Fujitsu B142 lifebook revival project

[Now_Then]

Hi, been reading round this and other forums regarding my prob ~ I think / thought I'd gone for the best option.... I will outline below!

The laptop is a Fujitsu B142 life book.. nice small compact machine, 64MB RAM, 20 gig HDD, 300Mhz processor. Used to run windows XP just fine (slowish but fine). The lappy has been unused for almost a year now, the charger blew, I removed the HDD and have been using it in a caddy for portable data via USB. << the HDD is fine but XP is long gone!!

Now I would like to bring the thing back to life, the problem is the B142 has no internal CD or 3.5" drive, the BIOS will only allow boot order to be changed between HDD and floppy (i no longer have the floppy drive!).... So I have Puppy burnt onto disk, using this desktop I can boot from the disk fine and play with Puppy ~ it looks perfect for this laptop.

But!! I cant get the Fujitsu B142 to load into it. I realised I wouldn't of have the MBR on the HDD (and puppy told me) and I've tried a couple of times with the different options.

At the moment I have 18 lines of code - bit too much to type.......
BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 00040034
printing eip:
c0104569
*pde = 00000000

ahhh now different!!!

Kernal panic - not syncong: Attempted to kill init!
Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = 4383761082201 ns)

So as you might be able to tell I am a complete noob to Linux (but a keen noob)

Any help would be very very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[rcrsn51]

If I have read this correctly, you have a laptop with no optical drive, no diskette drive and its hard drive in an external USB enclosure. So how exactly are you trying to install or run Puppy?

[Lobster]

. . . you have a laptop with no optical drive, no diskette drive and its hard drive in an external USB enclosure. So how exactly are you trying to install or run Puppy?

Faith

I am using a Fujitsu Lifebook for my Puppy Powered Buddhist Shrine/Alter
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 991#167991

. . . just to wish you luck. I have the optical drive and have stored the settings on a USB keydrive and also a USB hard drive enclosure
However I have the CD optical drive

I don't think the Lifebook Bios boots from USB but if you remove all the other potential booting options it might try . . .

my probs are the wifi
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 651#161651

Once again good luck

[Now_Then]

If I have read this correctly, you have a laptop with no optical drive, no diskette drive and its hard drive in an external USB enclosure. So how exactly are you trying to install or run Puppy?

That's almost correct... I do have a couple of external optical drives (USB) but the BIOS (ver1.02) will not give an option for anything other than HDD or diskette

What I've been trying is removing the HDD and using the external USB enclosure and my desktop, using the puppy disk I burnt I can boot into puppy and select to install to the external USB HDD. But the fujitsu has the messages above.

P.s. Lobster... Nice!
(do Lifebooks know the meaning of Life?)

[Now_Then]

*shameless bump!

Still not having any luck getting puppy onto my 20 gig HDD via a USB caddy.

Tried various options for the MBR, the file format is set to FAT32, currently it hangs at the "unpacking linux.... ok Booting kernel"

Any suggestions?

[muggins]

Now_Then,

From my understanding of this, (or maybe misunderstanding?), if your computer's bios won't allow usb boot, then puppy can't boot from your usb attached hdisk. You say you removed the conventional hdisk...was this because it stopped working? can it be replaced?

[madmagic]

Ok i think im on the same page as Now_Then, i have a external HD, but i cant find the option to boot from it -_-

[Lobster]

You can not change the BIOS to boot from USB. You can not boot from CD or floppy as you do not have these. There is no network boot or Ethernet connection as far as I know . . .

It seems impossible . . .

. . . however . . .
you intend to prepare the HD and then install back into the machine?
I recently did something similar
placing a hard drive in a USB enclosure back into a desktop

My feeling is (this needs confirming) Puppy booting from USB will have a different configuration running from USB than running from an internal hard drive.

So maybe getting the hard drive into a machine (rather than a USB enclosure) and installing that or convincing the USB enclosure that it is a regular hard drive, installing but then immediately booting from the Lifebook . . .

PS.
Regarding the meaning of Life . .
I am not even sure of the meaning of fish
However I set up a Puppy powered shrine here (for the first time)
As my imaginary psychiatrist always tells me 'In your case sanity is not an option'
http://www.zen45800.zen.co.uk/shrine2/
A little excerpt:
The Shakyamunyi Buddha that most people are familiar with, stated it this way:
"You process then you become obsolete"
This was later codified into the four principal truths of Buddhism - the other three concern causation and overcoming suffering.
Universal existence is prone to arise, have a moment of being in eternity and then decay, die, dissolve and recycle. Change happens to everything. All things except one . . .

[cherriepuppy]

hi
this is an old link but might be helpful

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy//viewt ... highlight=

cherriepuppy

[inged]

My wife owns a Fujitsu Lifebook P1120, that one comes with no CD and no floppy drive, similar to yours machine. That little machine was archived for almost a year because the HD failed and it was a pain to re-install something on it. That was until I discovered Puppy. We got an external USB floppy drive and external CD unit. An external USB floppy drive is the only USB device that will work when having this kind of problems. Some others have claimed that other USB devices will work, but it's for some specific models. Take a look on the leog.net forum, I did it for months when considering solutions to the laptop in the drawer desk.

So far, these are the solutions I have found:
1. Network boot
2. External Floppy + External CD
3. Placing the HD inside a desktop PC using and adapter (follow above cherriepuppy advice)

To me, the less cumbersome is No. 2. I used the WakePUP floppy created in other machine. The WakePUP boot floppy will load USB drivers for the external CD unit and will look for puppy in the CD, from there, the boot process is standard.

I did try No. 1, but at the time, the 'used' HD I had end up being a faulty one. I was trying Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Suse with no luck. That was before Puppy cross my path.

No. 3 is handy if you can get the adapter, but for the price it will cost you, you can get the external floppy and avoid future worries and less dismantling.

Let us know if there is a nifty way to install Grub on the external HD. Once that is done, Puppy will come easier. I will be interested too in the case that the external floppy will not be longer available.

PS.
I did a small Google search and it looks like Knoppix and Suse are able to install GRUB that way. Better yet, look for installing Grub on external drive, and follow the instructions. Just to be safe, disconnect the HD of your PC in case that Grub ends up installed in your Desktop. The one I found from a Suse forum reads using the Opensuse CD: grub-install /dev/sdb, where sdb is the name of the external drive. Play a bit with Puppy to see if that works, or post a new thread with the Grub installation, until somebody with more knowledge will save the day.