h00k00
Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Oct. 2005 |
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Posted: Oct. 28 2005,19:53 |
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Two weeks ago I bought a used Thinkpad 560E from the local PC junk store. Since the machine was broken with an unidentified HW problem and without any accessories (not even power adapter), I got it almost for free.
Problem 1: Power adapter
Good thing is that the new Thinkpads are using a backwards compatible power adapters, so I was able to use the one from my work laptop. And was able to identify problem 2.
Problem 2: The thing really is broken
After switching on the pc, it displayed the memory (48MB) and then started making clicking noises. No way to get to the bios settings changed either.
The sound reminded me of a broken hard drive, so I made some calls to used-pc stores in the area and located a suitable used hard drive (2.1GB). I did some googling and found a hardware maintenance manual for 560E. With help of the manual , changing the hard drive was surprisingly easy.
Then I switched the power on and identified problem 3
Problem 3: No way to boot up the 560E (no OS on the hard drive)
I borrowed a Thinkpad 600E from a friend and was going to swap the hard drives and do the installation. Then I made the biggest mistake and started looking for alternative ways that didn't require any hw work.
I bought a 64MB Compact Flash and I already had a CF-to-PC Card Adapter. Next I booted 600E with dsl-cd, formatted the CF (/dev/hde) and installed frugal.
- PCMCIA card was not recognized, before I removed PCMCIA LAN card.
- Frugal Lilo Install worked only for hda
+ Frugal Grub Install worked.
Then to problem 4.
Problem 4: GRUB
Well, that was on the display after I switched on my 560E (with PCMCIA as the first boot option).
Back to 600E with the CF and I noticed that the /mnt/hde1/boot/grub/device.map was incorrect. I changed hde1 to be the first entry and went back to 560E and problem 5.
Problem 5: cloop error
Now grub was workin ok, the startup ended into a lot of cloop-errors. Googling indicated something to be wrong with the image, but after a few reinstalls I started to doubt that. Then I noticed that the startup failed immediately after cardmgr was started.
I added the nopcmcia cheat code and I finally made it to command prompt. And problem 6. But before trying to solve problem 6, I decided to make the partitions on the hard drive and formatted them.
Problem 6: No X
A zillion cheat code combinations later I finally found a combination that worked, sort of. Regardless the grub cheat codes 640x48x4-mode worked and none of the others. Still I decided it was time make the installation to hard drive. Frugal Grub install seemed to go well, but it didn't.
Problem 7: linux24 and minirt24.gz missing from the hard drive.
I didn't know the professional way to correct this, so I just copied those from the CF and it worked.
Then for a while I still tried to get X-windows working, but then decided to download XFree86.dsl using myDSL Extension Browser. And yes, network connection worked without any problems.
Installation was easy - I moved the downloaded .dsl file to the root of hda2 and added the mydsl cheat code to grub's menu.lst and modified the .filetool.lst to include a 560E-specific /etc/X11/XFConfig86-4, which I had copied from the net.
Now I'm quite happy with the result - dsl is really fast enough for older laptops like mine. But next time I'll do it differently.
TO-DO list (hints are welcome):
* the icons that were visible when I used the dsl-cd on 600E are not shown in the desktop of my 560E
* scandic letters shown in dillo (firefow works)
* try some cheap PCMCIA WLAN card
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