My computer's senility is getting worse :(

[Pizzasgood]

Some of you may know that my computer once started forgetting stuff about the floppy drive. It would mistake it for a big floppy, or even forget it existed. I checked the plugs and even replaced the BIOS battery, but it made no difference. I got sick of the error messages interrupting my booting process, so I unplugged the drive.

Occasionally, it has forgotten the cd drive too, but it always comes back after a reboot or two.

Today, my brother tried booting into Windows to play some games. However, it claims that it can't find an operating system. It's not Windows, though, because it should go to the lilo boot-menu. But it doesn't. I seems that it thinks there are no operating systems on the harddrives. It works with the cd drive, though, because I'm in Puppy right now. This doesn't bother me much because all my files are still on the harddrive and I don't use Windows or Vector anymore anyways, but now my brother can't use the computer (all he uses it for is games, mainly BYOND, which I haven't gotten going in Wine yet). I don't blame the thing, because it's pretty old, but it is annoying. I suspect that it's the old harddrive's fault. I have a new 80 gigger as the second harddrive, so if it doesn't start working I'll have to try switching them and getting that one set to boot.

I might have to build him a "new" computer before I go to college. I've always wanted to build one, and there are a lot of new parts in this old computer. I'd just need a new case, motherboard and processor. I can keep the ram, graphics card, sound card, wireless card, harddrives, floppy (if it's not the floppy drive that's broken), and cdrw drive. The monitor's still useable too (it has small patches that are off color that seem to dissappear every now and then, then pop up somewhere else later, but they're small enough to be insignificant).

[Flash]

Building a computer is pretty much a no-brainer with new components if you do due diligence in choosing them, but I doubt you'll find a current production motherboard that can use your old memory, and certainly not a bleeding-edge microprocessor that can, so you better plan on buying a processor, motherboard and RAM. On the plus side, the on-board graphics on many new motherboards is adequate for most everything except games, and the on-board sound is as good as anything.

[Ted Dog]

That started to happen to me on a motherboard (CD drive was the last to go) the Motherboards IDE support started to act up but distroyed my 80 g HD before I figure it out. At the time all my money was locked-up so I started to find linux distros that only required CD drive & memory. I found Beatrix and modified it to support playing DVDs, surfing the web, QEMU etc. Windows was the first causality followed by my Suse linux (had it for years, fiddled and twicked to my liking) lost everything. But I was to late to save the drive. So if the drive is working and not being activity used, physically remove it. So that when the MB finally goes boots-up (dies) It goes by itself.
That is oddly how I ended up using PUPPY 1.01. Now with the multi-session DVD, I could build a replacement w/o HD, and spend money on RAM. totally doable for two hundred.
BTW its a good idea to request one from Santa, timing is right.

Otherwise any Santa's out there with a gift for pizzasgood. He has been good to us.

[Maud_Dib]

The parts for My newest LC ( Linux Computer ) are showing up tomorrow !
AMD 64 X2 3800+ at 2.0 GHz ! Dual Core ! Woo Hoo !
Motherboard is a Gigabyte brand model K8N51GMF-9 GF6100
with gigabit ethernet , firewire , USB 2.0 and onboard graphics & sound.
A Giga Byte of DDR400 Ram ( 512 X 2 )
A 580 Watt Power supply
and a TOSHIBA DVD Burner Model SD-R5372V

Gonna have me some fun tomorrow night !

MD

[aahhaaa]

PG- you might try eBay for an exact replacement mobo for that machine, should be peanuts & might even get a quicker P-III with it. The sleazy sellers won't be into old hardware prob'ly eBay even has a Wanted spot you could use. Watch those shipping charges tho!

Seriously, we need you here on a working machine.
I'd recommend an EPIA mobo for you, unless you need a lot of slots. One Gig CPU on a 7" square mobo; USB 2, Firewire, serial, parallel, Cat5, card readers, AGP & 5.1 sound onboard for $150 or less. Uses any ATX, mini ATX, ITX case & PS. Fits the less is more Puppy philosophy perfectly.

Or scout around for orphaned machines. People are always trying to give them to Salvation Army to the point where they won't take them. Pass the word at businesses you use, even put a sign up at laundromats, cafeteria, etc.

Usually you won't get a good monitor this way, but you could get lucky. Mostly the older machines have their WOS tied in knots & are otherwise good- some are dirty inside but all have parts you can use (like floppy drives).

Hope this helps!

[aahhaaa]

PG- afterthought... you know, you do qualify as a developer with your own distro out. You'd get a lot of good references here too.

You might want to check into developer perks with the hardware guys, they always need interesting things for trade shows & such. PizzaPup would look good in a gamer case, I'd say...

MD- cool but cruel

[Maud_Dib]

MD- cool but cruel

Where's the "Cruel" come from?

PG- Where are you Located ? Some one here might be able to ship you Somthing ?
I have a Compaq K6-2 with 256 MB sitting here ! worked fine , Last time I powerd it up !

I've been saving for my new comp for 6 Months , sorry if I'm a little to excited about it ...
MD

[Flash]

Hey, I happen to have a VIA 800 MHz CPU that is a direct replacement for a socket 370 PIII. It runs fine with only a heat sink, no CPU fan. Actually it will run for a while without even a heat sink, but since it got too hot to hold my thumb on I didn't run it for long without a heat sink. Anyone have a use for it?

[Pizzasgood]

Seriously, we need you here on a working machine.

At the most, even if my pc went up in flames after posting this, I'd be back by January. I'm mostly trying to keep this running for my brother (we share it). I'm getting a laptop before I go to college, and if I needed to, I could scrounge up enough money to get one after Christmas. And, come to think about it, I could commandeer my sister's computer in the meantime.

MD, I think he was reffering to your showing off when I'm not doing so great. I don't mind though. I've developed the habit of not reading other people's specs.

For the motherboard/processor, I'm not planning on going big, so ram shouldn't be a problem. As for my ram itself, I'm not sure how old it is. My mom bought some a couple years ago for my old computer, but it was incompatible or something. My uncle repairs old computers, so he gave me one of his for free which is what I use now. I'm not sure whether he stuck that ram in or found some other ram though. He has bags of the stuff. He also has old monitors filling a shelf, but I think this one will last a good bit. At the moment, the top right corner is a little blue, but it works great otherwise. It probably just got banged once. We hauled it from Minnesota to Georgia, after all.


@TedDog
That doesn't sound very good But wouldn't that make the harddrive inaccessable? I can get in from Puppy like there's nothing wrong. It just wont boot anything. I don't have much experience with hardware, but that makes me think it's the harddrive itself. It's an old 2GB drive that came with the computer. I mean, when my uncle gave it to me. No way of knowing whether it's the original.
I guess I'll just have to try getting it to boot from the other drive to check. If it is the mobo, I might need to get myself a multisession cd. I made one attempt when I upgraded to 1.0.6, but I think it ignored me and finalized the disk. It definately didn't work, and I just wanted to try it rather than use it, so I didn't try again.
Regardless, I'm due for some backing up anyways. Now I know what one of my first projects will be for Thanksgiving break :rool:

Yeah, I think I'll snoop around eBay when I get a chance.

As for Santa, he was going to be supplying me with some new video games this year. I'm unemployed because I'm lazy,have a buisy school schedule (and school comes first), and don't really need money at the moment. I have no car, so gas isn't a problem, no girlfriend, so dates aren't a problem, and I don't drink pop or coffee or do drugs, so I don't need to buy any of that stuff either. (And yes, I did just lump soda and coffee in with drugs.) So, the only thing I've been missing out on is games, and I haven't been playing them much lately anyways. I definately need to get some of the ones comming out, though. Especially if my computer dies There's always my birthday, though.


Wow. That post was longer than I thought it'd be. Summary: I need to isolate the problem this weekend, then look into fixing it. Meanwhile, I'll backup my stuff. Thanks for the tips. Hardware is definately one of the areas I'm not very knoledgeble about (especially motherboards), but this is as good of a time to learn.

And never fear. I can always get a temporary dirt system from my uncle. Puppy will run on it like it's an olympic track until I get my laptop.

[Ted Dog]

When you buy (or help someone pick it out) your college laptop try booting it with different versions of puppy. Laptops are the worst for the DVD burn success. I had like problems with version 1.06 and spent a week trying to find out why it behaved as it did. I ended up retrying my DeVilDog.iso ( which does no pre-checking on DVD types, tries or dies ) It doesn't complain. It worked for every DVD type I had...... UNTIL I got a 'deep discounted' a red 8XHP DVD-R from Office Depot 100pk, It will only burn one session on every DVD drive, computer and OS that I own. So that, hopefully will not be a trend. It had the same results you wrote earlier. One way to know flip the DVD-R over and see the width of the burn-band it should be only the width of the side of a nickel, about 3mm however, bad DVD-Rs the band is nearly the width of my finger, 12mm
Hint about college and money, It will be the last big thing you parents, relatives and older friends will give to you, (since you are not a girl ) enjoy! Send thank you cards, buy now when they are off season. If you have already picked a college let us know where to write the recommendation letters, it helps to get scholarships. (I promise to spell check mine )

[aahhaaa]

on your intended laptop & any added RAM, some models have heat probs- check their forums to see if that's an issue.

Lobster did a post today about getting his family to use Puppy; I suggested a gaming approach to disguise the learning curve for those phobicized by winders. Those people are the real challenge for Linux growth.
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... ght=#23796

I'd guess that you'd be the one here most likely to figure a way to make learning Linux seem more like a fun game and less like pick-up-sticks.

just a thought for your next distro...

TD- on really old mobos, sometimes it's a good idea to just replace the CMOS battery. Your symptoms might be corrupted BIOS issue, if unplugged with a weak battery, chip may reset to default & lose location of the right drivers.

[Flash]

Pizza, it sounds to me like you're an ideal candidate for a Puppy multisession DVD. A DVD holds more than that hard drive you spoke of, and you can get best quality DVD burners for under $60 these days.

[Pizzasgood]

I'd guess that you'd be the one here most likely to figure a way to make learning Linux seem more like a fun game and less like pick-up-sticks.

The very first thing I thought after that was this:
Hmm.... Maybe if it talked... "Hiedy Ho good user!" ...maybe not...
(yes, that's a "Mr. Wilson" from "Home Improvement" imatation...)

Unfortuantely, the only things I can think of to make it easier are having everything work with as little input as necsissary, descriptive names, and not assuming the user knows anything. I might actually be able to come up with something better if I think it over though. My dad knows next to nothing about computers, mostly because he doesn't use them. We seem to share the same mindset about most things, so with a little effort I could probably pretend I was Dad, turn on my computer, and see what I don't like.


I don't really feel like putting anymore money into this computer other than upgrading the mobo and processor, seeing as I won't be using it much longer. So, no DVD unless my brother someday decides to add one. Besides, unless Gates makes a multisession Windows, DVD won't help my bro play "Space Station 13." It is kind of pitiful that a little disk has more capacity than that harddrive, though Good thing I have the 80 gigger to back it up.

In about a half hour I'm going to start backing up my stuff, then I'm going to play around with stuff. If I can't get the harddrive to boot, I'm going to try putting it in my sister's computer just to make sure it's not the harddrive (If she lets me, that is). If it is the drive, I'll try swapping it with the new one. Otherwise, I'm going to be heading on over to eBay and singing a new song:

I'm surfin' eBay
(I'm surfin' eBay)
'cause I'm poor you know
('cause I'm poor you know)
and my old harddrive
(and my old harddrive)
won't boot no mo
(won't boot no mo)

[Flash]

...I don't really feel like putting anymore money into this computer other than upgrading the mobo and processor, seeing as I won't be using it much longer. So, no DVD unless my brother someday decides to add one. Besides, unless Gates makes a multisession Windows, DVD won't help my bro play "Space Station 13." It is kind of pitiful that a little disk has more capacity than that harddrive, though Good thing I have the 80 gigger to back it up.

In about a half hour I'm going to start backing up my stuff...

A DVD burner is useful for more than just running multisession Puppy. Actually, putting games on multisession live DVDs (or CDs) sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I don't know why game developers wouldn't do it. That way the state of a game in progress could be saved to the DVD so that the next time the DVD is booted the game resumes where it left off. Perhaps game developers could be encouraged to develop games for multisession Puppy.

You don't say what media you're backing up on. I assume it's the 80 GB hard drive. For the benefit of those who back up to CDs it's worth noting that a DVD will hold 6 times as much as a CD, but costs less than 6 times as much. DVDs are also more rugged; the data layer is sandwiched between equal thicknesses of plastic in a DVD, while protected by only the thickness of the paint on the backside of a CD.

[Ted Dog]

I updated mine and here is the layout
WindowXP 4.25G | linux swap 1G | linux ext3 10G | vfat32 remainder of drive
no extended partitions

WindowsXP is backed up using growisofs:

Code: Select all

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/hda 

(15minutes on my machine)
restored using: in puppy of course.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/dvd of=/dev/hda

(25mins)

Which is faster than scubbing the weekly new virus, removing bloat, reinstall, etc.

Windows swap I moved to D:drive (vfat32)

Sadly I tried to boot using the DVDimage of windows but it doesn't work. someday I'll try booting with QEMU

I see they are making a unionfs version for windows, so there is hope someday in the next decade that windows could multisession.

With one DVD-R you could backup/restore the entire slow harddrive, with two DVD-R's you can backup windows, wipe clean HD, install Puppy to HD, backup puppy to second DVD, restore Windows from first DVD whenever your Bro. wants to play. or restore puppy from second DVD. using two DVD-RW you can even save changes (same commands as above )

[Pizzasgood]

Actually, by backup I meant copying 280 some megabytes of compressed files to a cd (plus 140 I had from a previous backup). The only stuff I'll lose if I totall screw up is about two gigabytes of music (they're wavs at the moment, that's why they're so big) and a hundred megabytes of wallpapers, most of which I won't ever use anyways. I might have to mess with the big drive (which is where everything good is anyways) in the end if it turns out that the old drive is at fault, so that's why I used a cd.

Yeah, I know the advantages of dvds. I'm just not spending $60 on a drive I'll use for 6 months or less when I can just use cds for now. My laptop will hopefully come with one. If not, I'll get one eventually.

[Pizzasgood]

Whew! I got lucky. Turns out it was just a corrupted master boot record. Popped in the Western Digital Data Lifeguard cd that came with my newer harddrive, booted, fiddled around, found an "update mbr" button, clicked, and POOF! All better. Except my Lilo is gone, but I can get that back later. I don't use Vector anymore anyways. Other than running Apache with chroot from Puppy and logging in once to play with Lilo, I haven't used it in months.

I don't know how it got messed up, though, because it's been a month since I messed with Lilo.

And, I got a good benifit out of all this: I finally got around to backing up some stuff! I also learned that that disk is bootable. I don't think I knew that until today. Doesn't understand linux partitions, though. Now, what's next on my list? Hmm.... Maybe I'll start on PersonalPan Puppy tomorrow....

Oh, and I'm going to pretend to be Dad sometime when I have nothing better to do.

[aahhaaa]

I updated mine and here is the layout
WindowXP 4.25G | linux swap 1G | linux ext3 10G | vfat32 remainder of drive
no extended partitions

WindowsXP is backed up using growisofs:

Code: Select all

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/hda 

(15minutes on my machine)
restored using: in puppy of course.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/dvd of=/dev/hda

(25mins)

Which is faster than scubbing the weekly new virus, removing bloat, reinstall, etc.

Windows swap I moved to D:drive (vfat32)

Sadly I tried to boot using the DVDimage of windows but it doesn't work. someday I'll try booting with QEMU

I see they are making a unionfs version for windows, so there is hope someday in the next decade that windows could multisession.

With one DVD-R you could backup/restore the entire slow harddrive, with two DVD-R's you can backup windows, wipe clean HD, install Puppy to HD, backup puppy to second DVD, restore Windows from first DVD whenever your Bro. wants to play. or restore puppy from second DVD. using two DVD-RW you can even save changes (same commands as above )

Ted- this'd make a nice tutorial