Inspiron 8500 video problem in Tahr
Posted: Fri 06 Oct 2017, 03:07
Inspiron 8500 2004 upgraded to 512MB RAM with a replaced hard drive, dead wifi slot, dead USB, dead right mouse button.
Gorgeous sound, lovely keyboard, lovely non-glare screen, but something about the wide screen confuses xorgwizard
in tahr 6.05. Lucid 2016 video works fine. 1280x800 nvidia. Google has messed up youtube to the point where mplayer
from 2010 cannot handle most of the files (with smtube copied over to lupu along with required libraries and cacert.pem).
Lupu was upgraded to glibc 2.11.
I downloaded the tahr iso and did mount -o loop to extract the files then ran grub4dos.
Tahr needs more RAM even though I killed everything possible (clipit, firewall, ....)
and eventually everything froze up, twice.
VLC (under smtube) tells me recent changes to Youtube make some files unplayable.
I attempted to install mplayer2 in case it worked better (and then try to make it work in lupu 2016).
It crashed without saving updates, smtube, or mplayer2 (which I can download on some other computer).
Mplayer2 works with movgrab to play mp4s as they download and the lupu mplayer does not.
I next attempted to test Slacko 6.3.0 but 'wrong file type' - what file type is the Slacko iso?
Will Tahr or Slacko 6 smtube play all Youtube videos (with player more recent than 2010)?
I next tried to play Youtube directly with html5 (since Flash appears to have disappeared - despite libflash being
present and using either of two add-ons to evoke it, or editing about:config to do the same). In Pale Moon there is
no choice of resolutions, only 360p. Seamonkey 2.46 (last version to work in lupu) offers 144p 240p 360p 480p (maybe more)
and I could watch videos at 240p (since 360p is too memory or cpu or gpu intensive and the picture stalls).
Seamonkey is too memory intensive. It has worked other places where Pale Moon failed (I forget where).
When it works, smtube is flawless at 360p. 480p always displays at 240p. My laptops cannot handle 720p.
At least half the youtube URLs no longer work with smtube/mplayer from 2010.
movgrab might download something that mplayer1 can handle.
Another option is a Droid X with hdmi to VGA adapter and a small LCD screen.
I also use an Inspiron 8100 and have 8200, another 8500, 5150 (I gave away the 5100), 600M,
Latitude D505, and had a Latitude D600. 2001-2004. Also a dead 8000 from 2000.
They all appear to work well with Lupu and the 2.6 kernel.
But not a 2005 DELL B130 (or a 2200) both with b43 wifi card (which requires Tahr or ndiswrapper)
and screwy video requiring a kernel 3 (which has no fb support).
Gorgeous sound, lovely keyboard, lovely non-glare screen, but something about the wide screen confuses xorgwizard
in tahr 6.05. Lucid 2016 video works fine. 1280x800 nvidia. Google has messed up youtube to the point where mplayer
from 2010 cannot handle most of the files (with smtube copied over to lupu along with required libraries and cacert.pem).
Lupu was upgraded to glibc 2.11.
I downloaded the tahr iso and did mount -o loop to extract the files then ran grub4dos.
Tahr needs more RAM even though I killed everything possible (clipit, firewall, ....)
and eventually everything froze up, twice.
VLC (under smtube) tells me recent changes to Youtube make some files unplayable.
I attempted to install mplayer2 in case it worked better (and then try to make it work in lupu 2016).
It crashed without saving updates, smtube, or mplayer2 (which I can download on some other computer).
Mplayer2 works with movgrab to play mp4s as they download and the lupu mplayer does not.
I next attempted to test Slacko 6.3.0 but 'wrong file type' - what file type is the Slacko iso?
Will Tahr or Slacko 6 smtube play all Youtube videos (with player more recent than 2010)?
I next tried to play Youtube directly with html5 (since Flash appears to have disappeared - despite libflash being
present and using either of two add-ons to evoke it, or editing about:config to do the same). In Pale Moon there is
no choice of resolutions, only 360p. Seamonkey 2.46 (last version to work in lupu) offers 144p 240p 360p 480p (maybe more)
and I could watch videos at 240p (since 360p is too memory or cpu or gpu intensive and the picture stalls).
Seamonkey is too memory intensive. It has worked other places where Pale Moon failed (I forget where).
When it works, smtube is flawless at 360p. 480p always displays at 240p. My laptops cannot handle 720p.
At least half the youtube URLs no longer work with smtube/mplayer from 2010.
movgrab might download something that mplayer1 can handle.
Another option is a Droid X with hdmi to VGA adapter and a small LCD screen.
I also use an Inspiron 8100 and have 8200, another 8500, 5150 (I gave away the 5100), 600M,
Latitude D505, and had a Latitude D600. 2001-2004. Also a dead 8000 from 2000.
They all appear to work well with Lupu and the 2.6 kernel.
But not a 2005 DELL B130 (or a 2200) both with b43 wifi card (which requires Tahr or ndiswrapper)
and screwy video requiring a kernel 3 (which has no fb support).