Puppy tested working laptops (Updated Oct 30/06)

[SnowDog]

I decided to make this post of laptops running puppy. I will edit the list by adding to it as I test and install on various models.

Laptops (Running Puppy 2.01)

IBM ThinkPad 380ED
Configuration:
40Mb Ram, 2 Gig HDD (128Mb swap + balance EXT2)
Posting via Xircom PCMCIA Modem/Lan Combo Card - Shared connection from router. Modem detects on /dev/ttys3.
Grub installed to MBR, menu.lst edited to:
timeout 1
default 0

Performance
Is as one might expect of an old machine with little ram.
It boots in 60 seconds from off to desktop, but initial opening of some apps (like seamonkey) leaves lots of time for bathroom breaks, etc.
Seamonkey = aprx. 30 seconds on first load.
Abiword = 28 seconds (while aleady running Seamonkey and playing a CD.

Glitches:

Depending on whether you have any partitions already on the drive (and what type they are), you may be prevented from changing them with GParted, once you get into puppy, because they may be locked. The easiest solution I've found, is to boot from a boot floppy first (windoze one will work) and run fdisk to delete all partitions before booting Puppy.

This machine will not boot a 2.01 Puppy CD (at least mine won't), the boot fails. To get around this, boot from a wakepup floppy, with the cd in the tray, but ejected. once you see the text (freedos) appear on screen, close the cd tray quickly and it will boot okay.

You need to choose xorg in video choices (on this and many other machines with Neomagic graphics chips), and click through until testx screen appears, then hit ctrl+alt+backspace, then slect done. Now it will boot into desktop.

If using GParted to make swap space and ext 2 for Puppy installation, it may fail to apply settings. If you have this trouble, just open (pdisk) from control panel and choose to delete all partitions and write the changes. It may report an error after writing changes to disk, but it will be okay once you reboot. Again, it's easier to just floppy boot to start with and delete the partitions, unless you have and need to keep windoze on one of them.

When running puppy on this TP, sometimes static (looking) grey lines appear accross screen. (like a 1.5 inch band of tiny white/grey scribbles) accross the choices buttons in a pop-up browser message. Minimizing the window affected then restoring it seems to cure this.

Once installed, I find that MUT doesn't display the cd drive, so I replaced the desktop shortcut with one to pmount, which does show the cd.

Sound:
Sound works too!
I did a detect (all other) sound cards (again) with Alsa, first time it froze up & I had to shut it off & reboot manually.
Second time was the charm and it decided it likes a CS4236, I saved the config. and after a reboot I have a cd playing in Gplay.

Incidentally, for anyone who might find one of these beasts in a flea market, dumpster, etc...
My experiences tell me that their batteries seem to last longer than many others (in years) and can often be revived from a state of dead to a state of usable, with continuous charge/discharge cycles.

Overall, I'd say that running Puppy, these should make a really good value laptop for everyday surfing, e-mail, light office apps, etc.

Running Puppy 1.09 CE:
Dell latitute CPi (Pii 266)
128Mb Ram, 4 Gig HDD (128Mb Swap + Balance EXT2)
Linksys WPC11 Wifi Card on Ad-hoc Linksys router (shared dial-up)
Haven't found anything that doesn't work yet.
Apps load fast (love having Firefox)