How I got an old Thinkpad 570 running with Puppy

What works, and doesn't, for you. Be specific, and please include Puppy version.
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Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

How I got an old Thinkpad 570 running with Puppy

#1 Post by Spielmops »

I inherited an old Thinkpad 570 (no letter in front of the number!), build-year 1999 with docking-station. Pentium II, 333Mhz, 6Gbyte HD. Installed is Windows 98 - first edition. The thing is looking good, everything is working so far (after inserting a new BIOS-battery) and it has a PCMCIA-slot. And I have a wireless-card for cardbus (that is PCMCIA). I did not get Windows accepting the card, so this was a case for Linux. Puppy-Linux, because soldered RAM is 64GB and I inserted another 128MB. That makes about 200GB RAM - not enough for a normal todays OS.

First choice was Puppy-linux 4.2 multiuser (i had some experience with that). That was running flawless from scratch, but it has real old apps. So ...

Next try was Puppy-Wary 5.5. Running flawless, but did not see my old IDE-harddisk - that kernel is compiled without "ata_piix"-driver. I wanted to install Puppy on the harddisk, so I had to find, if there is a version of Wary with this driver.

Next try: Wary 5.3: same result

Fourth try Puppy 4.3.1. same result.

Next try: "And Now for Something Completely Different" - Tiny-Linux Core Plus. A modern OS (Kernel 4.8) and running. But bad GUI, nothing I want to work with.

OK: if this old mashine is running with a modern OS, why don't I try:

5. Puppy Slacko 6.3. Starting as good as the other versions, sees my harddisk, but without sound. No soundcard except pc-speaker despite the loaded driver. Hmmm! I heard something about "Slacko with bad sound-support, so let's try ...

6. Puppy Tahr 6.05. Exact the same: no sound.

I explored the list of loaded modules, compared it with the same list in older Puppies: exact the same. I looked everywhere in blacklist-files, in init-files, alsa-files and so on. everything was good, but no sound.

One day later and several hours of research - here is the result and the reason of no sound:
https://wiki.debian.org/snd-cs46xx.
The kernel in Slacko 6.3 ist 3.14. and with this version there is no firmware in the "snd-cs46xx"-driver. I searched for this firmware, found it and stored it in /lib/firmware/cs46xx/. After the next start the sound-card appeared and sound is OK. This Thinkpad makes a very good sound, can supply any party with music without amplifier ....

Now I have a good running 18 year old computer, which is a little bit slow, but so am I - I'm retired, I have time ...

Spielmops[/url]

cthisbear
Posts: 4422
Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#2 Post by cthisbear »

Spielmops:


Specs:

https://www.cnet.com/products/ibm-think ... ies/specs/

Hey mate welcome to Puppy.

Amazing that you got Slacko running on it.

Pity that it doesn't have a cd????

because you could extract the >>>Slacko 6.3.sfs
to your hard drive and boot from that file after the cd starts.

Cheap Frugal method...like adding ram... a Puppy exclusive.

It would look like this in lowercase.

puppy_slacko_6.3.2.sfs

Chris.

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#3 Post by bigpup »

because soldered RAM is 64GB and I inserted another 128MB. That makes about 200GB RAM - not enough for a normal todays OS.
I am going to assume you are really saying it now has about 200MB of RAM.

Still a low number, but usable.

Puppy will use the lowest amount of memory to boot to a desktop, if you do a full install of Puppy to the hard drive.
Programs will start a little slower, but the needed memory will be available.

A Linux swap partition, on the hard drive, will also help with low memory.
Make it about 512MB in size.

Stick to only running one program at a time and it should work OK.
Do not have a lot of browser windows open at one time.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

#4 Post by Spielmops »

Amazing that you got Slacko running on it.

Pity that it doesn't have a cd????
How do you think I got all those puppies running? This machine does not boot from USB. The Docking-bay has an optical drive.
because you could extract the >>>Slacko 6.3.sfs
to your hard drive and boot from that file after the cd starts.
What I said is: "wanted to install Puppy on harddisk". And I did that! Full install.
I am going to assume you are really saying it now has about 200MB of RAM.
Still a low number, but usable.
You say that! At least if you start Firefox. Thats the point where you are happy to create a swap-partition along with the installation.

Spielmops

Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

Thinkpad 570 and S2RAM

#5 Post by Spielmops »

Suspend to RAM works, if you don't disable ACPI (acpi=force at boot is not necessary). But after waking up I found

- the ACPI-Daemon working with at least 60% CPU. Killing that daemon and restart was the solution,

- the WLAN-connection lost. Reason: the dhcp-Daemon got killed and did not restart at wakeup. Solution: start that daemon.

So I wrote the following lines into the file /etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh

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dhcpcd
/etc/init.d/rc.acpi restart
the end of that file should look like this:

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# process at recovery from suspend
#restartwm
modprobe ehci_hcd
#/etc/rc.d/rc.network restart
dhcpcd
/etc/init.d/rc.acpi restart

rm -f "$LOCKFILE"

The original-file had the character " after LOCKFILE missing and the "new line" at the end, which produced errors ...

Spielmops

Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

Unpleasant experiences with additional software

#6 Post by Spielmops »

Rox-filer is - for me - shit! I need a filemanager with steady window-size and a folder-tree. That is Thunar.

Installing Thunar went as expected fine, but running Thunar failed with "missing-lib-error". I had to create 3 symbolic links in /usr/lib/::

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ln -s libthunarx-2.so.0 libthunarx-2.so.0.0.0
ln -s libexo-1.so.0 libexo-1.0.1.0
ln -s libxfce4ui-1.so.0 libxfce4ui-1.so.0.0.0
and now I have my filemanager running

Next thing was Midori. Install went in two steps, because the dependencies are not so clear. The second install was "glib.networking" and "libproxy".

At the first start Midori claimed:

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(midori4:12190): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: Settings schema 'org.gnome.system.proxy' is not installed

Trace/Breakpoint ausgelöst
I had to search for an hour: you have to install

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gsettings-desktop-themes
Ok, I did this and Midori startet ....

..... 3 times at once! I had to edit:

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/usr/share/applications/midori.desktop
There are 3 lines with the keyword "exec" (for midori, midori-new-window, midori-new-tab). Comment two of those lines out and everything is fine.

Spielmops

Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

Thunar doesn't show any icons

#7 Post by Spielmops »

Thunar did not show icons but the desktop-icon. No folder-icon! After 2 hours of searching I found:

the folder-icon has to be named: inode-directory.svg

File-format has to be SVG !

So cd to the directory:

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cd /usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/places
and make a symbolic-link:

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ln -s folder.svg inode-directory.svg
If you like an icon with a nicer color better, search for one (eg. Wikipedia), but it has to be *.svg !

For thumbnails install: tumbler.

Spielmops

User avatar
Dixie Dog
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 25 Mar 2018, 13:26

#8 Post by Dixie Dog »

Slacko 6.3.0

I use it for for my HiFi Good as any digital sound source I can find.

Spielmops
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017, 20:25

#9 Post by Spielmops »

I have a similar Laptop, year 2005 with Intel Celeron - 1 core. It has a i586-architecture and most linux-distributions share x86_64-builts. So that reduces the range. My choice was Mageia, which I tried with a live-version. I was so impressed, that I installed that live-version half an hour later. It is pretty good configuered, has a comfortable admin-tool (grafical) and runs fine.

Spielmops

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