Compaq Presario 1622

– Damn Small Linux : failure
– Knoppix : failure
– Ubuntu : failure

After Ubuntu couldn’t even access the floppy drive, I got suspicious. Re-loaded Windows, and got the same exact memory error that started all of this off. So, this all points to a slow, but sure, motherboard failure.

Kinda like my desktop.

Anyway, I’ll be parting it out. Old laptop RAM, the battery, the PC cards, and the chassis/motherboard/screen/wossname for parts. eBay, unless I get a local offer. Anybody interested? ;)

Compaq Presario from Work

I don’t have it in front of me, or I would have posted the model number.

Due to errors on the hard drive, the Windows XP partition could not be re-sized. So, I wiped the whole thing, created a 15 gig partition for each OS, and easily loaded Windows XP and Ubuntu. Ran a file-checker in each OS to mark off the bad sectors of each partition.

It’s all packed up and ready to be given back to Tom. Yay for field laptop!

iBook
– Wallpaper : procured
– USB mouse : procured and installed
– USB Hub : procured and installed
– Printer : switched over to USB, connected to USB hub, and installed.
– Scanner : Tossed the old parallel port Mustek in the trash. It was dead, and I had the ninepence. Anyway, connected the new HP ScanJet 3500c (thanks to Jody, the mother in law, for that xmas gift!) through the USB hub, and it installed smoothly.

To Do
– eBay off the 11 year old Presario’s parts.
– Gut the old desktop and eBay the extra sound card and RAM.
– Procure internal-to-external conversion kits. I want to turn both 30GB hard drives and the CD-R/W to firewire, and connect them to the iBook that way.
– Figure out what in the blazes is wrong with this wireless/wired combo router from Netgear, and get that installed.

Crap. I did not intend to type this much. I’ve gotten some writing done today, but I’ll wait to update on that. Sleep calls.

The technology gods and I continue to have an interesting time of things. :)

I’m posting this from my brand new (used) G3 iBook. It’s so white… and calling out for an Autobot logo somewhere on its casing. I was able to get the Cuthulhu for President sticker off of it, as well as the remnants, with some Goo Gone on Christmas Day.

Needless to say, is still the mistress of gift-giving. I can’t believe so many people kept this secret, especially ! I don’t even know if was in on it, as this was his laptop before it began its trek into my hands.

Of course, I didn’t do too badly myself. I picked this up for , and I’m continually assured that I did well. ;)

The tech gifts have rained from the sky, or, uh, from under the Christmas tree, and so I have more and more and more technical projects to work on. This makes me happy and challenged (which seem to go hand in hand lately). However, there are enough to equal my writing projects, which I have most definitely not given enough time to.

I think I’ll post about gifts and/or projects as they come up and/or get finished. And/Or. Xor. z0rz. Over and out.

Progress:

After hashing it out with last night, I decided to try the full-blown Ubuntu install on the laptop. While it’s big, and takes up a lot of hard drive space, either Gnome or KDE are going to be the only window managers that will make this install user-friendly enough to be used by non-Linux geekasaurz0rz0rz0rz. So, full-blown Ubuntu it is.

The install took FOREVER, but it installed in a stable fashion the first time. It takes a while to boot, but is quick and responsive once it’s booted. So, the installation of the OS is a success!

However, there are still no wireless drivers. So, I have installed the ndiswrapper pages and obtained the proper windows .inf driver file. I copied it from my desktop onto a floppy, slide the floppy into the Presario, attempt to mount the floppy, and uh… no. It seems that none of the floppies I have will mount, which means that it’s likely a problem between Ubuntu and the floppy drive itself.

I’ve never had any problems with the floppy drive under Windows, so I’m guessing this is another instance of tweak or get tweaked.

Once I figure out the floppy problem and get the wireless card working under ndiswrapper, only the following tasks remain:

Getting the ancient sound card recognized and functional.
Installing codecs for “non-free” things like mp3 and streaming video.

I think this is as far as I’ve ever gotten in a Linux install without flipping out and going back to Windows. :)

Hardware:
Compaq Presario 1622
Pentium I MMX 266 MHz proc.
160 MB RAM
CD-ROM drive
PCMCIA Netgear wireless card

Goal:
Windows 98 has consistently required re-installs, and up until this point it’s been blamed on the CD-ROM drive. Now, after a serious RAM error, chips have been swapped and this unit has begun the experiment of keeping old hardware useful and worthwhile. To that end, Knoppix will be tested and run from the CD-ROM drive, and then installed on the hard drive. Damn Small Linux was considered, however it has a problem with the particular Synaptics Touchpad that Compaq chose to use on this machine.

Progress:
With the 160 megs of RAM, Knoppix loaded flawlessly from the CD-ROM. I partitioned the hard drive into a 256 meg swap partition and a 2.9 gig main partition. The initial boot from the hard drive was a bit slow, but it looks like that’s because it’s a first boot. Wireless card is not detected. Hrm, perhaps PCMCIA is not fully supported. Also, things still seem extremely slow. Rebooting the machine from CD to attempt to access pcmcia there. And now I stumble across the warnings by Knoppix users not to sintall to the hard drive. Apparently, all sorts of things break when the hard drive installer is run.

As the coffee shop is closing, and I’ve discovered that my wireless card isn’t supported by either Damn Small Linux or Knoppix, I’m considering putting Win98 back on the machine. There has to be a way to keep this old hardware functional, responsive (if not fast), and useful. :/