Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Lobster · Posted: Sat 26 Apr 2008, 10:05 Post subject:

Another option is the emerging mini laptops - here is a roundup
http://www.liliputing.com/2008/04/over-past-six-months-or-so-asus-everex_24.html

and here are some frugal PC builder resources . . .
http://tinyurl.com/66d5c6

mechmike · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 88 Location: Pelham, AL

Lobster, that FreeGeek link (the second one) is great!

Bookmarked, and going on my blog...

prehistoric · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 1210

Aitch · Joined: 04 Apr 2007 Posts: 6825 Location: Chatham, Kent, UK

Hi Chris667

What an amazingly uninformative website Viglen have!!
I've tried everywhere, but could not find any specs for this little £99++ box!
What processor/speed?
Does it run on an internal laptop psu, or external 12v transformer unit?
What memory is installed/upgradeable to?
Even the downloadable pdf didn't tell me anything

Shame

Aitch
Edit
Please post how you get on with installing Puppy onto it
And especially whether the bios has a bootable usb/Ext CD setting

chris667 · Joined: 01 Apr 2008 Posts: 32

It's terrible isn't it? I haven't looked at it tonight, the weather was nice. I've just installed puppy onto a USB flash drive, which I will use to install to the Viglen. The BIOS setup allows you to choose it as a boot option, and recognises a USB keyboard (have you ever tried to get into the bios setup of a new dell? Twisted Evil

)
I only had a brief look at the machine, after a short, brief struggle with Xubuntu I had to switch the machine off and make myself a cup of tea. It has a 40GB hard disk.
Will look at it properly with puppy tomorrow though, watch this space. Cool

mechmike · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 88 Location: Pelham, AL

Sage · Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 4638 Location: GB

Viglen has had a chequered history. Some of the early machines were good but a little overpriced. They went into a spin when everyone else was crashing into bankruptcy. It passed into Mr Sugar's hands and made good custom machines at good prices for a while, but the badge was again passed on. Not sure who owns the label now. Proprietary HW is usually a bad choice. This technology is so new and advancing so rapidly that it needs fullest user access to keep it tweaked, despite the fact that neophytes can break it! One learns rather quickly when one's own £/€/$ are at risk.

Xbuntu is tripe - they should line the developers up against the wall. It isn't proper Xfce, but a Gnomish version. It is broken. I hate Gnome; it is, like KDE overbloated, but without the intuitive UI. Can't see any reason to settle for anything except a properly developed Xfce distro these days, except, of course, for super-compact offerings.

chris667 · Joined: 01 Apr 2008 Posts: 32

I'm currently viewing this website on it, using Puppy 3.00 and Seamonkey as a live-cd. It's all sort of working now.
Here's a more thorough spec:
Processor: AMD Geode 399Mhz
Memory: 256MB
Hard drive: 40GB.
It has 4 x USB 2.0 Ports and 2 x USB 1.0. It can only boot from a device connected via USB 1.0, though, so slow.
We couldn't get it to work at first, but it's booted up puppy after a fashion.
Still, I'd rather have a limping, out of date Puppy than the default Xubuntu anyday.
I think I might put this machine away until I receive the Puppy unleashed CD I ordered yesterday. Cool

capoverde · Posted: Mon 28 Apr 2008, 04:01 Post subject:

Hi there,

compliments to all for your efforts to Puppy-ize all kinds of computers around, it's a sport I also like in the non-commercial version, i. e. garbage-recycling -- so much PC hardware gets thrown away, and often quite good stuff! Lots to learn for free.

Last one in my list of roadside PCs is a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic 400 (Pentium III/500) whose PSU went KO: replaced it and works fine. Puppy is quite at ease there, runs without a glitch and does everything (sound, net etc) -- just like on 4 previous slower machines, only faster.

@Sage: thanks for the Kolibri hint! Didn't know this one, immediately downloaded it.

prehistoric · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 1210

@mechmike,

I found the problem with that $25 Compaq iPaq desktop. This is one of those that fall in the "can't happen" category. There was nothing wrong with the entire machine in the case: processor, memory, disk, I/O, ethernet port, etc.

It was shipped with a new-looking power cord with a broken conductor. Rolling Eyes

mechmike · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 88 Location: Pelham, AL

Sorry - wireless hiccup = double-post...

mechmike · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 88 Location: Pelham, AL

Yogi · Joined: 19 Aug 2005 Posts: 177

Please keep me(us) informed on your progress with the iPaQ 500 MHz. I just bought one yesterday to fool around with. I plan to make it my road trip PC. Gonna use Mean Puppy w/opera on it.

prehistoric · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 1210

Hi Yogi,

First a clarification: this is an iPaq desktop, not the iPaq handheld. The weight is significant and you may not want to cart it around. If I was going to be carting this around, I'd probably replace the HD with CF in an IDE adapter. This would improve speed and reduce the chance of losing everything in a head crash.

Here's where I'm reporting on problems found in testing 3.02 , Chihuahua, on it. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28481&start=30

Aside from the power cord problem, I've had to download the manual to find out how to reset the BIOS password. Installing Puppy to the HD on another machine, and moving the drive, took care of my installation problems. I partitioned the 8.4 GB drive with a 500 MB swap partition and two ext2 partitions. I've used a manual frugal install from USB drive, or copying across a network for everything after that first installation.

I got 3.01 working pretty much as advertised, (just had to adjust the monitor instead of using xvidtune). At the moment, I'm testing 3.02 and Muppy-Mini-008.3 as frugal installs and preparing to do a full install on a different partition. I still have the 128 MB RAM it was shipped with installed, for software testing with little memory. If I was going to use this heavily, I'd probably replace one or both DIMMs with 256 MB PC100 SDRAM. Even adding 64 MB by replacing one 64 MB DIMM with 128 MB would make a significant improvement.

Does this help?

prehistoric

Yogi · Joined: 19 Aug 2005 Posts: 177

Hello prehistoric,

Yeah, I bought the iPaq 500mhz Celeron w/128mb ram and 4gb hd from the same place you did. $25 w/free shipping. Just waiting for it to arrive. I just need it primarily for internet. Who knows, I might be surprised what this thing can do. I think I've got some old
sdram in the closet. 128mb should be enough for Mean Puppy but the more the better, right? What I'm really hoping is this little pc is quiet. Do you know does it use a cpu fan?
Also, how's the performance so far?