Hello all. This is my first post in this forum, so let me say thank you in advance to everyone for helping me solve my issues.
What can I say about this job? It's a doozy. I have an IBM ThinkPad 390X (500 mHz Intel Celeron processor, 64 MB RAM, 6 GB hard drive) and, perhaps most interesting, a bilingual English/Japanese keyboard.
The previous owner of the laptop had Windows 98 installed...in Japanese. So I formatted the hard drive and started over with Puppy Linux. I'm trying to set this up for my computer illiterate mother-in-law so she can surf the Internet without the performance drag of Windows.
Anyway, when I boot Puppy from CD-ROM, a few things happen that annoy me quite a bit. It always asks about my keyboard type and then asks me whether I want Xorg or Xvesa. Then I have to configure the display settings.
Then, once Puppy is loaded in English, all the fonts look jagged and distorted. I think this may be related to the Japanese language settings (even the DOS installation on this machine is in Japanese). I can squint and figure it out, but she has poor eyesight, and this is unacceptable for her.
As for the keyboard and display settings, my goal was to set it once and forget it. This would be even more true once I figured out how to install the driver for my USB WiFi adapter...I certainly don't want to make her do that over and over again.
So I performed a hard drive install, and when I boot from the hard drive, I get an "invalid system disk" error.
How can I conquer these obstacles?
Thanks in advance,
mediagiant
Reviving an old ThinkPad...with a twist
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Sit Heel Speak
- Posts: 2595
- Joined: Fri 31 Mar 2006, 03:22
- Location: downwind
Re: Reviving an old ThinkPad...with a twist
64MB is at the low end of what will support Puppy, though possible.
Others will advise you which versions of Puppy can work best in such a small RAM footprint.
Adding more RAM, if you can, may help performance.
When you Log Off/Shutdown your live-CD session, you will be asked whether you wish to create a savefile. Answer Yes, create the savefile on the disk, choose to place it on the first partition (hda1 or sda1), and make the savefile 512MB in size (it will ask you all this). A file will thus be created with a name such as "pup_save.2fs" --inside it will be saved your keyboard type, Xorg/XVesa choice, display and language settings, and so on. Then you won't need to re-choose them every time.
After you have selected a Puppy version,...I'm sure others will offer their considered opinions, below...2.14R may be a good choice...then we can talk about adding the best fonts for easy reading by someone with less-than-perfect eyesight.
Will the user of the machine be using Japanese? Other pictographic languages?
(note: disregard the foolish advice I gave here earlier, which I have deleted, with regard to partitioning) (in other words, leave the partitioning the way it is, and do a frugal install).
Others will advise you which versions of Puppy can work best in such a small RAM footprint.
Adding more RAM, if you can, may help performance.
When you Log Off/Shutdown your live-CD session, you will be asked whether you wish to create a savefile. Answer Yes, create the savefile on the disk, choose to place it on the first partition (hda1 or sda1), and make the savefile 512MB in size (it will ask you all this). A file will thus be created with a name such as "pup_save.2fs" --inside it will be saved your keyboard type, Xorg/XVesa choice, display and language settings, and so on. Then you won't need to re-choose them every time.
After you have selected a Puppy version,...I'm sure others will offer their considered opinions, below...2.14R may be a good choice...then we can talk about adding the best fonts for easy reading by someone with less-than-perfect eyesight.
Will the user of the machine be using Japanese? Other pictographic languages?
(note: disregard the foolish advice I gave here earlier, which I have deleted, with regard to partitioning) (in other words, leave the partitioning the way it is, and do a frugal install).
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mediagiant
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon 11 Feb 2008, 02:53
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NoobieDoobieDo
- Posts: 60
- Joined: Mon 14 Nov 2005, 19:47
While not a Thinkpad, I have Puppy 2.15ce running on a Windows95 era Twinhead laptop which has a 266MHz Pentium MMX processor with 64Mb of RAM and 200Mb (I think) of swap file.
I agree it doesn't run that fast
The solution is really to fit more RAM but on a model that old, that isn't practical. New RAM of the EDO variety is hugely expensive, and used RAM is very hard to find.
A more basic Puppy without the "eye candy" of 2.15 runs considerably faster on this particular laptop.
Nathan's Grafpup, although not a basic puppy, also runs faster for me, and has the added bonus of being able to provide user login with passwords. if you wish to use that feature.
You may find that desktop icons look too big on earlier laptops which have 800x600 screens. The solution is simple, actually. Using the mtpaint imaging utility built into puppy, you can reduce the size of each icon from (48 or more) pixels to perhaps 32. This will actually save a bit of memory.
Best of luck
Richard downunder
I agree it doesn't run that fast
The solution is really to fit more RAM but on a model that old, that isn't practical. New RAM of the EDO variety is hugely expensive, and used RAM is very hard to find.
A more basic Puppy without the "eye candy" of 2.15 runs considerably faster on this particular laptop.
Nathan's Grafpup, although not a basic puppy, also runs faster for me, and has the added bonus of being able to provide user login with passwords. if you wish to use that feature.
You may find that desktop icons look too big on earlier laptops which have 800x600 screens. The solution is simple, actually. Using the mtpaint imaging utility built into puppy, you can reduce the size of each icon from (48 or more) pixels to perhaps 32. This will actually save a bit of memory.
Best of luck
Richard downunder
[i]Have you noticed editing is always needed for the inevitable typos that weren't there when you hit the "post" button?[/i]
[img]http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/416434.png[/img]
[img]http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/416434.png[/img]
Well you can get 128MB from Crucial for that model for around 30USD (and in the UK less than 20GBP). Puppy will run very nicely indeed in 196MB of RAMrichard.a wrote:The solution is really to fit more RAM but on a model that old, that isn't practical. New RAM of the EDO variety is hugely expensive
That makes it really quite practical so long as you aren't absolutely on the breadline.
Fine.
I'm in Adelaide (as you can see from below my avatar) and I can assure you it's as rare as hen's teeth here.
I would not encourage anyone buying sight unseen, money up front, from eBay, or anywhere else, because on early computers you should actually fit the RAM into the computer (with battery removed) and try it before buying. I say this from personal experience.
To substantiate my claim on cost. I obtained a quote from a manufacturer of RAM who quoted me a price in the nineties of Australian dollars for him to make me a 64Mb laptop stick. And laptop sticks are always more expensive than desktop varieites, it appears, from talking to a range of dealers with whom I'm on friendly first-name terms.
So I don't think my points were because of being cash-strapped. Generalisations are frequently out of place because they aren't accurate.
I'm in Adelaide (as you can see from below my avatar) and I can assure you it's as rare as hen's teeth here.
I would not encourage anyone buying sight unseen, money up front, from eBay, or anywhere else, because on early computers you should actually fit the RAM into the computer (with battery removed) and try it before buying. I say this from personal experience.
To substantiate my claim on cost. I obtained a quote from a manufacturer of RAM who quoted me a price in the nineties of Australian dollars for him to make me a 64Mb laptop stick. And laptop sticks are always more expensive than desktop varieites, it appears, from talking to a range of dealers with whom I'm on friendly first-name terms.
So I don't think my points were because of being cash-strapped. Generalisations are frequently out of place because they aren't accurate.
[i]Have you noticed editing is always needed for the inevitable typos that weren't there when you hit the "post" button?[/i]
[img]http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/416434.png[/img]
[img]http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/416434.png[/img]
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mediagiant
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon 11 Feb 2008, 02:53
Well, I want to make sure I can make it work at all before I invest in a RAM upgrade. I don't mind upgrading it, but I don't want to do that and still end up with a non-working computer.
How can I fix the jagged fonts? I think this may have something to do with the language settings.
Also, I have a USB WiFi adapter, and I need to install the driver from the CD. How can I access the CD drive after booting from the CD-ROM? I can't seem to find it in the menu or on any of the desktop icons.
How can I fix the jagged fonts? I think this may have something to do with the language settings.
Also, I have a USB WiFi adapter, and I need to install the driver from the CD. How can I access the CD drive after booting from the CD-ROM? I can't seem to find it in the menu or on any of the desktop icons.
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jonyo
Might be able to pull the pup disk & quickly copy the .inf file form the win disk (home icon is a good spot), or maybe use a floppy or usb flash stick (has to be mounted). What make model usb wifi adapter? Could be a native driver is good to go. There's usually a usb stick type icon on the desktop to access drives. Good wifi info here.
I'd also try a few diff vers of pup. A particular prob with one might go away trying another. Which are you working with?
Excellent instructions here on installing 2.15 to HD.
I'd also try a few diff vers of pup. A particular prob with one might go away trying another. Which are you working with?
Excellent instructions here on installing 2.15 to HD.
On low ram machine, do a full expanded type 2 install instead of frugal type 1 install. Then make a linux swap partition which should be somewhere 64mb to 128mb. Making it any bigger than that wont help anything.
I had Puppy installed and working fine with 300mhz laptop with 32mb ram. Well pretty good, not enough ram for Seamonkey, had to use Opera. Once I increased ram to 96mb, it was very happy.
A 500mhz laptop should be able to use cheaper laptop ram for that era. The older laptops sometimes used EDO ram which is rare and expensive especially for 128mb chip and many old laptops only allowed adding one extra chip. Thats reason I only added 64mb edo chip on laptop I mention, it was much, much cheaper (~$10) than the rare 128mb edo (~$60). Those are ebay prices, buying new retail will be higher.
I'd choose USA keyboard and choose xorg which will run the xorg wizard and give you possible options that it detects. Xvesa can work fine too, but since this is a laptop maybe xorg give more options. You can always change if it doesnt work for you. There are video wizards in the menu or you can alt-ctrl-backspace and type in xorgwizard. Xorgwizard will let you test any combination you choose before committing to it. So if you dont get clear good appropriate resolution pic in the test, dont click anything and let it revert back to the wizard and pick another combination.
I had Puppy installed and working fine with 300mhz laptop with 32mb ram. Well pretty good, not enough ram for Seamonkey, had to use Opera. Once I increased ram to 96mb, it was very happy.
A 500mhz laptop should be able to use cheaper laptop ram for that era. The older laptops sometimes used EDO ram which is rare and expensive especially for 128mb chip and many old laptops only allowed adding one extra chip. Thats reason I only added 64mb edo chip on laptop I mention, it was much, much cheaper (~$10) than the rare 128mb edo (~$60). Those are ebay prices, buying new retail will be higher.
I'd choose USA keyboard and choose xorg which will run the xorg wizard and give you possible options that it detects. Xvesa can work fine too, but since this is a laptop maybe xorg give more options. You can always change if it doesnt work for you. There are video wizards in the menu or you can alt-ctrl-backspace and type in xorgwizard. Xorgwizard will let you test any combination you choose before committing to it. So if you dont get clear good appropriate resolution pic in the test, dont click anything and let it revert back to the wizard and pick another combination.
Hi mediagiant
I had a similar setup in a 570, & in the end concluded that there
were slight differences in the dos base files
I reformatted the drive & installed the dos from a win98 disk
by typing /s after the format command - i think,
it was a while ago, though I may have added things from
the win98 cd ? - brainfade
mine was complicated by the lack of bootable cd,
which I eventually resolved by finding a usb cd dos driver
for which I modified autoexec.bat, instructions came
with the download
richard/mediagiant - memory
crucial did stock edo up until recently
(last year, I got 64M for it, for UK£16 + post)
http://www.crucial.com/uk/?gclid=CNrr-t ... XgodzHXezA
don't try & use their online scanner unless your running win +IE
but you can still search their hardware db
they ship worldwide so oz is no problem
I agree with what you said about ebay, richard,
had a few bad ones myself
good luck mediagiant, I hope your mother in law
appreciates your efforts, & becomes a bit less
computer illiterate
I found a bridge program helped my mum lose some fear
Then it had a use & an interest to her
she was soon searching to find out what else this new
box of tricks would do
aitch
Edit: just remembered the lenovo site
great support for ibm's - general
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... country=uk
specific
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4BXPQ3
I had a similar setup in a 570, & in the end concluded that there
were slight differences in the dos base files
I reformatted the drive & installed the dos from a win98 disk
by typing /s after the format command - i think,
it was a while ago, though I may have added things from
the win98 cd ? - brainfade
mine was complicated by the lack of bootable cd,
which I eventually resolved by finding a usb cd dos driver
for which I modified autoexec.bat, instructions came
with the download
richard/mediagiant - memory
crucial did stock edo up until recently
(last year, I got 64M for it, for UK£16 + post)
http://www.crucial.com/uk/?gclid=CNrr-t ... XgodzHXezA
don't try & use their online scanner unless your running win +IE
but you can still search their hardware db
they ship worldwide so oz is no problem
I agree with what you said about ebay, richard,
had a few bad ones myself
good luck mediagiant, I hope your mother in law
appreciates your efforts, & becomes a bit less
computer illiterate
I found a bridge program helped my mum lose some fear
Then it had a use & an interest to her
she was soon searching to find out what else this new
box of tricks would do
aitch
Edit: just remembered the lenovo site
great support for ibm's - general
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... country=uk
specific
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4BXPQ3
It seems that the message about laptops just will not get through, especially against the onslaught of one of the biggest marketing exercises the trade has ever mounted.
They are a waste of time and money, except in those rare cases of a retired IT professional of very high accomplishment, limitless funds, who also possesses exceptional HW skills, trade sources of parts, boundless patience and access to the secrets of and able to rewrite and reflash all the FW. I possess a tiny compliment of those attributes. I have been refusing further gifts of old laptops for several years.
In cases like the present, it is possible to obtain shedloads of old desktop boxes complete with lorryloads of parts, completely gratis. This would enable (re)building a bespoke box to granny's dream specification, stuff it out of sight under a table, behind the sofa, w.h.y. and connect it to her tele with long leads hidden under the carpet and provide her with an illuminated laptop keyboard with built-in touchpad. Not a question of how much installed memory, more how much can we squeeze into the limited number of slots. SDRAM has become a confetti operation, a cornflakes job - where can I store it all, what will they pay you to carry it away, did you want another Sainsburys' bag, shall we order a JCB to shovel it in?
In short, old laptops aren't even useful as an intellectual exercise - truly they are destined for landfill. The ugly box reigns supreme! Stop wasting your time and intellectual prowess. Stop feeding the wannabe £$€-bnaire would-be suppliers. In the long term they aint gonna fly. Buy yourself and your granny a Nokia95 to use in the loo if it has to be portable.
There! And I didn't even get around to the battery issues.
They are a waste of time and money, except in those rare cases of a retired IT professional of very high accomplishment, limitless funds, who also possesses exceptional HW skills, trade sources of parts, boundless patience and access to the secrets of and able to rewrite and reflash all the FW. I possess a tiny compliment of those attributes. I have been refusing further gifts of old laptops for several years.
In cases like the present, it is possible to obtain shedloads of old desktop boxes complete with lorryloads of parts, completely gratis. This would enable (re)building a bespoke box to granny's dream specification, stuff it out of sight under a table, behind the sofa, w.h.y. and connect it to her tele with long leads hidden under the carpet and provide her with an illuminated laptop keyboard with built-in touchpad. Not a question of how much installed memory, more how much can we squeeze into the limited number of slots. SDRAM has become a confetti operation, a cornflakes job - where can I store it all, what will they pay you to carry it away, did you want another Sainsburys' bag, shall we order a JCB to shovel it in?
In short, old laptops aren't even useful as an intellectual exercise - truly they are destined for landfill. The ugly box reigns supreme! Stop wasting your time and intellectual prowess. Stop feeding the wannabe £$€-bnaire would-be suppliers. In the long term they aint gonna fly. Buy yourself and your granny a Nokia95 to use in the loo if it has to be portable.
There! And I didn't even get around to the battery issues.
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TheProphet
- Posts: 174
- Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22
Hah! got y'all beat!!!
An older Compaq Presario with all the problems HP (they bought out Compaq) Marketing can shovel on! Parts which they knew in advance would need replaced? Like the CMOS battery, hahahahahahah you have to take the whole beast apart to replace it, AND HP won't kick out with an image of what the mainboard looks like or where the CMOS battery actually is!
Not even a DIAGRAM...
Call HP Tech Support and get somebody who wants to sell you a brand new one...
Compaq even put a deliberately obscene 48 meg upward limit on how much memory you can put on it.
The hard drive is 80 megabytes.
But I did get Puppy to work on it, oh yes I did!
I formatted the entire HD as swap and run Puppy off the liveCD.
Of course, I have to set-up the BIOS every time I turn it on and then I'll only be able to actually boot from the floppy, but IT WORKS! Bwaaahaaahaaahaaa I feel like a mad scientist with that one.
Use as much of the HD as Swap as you feel comfortable, keep most of the Puppy on the CD, use the xvesa instead of xorg and the real problem is you need some better fonts. TTF doesn't seem to be working. Also lowering the resolution to 800x600 but with 24 or 32 bit color.
Sage is right about one thing, they are more geared to bragging rights...
"Behold, I have installed and run Windoze XP on an i386 with 16 megs of RAM! I am THE engineering Genius, Bow and kiss my ring!!"
An older Compaq Presario with all the problems HP (they bought out Compaq) Marketing can shovel on! Parts which they knew in advance would need replaced? Like the CMOS battery, hahahahahahah you have to take the whole beast apart to replace it, AND HP won't kick out with an image of what the mainboard looks like or where the CMOS battery actually is!
Not even a DIAGRAM...
Call HP Tech Support and get somebody who wants to sell you a brand new one...
Compaq even put a deliberately obscene 48 meg upward limit on how much memory you can put on it.
The hard drive is 80 megabytes.
But I did get Puppy to work on it, oh yes I did!
I formatted the entire HD as swap and run Puppy off the liveCD.
Of course, I have to set-up the BIOS every time I turn it on and then I'll only be able to actually boot from the floppy, but IT WORKS! Bwaaahaaahaaahaaa I feel like a mad scientist with that one.
Use as much of the HD as Swap as you feel comfortable, keep most of the Puppy on the CD, use the xvesa instead of xorg and the real problem is you need some better fonts. TTF doesn't seem to be working. Also lowering the resolution to 800x600 but with 24 or 32 bit color.
Sage is right about one thing, they are more geared to bragging rights...
"Behold, I have installed and run Windoze XP on an i386 with 16 megs of RAM! I am THE engineering Genius, Bow and kiss my ring!!"
Oh yes, I've done all that, the Compaq hidden partitions, the hidden plastic tabs that break when you open the case, the soldered-in CMOS battery, the funny connections on memory strips, let alone smc memory, the strange F10 rhs blob and almost empty BIOS options, the batteries that die after 18mnths and cost 50% of the cost of the entire machine to replace, truly it's endless.
If it has to be a laptop be sure that your company is paying ALL the bills. That means the HW and SW maintenance and upgrades, replacements and back-ups (onto desktop, of course).
Oh! By the by, make sure you're working for a wealthy company with a poor stock control and weak accountancy procedures....
If it has to be a laptop be sure that your company is paying ALL the bills. That means the HW and SW maintenance and upgrades, replacements and back-ups (onto desktop, of course).
Oh! By the by, make sure you're working for a wealthy company with a poor stock control and weak accountancy procedures....
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TheProphet
- Posts: 174
- Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22
The current tax laws we have here in the States make it so if your corporation is big enough, and you lose enough money you can get it all back in tax write-offs.
Wonderful stuff, that.
It's part of the reason we have a 5 trillion dollar deficit.
But if we adjust for the dollar dropping like a rock in value, it's only 4.3 trillion dollars, so that's not really all THAT ba...
oh, who am I fooling? It's Hugely Monstrously Bad ... and all the countries which would be worth taking over, and exploiting their economies, could kick our collective arse in a fair fight....
Wonderful stuff, that.
It's part of the reason we have a 5 trillion dollar deficit.
But if we adjust for the dollar dropping like a rock in value, it's only 4.3 trillion dollars, so that's not really all THAT ba...
oh, who am I fooling? It's Hugely Monstrously Bad ... and all the countries which would be worth taking over, and exploiting their economies, could kick our collective arse in a fair fight....
What version of Puppy are you using?
Do not use Puppy 3.x, or Grafpup 2. (Perhaps Richard meant Grafpup 1 was faster, but 2 isn't).
Either use Dingo (it seems to be fairly useable already to me - I would definitely choose it), or an older Puppy. Dingo looks awful when you first boot it, but if you just change the JWM, GTK and icon themes (with the built in changers) it is great.
Probably though, this means the hard drive is failing.
Sit Heel Speek is the best person to talk to about fonts, unless (like me) you like nice crisp pixellated fonts with no antialiasing or hinting or anything, in which case you should set everything to use Helvetica 10 (or whatever size is the biggest that looks good on your machine...
Do not use Puppy 3.x, or Grafpup 2. (Perhaps Richard meant Grafpup 1 was faster, but 2 isn't).
Either use Dingo (it seems to be fairly useable already to me - I would definitely choose it), or an older Puppy. Dingo looks awful when you first boot it, but if you just change the JWM, GTK and icon themes (with the built in changers) it is great.
Unless you never bothered letting Puppy make a save file, it shouldn't do that, so something is going wrong. Maybe it couldn't find the save file for some reason.It always asks about my keyboard type and then asks me whether I want Xorg or Xvesa. Then I have to configure the display settings.
Maybe Grub or something did not install correctly. Have you tried booting with Grub installed on a floppy disk (or with a wakepup floppy)So I performed a hard drive install, and when I boot from the hard drive, I get an "invalid system disk" error.
Probably though, this means the hard drive is failing.
Sit Heel Speek is the best person to talk to about fonts, unless (like me) you like nice crisp pixellated fonts with no antialiasing or hinting or anything, in which case you should set everything to use Helvetica 10 (or whatever size is the biggest that looks good on your machine...
Q.E.D.! Stop throwing good money after bad.Probably though, this means the hard drive is failing.
Only a lunatic would cut the taxes further and give more free handouts to the rich. But don't worry me with your troubles, our guys think it's funny to bail out crooked pseudo-banks with public funds instead of letting them fail in the ancient tradition of City spooks.It's part of the reason we have a 5 trillion dollar deficit.
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TheProphet
- Posts: 174
- Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22
There are a few things in life more useless than a lappie...
Windows installation disks for instance.
they work better if you crack the CD and put magnets on the diskettes...
That way the worst thing they can do is give you a "invalid boot disk" message...
although a lappie and a laplink cable could be a good diagnostics tool for working on Other Folks' Computers..
and personal amusement of course..
Windows installation disks for instance.
they work better if you crack the CD and put magnets on the diskettes...
That way the worst thing they can do is give you a "invalid boot disk" message...
although a lappie and a laplink cable could be a good diagnostics tool for working on Other Folks' Computers..
and personal amusement of course..