Old Compaq woes

[OlySoftCIO]

Hello Puppy People!

I don't know if this is the right area for this plea for help, but after a couple searches I could find no thread with similar issues.

My organization takes in older computers to refurbish; some of which we give back to the community and some of which we sell for $50 or so just to be able to buy parts(HD and RAM mainly).

Anyway, this is the oldest Laptop I've been given yet. A Compaq 1247 with 160MB RAM and a 4gb HD. But everything works and it's in great shape! I'd love to at least turn this thing into a demo to show how far back in time we can go to re-purpose hardware.

To be clear. Puppy boots perfectly fine from CD, and runs like a champ this way. I'd like to get in onto the HD though. I've run the install app a couple times to see if X was not starting but even with xvesa there is no joy.

Grub 1.5 is loading and finds the menu.lst in /boot/grub, so I get the menu requesting Start Linux or install grub. Upon requesting to Start Linux I see briefly some kind of "starting" message that flashes on the screen and then vanishes immediately.

Networking is my gig, but I'm ok with hardware too. I've not seen this before though. Any ideas how to get this thing running live?

Thanks in advance;

Dave

[Dewbie]

What type of installation, frugal or full?
If you can't add at least another 96MB RAM, go with full.

Next, install a Linux-swap partition.
(Go to Menu / System / GParted partition manager).
Follow this formula:
(RAM) or (RAM + swap) = 512MB
So you will need about 352MB swap.
(that is, if you stay with 160MB RAM)

See if this makes a difference.
If not, then try grub4dos.
It's much easier to work with than regular grub.

Also, you might want to try Wary if you haven't already.
It has an older-version video wizard that works better with older hardware.

[bigpup]

To be clear. Puppy boots perfectly fine from CD, and runs like a champ this way. I'd like to get in onto the HD though. I've run the install app a couple times to see if X was not starting but even with xvesa there is no joy.

What version of Puppy are you trying to use?

If it works OK from a live CD, you must be doing something wrong in how you are doing the install.

Your specific steps needed to see what you are doing.
You do what?
You see what?

This info may help.
Various ways to install puppy
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=60302

Here is a Puppy specific Google search:
http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html

[John Doe]

Can you post your grub config? Maybe something got messed up.

Also, make sure the BIOS is as up to date as possible.

I had a compaq that wouldn't boot Puppy from HD until I did that.

[8-bit]

I also have an old Compaq laptop with a 4gig hard drive partitioned with Win98SE and Puppy Lucid 5.20 frugal install with no swap partition.
Win98SE runs fairly well on it, but Puppy over a period of time gets corrupted.
I think this is due to the memory not being enough for that version of Puppy and the install being frugal.
With a temporary swap file being used, the process of saving the pupsave at shutdown is getting corrupted since what is in the swap file is not making it into the pupsave file.
I guess I will have to try a different version, a full install, and a remake with only the applications I actually need to keep ram usage to a minimum.
So for low ram PCs, this one has 150 megs, do not expect miracles.
My main problem though is that I am limited by needing a version late enough to have the dependencies needed for some applications I have installed and the earlier versions of Puppy just do not have those needed dependencies.
And for those that may want to know of the dependencies needed, I need to have the QTlib support files for the application.
Currently, trying to run Gparted, AbiWord, Geany, and others just crash as in just disappearing.

[OlySoftCIO]

The problem was something fundamental I was doing wrong as I thought. Sometime during the install I was asked if I wanted to enable the image showing behind the grub & boot text. I selected for it every time I did an install...I did the last install and chose not to enable it. BOOM! Instant win.

Puppy runs great. Take about a minute to boot up, but considering the machines capabilities, one minute to a full and modern installation of GNU/Linux is marvellous.

This is definitely something our nonprofit needs to be aware of. Are there any actual books on Puppy? Or better web resources for techs to come up to speed on the differences in Puppy and other distros? Our operation provides us with lots of these old laptops from time to time.

[bigpup]

Puppy info:
Top few posts in the beginners section of forum.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index. ... order=DESC

Good place to start learning:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=115

Inside Puppy working details are here:
http://puppylinux.com/tech.htm

[Sylvander]

Are there any actual books on Puppy? Or better web resources for techs to come up to speed on the differences in Puppy and other distros?

Over the years...
As I browsed/browse the Puppy forums...
When I found/find something interesting or useful...
I post about it giving links in my PC-Guide Puppy Linux thread.
Here is the present last page = #18.
Begin at the last post and work backwards.
I think a book is included in there somewhere.