Tecra 8000 laptop: 1.0.4 up and running

Using applications, configuring, problems
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peppyy
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Tecra 8000 laptop: 1.0.4 up and running

#1 Post by peppyy »

Hey all, it is the pest again with another cheap laptop that I am trying to run Puppy on.

I will attempt to boot to the bios and see if there is any settings that I can change but at the moment 1.0.4 seems to have a problem with pcmcia and 1.0.1 won't start x. I have read that some of these toshiba laptops need kernel 2.6x so perhaps I will also try 1.0.2.

Wish me luck :)

I know it isn't the drive or ram because I am on the newest slax typing this.

Coming soon to a Puppy PC near you!

Watch for the sequil, How-to, tecra 8000.
Last edited by peppyy on Thu 08 Sep 2005, 19:30, edited 1 time in total.
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#2 Post by peppyy »

Ok, Just to remind myself why I don't use winows anymore I put the win98se disk in and an hour later I tried to install the network card. Well another hour or so with only a half a screen at 640x489 16 and it still wasn't working. Of course it needs to reboot and wants you to change the cd 16 times and ends up that you have to reinstall it again.

I guess I don't need to bore everyone with the details but I thought I would posst once before format and install something x. There is no way I am going to chase down antivrius, and updated and video and browsers and e-mail clients and utilitys.
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#3 Post by peppyy »

Ok, Here is what I have.
puppy 1.0.3 anthros with framebuffer will load from cd until I do a harddrive install type 2. Can't start x from the install or cd. After that, even when I choose no hd option 2 when booting from the cd I cannot start x.

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fatal server error.
no screen found.
I wipe the drive, reinstall with framebuffer in 640x480x256, no go
I wipe the drive, reinstall with framebuffer in 640x480x32k nada
I wipe the drive, reinstall with framebuffer in 800x600x256, nope

I tried the old instructions copy to drive and install grub and see if that would work bit I am unable to mount the drive no matter which format I choose, fat32, fat16, linux83, resierfs etc

I have run the drive utilitys, updated the bios and about everything else I can think of.

Any ideas?
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#4 Post by peppyy »

Ok, I am currently running libranet 3.0 on the machine and although it is slow it is about 80%.

There is a neomagic module that allows you to set driver to
neomagic 2200 magicgraph 256av
I set the resolution to 1024x768 16bit and it looks fantastic.
It reports the monitor as Toshiba, tos5082
Diagonal display size 29.8 cm
monitor dpi 109
horozontal sync 31-48
vertical refresh 50-70

Is there a way to set these parameters in puppy during boot or when starting x?
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Guest

#5 Post by Guest »

Go for the nfs-puppy version it has a cutdown version of XFree86, I use it on my own Dell laptop with a neomagic chipset and on a HP Pavillion with a i810 chipset.....framebuffer is way too slow and can't understand why ppl still want to use it.... :?

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#6 Post by peppyy »

I have tried to download it a bunch of times and keep getting a prompt for username and password. Maybe I am trying to download the wrong one? It is in announcments.

I/ll boot the monster and try again.
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#7 Post by Guest »

It's cool now......I exceeded my bandwidth last month so had to put a stop ....but it's ok now

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#8 Post by peppyy »

Very nice! Video looks crisp and clean. Still trying to get it to boot from the hd before I go to nuts with it but it is startingn to look good. This setup is the same one I used in deb for an older machine.
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keenerd
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#9 Post by keenerd »

A caution about installing Bladehunter's iso to hard drive:

I have never had it to work as an upgrade to an exisiting (type 2) install. I get the most amusing errors. The only thing that has worked is backing up my data, wiping the partition, and doing a fresh install. I haven't heard other people mention problems, so it may be my fault.

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#10 Post by peppyy »

Might be the best idea. I have tried installing to the hard drive the "old" way and although grub loads and she starts to boot, I keep winding up with kernel panic stops.

I would deal with LN3 but it crawls on this machine and Puppy flies. Must have been drinking Red Bull lol.

Guess it is off to the ibm utilitys disk and another 3 hours of zero writing. Yhe only problem I have with that is that then Puppy wont recognise the drive to add the format. I really need a bootable copy of cfdisk. Thought it would be on the ultimate boot cd but it isn't.

This is going to make someone a nice little laptop if I ever get it done.
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Guest

#11 Post by Guest »

This should be a diary :lol:

NFS Puppy to the video rescue.
Full hard drive install as sole OS.
Format hard drive with ibm tools,
Setup drive with ultimate boot cd, linux native type 83
Boot to Puppy, install type 2, grub to MBR.

No issues wirh an Orinoco Gold Classic card, plug-n-surf
Battery monitor not working.
Sound not working.
I have found a few folks who have gotten the sound working in linux so I am trying everything I see. So far the only time I have seen a mixer was with
modprobe sb.

Next attempt is to change some of the "I'm not sure if it is a plug-n-pray settings or not" in the bios. Might be I missed something after the upgrade flash.

If anyone has one of these tecra 8000 laptops woth working sound I would like to see the config if possible.

Guest

#12 Post by Guest »

This should be a diary :lol:

NFS Puppy to the video rescue.
Full hard drive install as sole OS.
Format hard drive with ibm tools,
Setup drive with ultimate boot cd, linux native type 83
Boot to Puppy, install type 2, grub to MBR.

No issues wirh an Orinoco Gold Classic card, plug-n-surf
Battery monitor not working.
Sound not working.
I have found a few folks who have gotten the sound working in linux so I am trying everything I see. So far the only time I have seen a mixer was with
modprobe sb.

Next attempt is to change some of the "I'm not sure if it is a plug-n-pray settings or not" in the bios. Might be I missed something after the upgrade flash.

If anyone has one of these tecra 8000 laptops woth working sound I would like to see the config if possible.

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#13 Post by peppyy »

Should have logged in again.
Have sound,

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modprobe opl3sa2 io=0x538 mss_io=0x530 mpu_io=0x330 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 
It is a bit quiet but it works.

Now there is a problem with xmms.

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# xmms
ln: /opt/xmms: No such file or directory
/root/my-applications/xmms/bin/xmms: error while loading shared libraries: libxmms.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Is this just for the Puppy version I have?
I also have a problem with a missing default skin in mplayer.

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# gmplayer2
ln: /opt/mplayer: No such file or directory
MPlayer 1.0pre6-3.3.1 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Celeron A Mendocino/Pentium II Dixon (Family: 6, Stepping: 10)
Detected cache-line size is 32 bytes
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 0 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection - WARNING - this is not optimal!
To get best performance, recompile MPlayer with --disable-runtime-cpudetection.

vo: X11 running at 1024x768 with depth 16 and 16 bpp (":0.0" => local display)
[skin] file ( /opt/mplayer/share/mplayer/Skin/default/skin ) not found.
Skin not found (default).
Any idea? I am off and running, fixin xp puters for the day ;)
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Guest

#14 Post by Guest »

Reinstall the dotpups...something has gone wrong....I don't use mplayer myself but use xmms to listen to my mp3 collection.....So in that respect I can say it's not the version of Puppy you are running as I'm running the same version on two different machines.

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#15 Post by peppyy »

Needed to create the directory /opt
That seems to have cured xmms and mplayer. Problems with the sound still. It is really quiet even turned all the way up. When I run mplayer from console and play a dvd, it gives me suggestions how to get it to play stating that my system is too slow.

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Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
  - Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.
  - Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
  - Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
  - Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try -hardframedrop.
- Broken file
  - Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
  - Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
  - Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html
It nay be possible to get it running if I can figure out the sound and do some more tweaking.
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#16 Post by peppyy »

Fixed the sound, (did nyou know that there is a tiny rotary volune control on the front of these things?)

Installed Wifi Beta and WAG. The older WAG works great but the new one doesn't seem to like this machine.

I can get my card working with the wifi-beta as long as I don't add the line /sbin/dhcpd to rc.d local. Whenever I do it refuses to boot. It works fine with the exact same setup on my 600e. I even copied and pasted the 2 lines from one to the other to make sure there were no tybos. I also ran into the same problem on my 770z with puppy 1.0.3.

Is there another way to setup auto dhcp?

Don't think I stand much of a chance on these 366mhz machines for the dvd's

When this machine is finished I will add it to the working laptops list woth a link to a simple howto. Don't quite understand the whole wiki thing yet but I am learning.
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Bruce B

#17 Post by Bruce B »

Just to make sure I'm on the same page with you about one thing.

As I understand it, the grub framebuffer support != X framebuffer support.

BTW - I think there is a pupget for X framebuffer but I don't know if it works.

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#18 Post by peppyy »

I am using the nfs-puppy version 1.0.4 with XFree86. It looks really nice except for a slight blue shadow to the left of certain text. You have to know your display details before you set it up because it writes the config file before starting x.

I know in debian there is a way to run a wizzard but I don.t have that version on any machines anymore so I am not sure what the command was. I am pretty sure it had to be done in commald line and not a terminal though.
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keenerd
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#19 Post by keenerd »

I did change a few things, but if anything there should be more compatability. Hrm.

Could you run the debug script for each version of WAG? It generates a debug.txt file which contains log of actions and errors. The 0.2.6 debug script is
/root/my-roxapps/WAG/debug
The 0.3.0 debug script is located at
/usr/local/WAG/debug

You'll have to re-install either version before running the appropriate debug script. With any luck, I can have this fixed quickly.

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#20 Post by peppyy »

Ohhhhh, I should have read that request before I packed them up. I am going to show 2 of the laptops tomorrow. I am 95% sure the ibm 600e is gone, Sold so the tecra may return. If they don't buy both I will see if I can get the debugs for you.

I got the wifi-beta working by adding a 5 second delay between the ndiswrapper and the dhcpcd in rc.d local and haven't played with WAG again yet.
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