Cheap machines ideal for Puppy

Message

prehistoric · #91 Post by **prehistoric** » Tue 08 Jul 2008, 05:03

@Aitch,

Alright Aitch, I guess you can't lighten up, even for a moment.

So, here's the explanation, the licensing started years before Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653. Calling Cromwell a dictator sounds pretty grim, calling him a monarch puts him on a par with other rulers of England. Check on how many of those either dissolved parliament, usurped parliamentary powers, or never bothered to call it into session, before you object that there's a fundamental difference. Considered as a monarch, Cromwell didn't do all that badly, compared to near contemporaries. (Consider the earlier effects of Henry VIII or Mary Tudor on people with differing religious opinions. Consider the situation in France or Spain.)
Added: Check this Wikipedia article for more particulars. For a semi-popular book about him, I recommend Antonia Fraser's biography, which follows a revisionist view of his character that started a few decades ago.

His excesses, and those of the restoration, led in a direct path to constitutional monarchy. When James II attempted to draw Britain back into the Catholic sphere of influence, William and Mary were offered a throne with strings attached, and accepted the conditions, setting an important precedent. A limited form of religious toleration was a necessary part of their rule. My ancestors could be recognized as non-conformists without losing important parts of anatomy. The reference I found about licensing presses was part of a process which provoked Milton's Areopagitica, and propelled the idea of freedom of the press into public consciousness. Cromwell's attempts at blue laws ended up producing a city with his name and, apparently, considerable looseness.

In my lifetime we have repeatedly had one group in power making fools of themselves, while the opposition plotted to regain power by offering alternatives. Over a period of time some changes become irreversible. There is no longer a question about having a person described as "black" in a cabinet position, on the Supreme Court, or as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Maybe it didn't all happen the way you would like, but it did happen. I don't think there is a question about the top spot any longer. There have been other changes I have approved, and many I have not, but we have been adapting, slowly, imperfectly, it is true.

This is all pluralism in action. There have been many other episodes in history which produced a great deal of bloodshed, a change in government, and not much else, certainly nothing of lasting value. If I can't bring my government into conformity with your opinions momentarily, are you seriously calling for a descent into an abyss which has been repeatedly explored? Do you really believe in democracy, even if people are sometimes wrong? Do you really believe in legal protection for those who disagree with you?

The term "politically correct" raises my hackles. So does the idea of "right-thinking people" all agreeing. The idea of tearing up a constitution, even if flawed, brings back unpleasant memories. Unless you've actually seen what happens when secret police are given free rein, with your own precious butt in the balance, you simply don't have a basis for comparison. And, if you are one of those who proclaim "all who are not with us are against us" I suppose I'm in the opposition.

I prefer to believe you misspoke without thinking through consequences of a suggestion.

If administrators want to move these posts to a separate thread, I will be glad to return to topic.

markofkane · #92 Post by **markofkane** » Tue 08 Jul 2008, 10:24

I am against "political correctness" because it infringes on Free Speech.

I believe in saying what I mean without "softening it up so I cannot offend anyone"

Political Correctness here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_DGoEWjT28Y

It has more than one part.

Aitch · #93 Post by **Aitch** » Tue 08 Jul 2008, 13:16

If administrators want to move these posts to a separate thread, I will be glad to return to topic.

Suggestion:
yes, agreed - mods, please snip all relevant parts from this thread & move to :-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 100#213100

@prehistoric, you can suggest amendments to the heading if you like

I'll come back at this, once moved to save this thread

Aitch

Edit: have pm'd Flash

prehistoric · #94 Post by **prehistoric** » Wed 09 Jul 2008, 22:37

My latest acquisition, a used Compaq Armada M700, arrived today and was running Puppy 4.00 within minutes. I am not posting from that, however, because I wanted to test another possibility.

This time, I'm posting from the $25 Compaq iPaq desktop (not handheld) mentioned earlier in this thread. The difference is that this time I slipped the CD drive out of the Armada, slipped it in the multidrive bay of the iPaq and booted from a CD. This confirms that multibay devices do work in these iPaqs. This offers a simple way to install Puppy on these machines, for people who don't like swapping hard drives.

Next, I'll be trying various wireless connections on the laptop. So far, everything looks good.

prehistoric · #95 Post by **prehistoric** » Thu 10 Jul 2008, 13:22

This may help someone else trying to put Puppy on an old laptop.

I had no trouble getting Puppy 4.00 to boot from CD and run on the M700 mentioned above. Something I've never seen before happened when I tried to install to the internal ATA hard drive, gparted started "scanning all devices" and never finished. I thought there might be an OS problem with a chipset this old (Intel 440 bx/zx etc.), so I went back to Puppy 2.17.1 without changing the outcome. At that point, I switched to SystemRescueDisk 1.0.2 and got the same behavior.

I could have use fdisk or cfdisk to delete the sole partition and create a new one, but there are a couple catches: Compaq often puts a hidden diagnostic partition at the front of a hard drive which holds code the BIOS may use; for a suspend to disk there is typically a file inside the Windows partition (FAT32 for this machine) which holds the contents of RAM plus some information or code the BIOS can use to restore things. It is easier to deal with this later if you don't wipe all evidence of how it was working when you got the machine.

The solution was to call gparted from the console with the name of the device as an argument.

Code: Select all

# gparted /dev/hda

The name the OS uses for the device can be found in the output of dmesg, if you are not sure what it is called. Once gparted was pointed at the right device, I could resize the Windows partition to open up space without destroying the contents and create a linux swap partition plus an ext2 partion to hold my Puppy files.

For people new to Puppy this kind of solution is often totally mysterious voodoo. The problems aren't created by Puppy, they were put there by the manufacturer and only revealed when we tried to run anything but Windows. If you put Puppy on a Compaq machine, I strongly recommend you do not wipe the disk and start from scratch. A small partition with whatever secrets Windows holds is all you need.

For those who have wiped the disk, it is possible to get Compaq set up software and restore what you need on a new disk before you do anything with Puppy. Just don't expect the manufacturer (or MicroSoft) to make it easy. They prefer to sell replacement hard disks for premium prices, until they get old enough to be an inventory problem.

If you have wiped the disk and experienced no problems, please don't argue with me about it, just consider yourself lucky. There can be more things in hidden code than you have dreamed in nightmares - unless you write microcode for Intel.

sunburnt · #96 Post by **sunburnt** » Sat 12 Jul 2008, 01:48

nVidia says it's starting manufacture of 386 compatable cpus that'll cream Intel & AMD.
Hummm... An ITX 4" x 6" board with a cpu that's also an 8800GTX gpu with shared ram!
More power in a small format motherboard than is currently available in ATX boards.

Lobster · #97 Post by **Lobster** » Sat 12 Jul 2008, 01:58

sunburnt wrote:nVidia says it's starting manufacture of 386 compatable cpus that'll cream Intel & AMD.
.

any links?

Aitch · #98 Post by **Aitch** » Sat 12 Jul 2008, 02:48

there's this, which may shed some light

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/249 ... e-chipsets

Aitch

sunburnt · #99 Post by **sunburnt** » Sat 12 Jul 2008, 04:57

It was a news announcement by nVidia, I can't remember where I saw it.

mechmike · #100 Post by **mechmike** » Thu 04 Sep 2008, 23:25

Inadvertent double-post...

mechmike · #101 Post by **mechmike** » Thu 04 Sep 2008, 23:25

$65 USD shipped:

Edit 02/2014 - the link originally posted no longer exists...

mechmike · #102 Post by **mechmike** » Mon 29 Sep 2008, 03:45

Edit 02/2014 - the link originally posted no longer exists...

$39.99 USD plus ground shipping of around $20 USD...

1.1 Celeron, 128MB RAM, 20 GB HD

chicks · #103 Post by **chicks** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 06:22

Maxspeed Maxterm 3300, $34.99 + $12.50 shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-MaxSpeed-MaxTer ... 0106936325

These are very well made thin clients. Boot from CF card (behind little cover next to PCI slot on back), run Puppy very well. There are mounting brackets and plug for a 2.5" IDE laptop drive inside. Very similar to my main Puppy PC.

512MB RAM, 800MHz

mechmike · #104 Post by **mechmike** » Sun 04 Jan 2009, 23:58

Edit 02/2014 - the link originally posted no longer exists...

Processor Class: Pentium III
Processor Speed: 450 MHZ
Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive: 6 GB

Aitch · #105 Post by **Aitch** » Mon 05 Jan 2009, 19:57

UK users

Dell-OptiPlex-GX110-Pentium-3-III-667Mhz/256mb-SFF-Desktop-PC/CDrom

http://preview.tinyurl.com/9vbwp4

ebayUK £13.99 + £12.50 post

Aitch

Aitch · #106 Post by **Aitch** » Sun 10 May 2009, 11:37

Brand new/guaranteed 'New model' CNM minibook now being advertised @ less than £150 inc post!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0049414950

also in Maplins [dearer @ £170

used - check amazon ~ £90!

CNM are already posting updates & the E220 3G modem works with it [though there have been issues with some routers/channels 12/13, maybe will get patched]

Runs a Linux OS, Firefox browser, has 400mhz X burst processor & 2Gb SD card

forum support

http://linuxlaptopforum.ark2webdesign.c ... 126.0.html

anyone fancy dipping a toe in the water & trying puppy on one.....?

Aitch

jamesjeffries2 · #107 Post by **jamesjeffries2** » Sun 10 May 2009, 12:58

the x birst processor is, alas, MIPS based rather than x86 so would require a cross compile of puppy to run unfortunately.

looks like a fun little machine apart from that

jamesjeffries2 · #108 Post by **jamesjeffries2** » Sun 10 May 2009, 13:13

technically not a machine, but i want to get hold of one of these boards stick some cheap ram in it and a ide-cf adapter for puppy. maybe make a case out of lego or soemthing. dual core energy efficient pc for about £120

Aitch · #109 Post by **Aitch** » Sun 10 May 2009, 16:31

James

Have a look at the VIA EPIA & the Gigabyte 945/965 series too

Aitch

jamesjeffries2 · #110 Post by **jamesjeffries2** » Sun 10 May 2009, 17:43

@aitch I like the epia boards, especially the cryptography and mpeg acceleration stuff they have built in. not sure if puppy supports it out of the box but sure I could get the drivers to work.

Would prefer to go for dual core for now though so my girlfriend can run windows(booo...) on it a little more comfortably

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Cheap machines ideal for Puppy

serious or not, it wasn't a good suggestion

back on topic, with Compaq Armada M700

adventures with Compaq Armada M700

'nother cheapie...

$30 shipped in the US