with the settings in bios and managed to get it working with these lines in my bootlocal.sh:
| Code Sample |
sudo rmmod ad1848 sudo rmmod opl3 sudo modprobe ad1848 io=0x530 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 sudo modprobe opl3 io=0x388 |
It throws me one error on startup, which I believe comes from the old driver not working prior to bootlocal running, but it works like a champ.
For the record, I figured all of this out from a former HD install of DSL, where I apt-get updated the sndconfig tool and the newer version was able to spot the card. Once I had it working there, it was simply a matter of sussing out which files sndconfig tweaked in order to get everything working. After that, I tossed them in bootlocal and kissed my HD install goodbye forever.
Email if you need any other help tweaking this little beast. Definitely worth the trouble.
Posted by doobit on Oct. 06 2005,13:01
| Quote (dare2dreamer @ Oct. 06 2005,01:48) |
| Once I had it working there, it was simply a matter of sussing out which files sndconfig tweaked in order to get everything working. After that, I tossed them in bootlocal and kissed my HD install goodbye forever. Email if you need any other help tweaking this little beast. Definitely worth the trouble. |
Thank you! Mine seems to be working fine now, excpet for the sound. I'll make those changes later and see how it works.
I was actually thinking about doing the hard drive install simply because the Windows 98 on it is so useless. I could just keep it on the hard drive and write the bootlocal.sh and backup files to the same partition as Windows, since DSL reads FAT32.
This computer is in like-new condition. Even the battery holds a full charge. With DSL working so well on it I can't imagine needing to buy a more expensive, or new machine. The major computer makers should be freaking.
Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 06 2005,15:33
| Quote (doobit @ Oct. 06 2005,09:01) | ||
Thank you! Mine seems to be working fine now, excpet for the sound. I'll make those changes later and see how it works. I was actually thinking about doing the hard drive install simply because the Windows 98 on it is so useless. I could just keep it on the hard drive and write the bootlocal.sh and backup files to the same partition as Windows, since DSL reads FAT32. This computer is in like-new condition. Even the battery holds a full charge. With DSL working so well on it I can't imagine needing to buy a more expensive, or new machine. The major computer makers should be freaking. |
Nah too many Winblows users out there stuck to using their slow and boggy bloatware, thus they need more and more powerful hardware just to run it!
DSL is for the enlightened and the free!
Welcome to the Revolution!!!
Brian
AwPhuch