Wow. I started this blog 1 year ago.
Anyways, on the state of things:
I intend on getting the 486 running by installing a network card and downloading the BasicLinux DOS-loader version. I'll probably find a smallish hard drive for the other eMachine, or maybe just throwing this in it and using my spare 4GB SDHC card.
I installed ethernet network cards in three of the four machines that needed them, the 486 being an exception because it's too old for PCI. I'm getting an ISA adapter for it. Anyone have any tips for installation or is it the same as PCI?
I made a go at giving Oofleschmoop a new HDD when I disassembled a broken iBook G3, but apparently (after thinking the mainboard was borked) the 20GB HDD from the iBook is too much and the BIOS hangs at startup.
It only supports 8GB or less it would seem, so I'm getting a 2.5" Compact Flash to IDE adapter and using a 4GB CF card. This should make the laptop lighter too, so I really like the idea.
Regarding the comments on the last post: I intend on trying out SliTaz and/or Tinycore Linux. Since I now have a spare 20GB HDD I can just pop out the 12GB XP HDD in Neezltrak and put in the spare, which is currently loaded with Damn Small Linux, to test out Tinycore/SliTaz.
I'm also moving all the old desktops from my room to the basement (until the Computer Club is started up) so I can get an internet connection for all of them. In the interest of neatness I have Neezltrak, Fahrigon, and Antikron sitting in a stack running Folding@home. In addition, Blokhmen's logic board has failed again, the major issue being a no longer working fan. Due to holiday shopping and inclement weather I probably won't get him fixed until 2009, so I'm doing everything from Centrikle now.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Lotsa stuff
Lets see...
Since my last post, I got a Dell Mini 9 (1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 16GB SSD) (one of those new netbooks) and loaded my XMonad config from Esteguan, which it does awesomely with.
Then I got a Dell Inspiron 1200 (1.3GHz Intel Celeron M 350, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD) from a friend. I've installed Xubuntu on it and am planning to do OS development for the computer club at my school.
That same day I brought home an old 486 from my dad's workplace. It has a 66MHz 486, 8MB RAM, and a hard drive of probably less than 1GB. My dad was also planning on throwing out another eMachines 400i that was supposedly broken, but I stopped him and grabbed it. If it's truly broken I might just salvage parts, if not I'll just install a good Linux distro for it.
About a week later my dad asked for a laptop for the new CNC machines so that the machinist can program them using a simple text editor because the built in editor is unintuitive and kinda sucky. So I've given him Esteguan, and taken the DWL-G650 (he won't need it).
Then, yesterday, I was informed that my cousins had an old laptop sitting around. When I visited them I found a Gateway Solo 5300 (700MHz Intel Pentium III, 192MB RAM, 10GB HDD) in near perfect condition. She had used it from 1999-2001 and then let it sit since then, because she wanted something faster (after paying $1600 for it but two years earlier). Also, I found it to be perfectly speedy, then I installed sidux and now it's even faster.
And I don't talk about this one, but I do have another Thinkpad T20 (700MHz Pentium III [Windows lists it inconsistently as 540MHz and 426MHz, but I don't think they sold T20's like that], 128MB RAM, 12GB HDD) but I need it for robotics so I use XP on it. I'm buying more RAM for it now, as XP really really really sucks with 128MB RAM.
Names:
Dell Mini Inspiron 9 is named Centrikle, the Inspiron 1200 is Fahrigon, the 486 and the 7th eMachine are yet nameless, the Gateway is named Antikron, and the T20 with XP is named Neezltrak.
Since my last post, I got a Dell Mini 9 (1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 16GB SSD) (one of those new netbooks) and loaded my XMonad config from Esteguan, which it does awesomely with.
Then I got a Dell Inspiron 1200 (1.3GHz Intel Celeron M 350, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD) from a friend. I've installed Xubuntu on it and am planning to do OS development for the computer club at my school.
That same day I brought home an old 486 from my dad's workplace. It has a 66MHz 486, 8MB RAM, and a hard drive of probably less than 1GB. My dad was also planning on throwing out another eMachines 400i that was supposedly broken, but I stopped him and grabbed it. If it's truly broken I might just salvage parts, if not I'll just install a good Linux distro for it.
About a week later my dad asked for a laptop for the new CNC machines so that the machinist can program them using a simple text editor because the built in editor is unintuitive and kinda sucky. So I've given him Esteguan, and taken the DWL-G650 (he won't need it).
Then, yesterday, I was informed that my cousins had an old laptop sitting around. When I visited them I found a Gateway Solo 5300 (700MHz Intel Pentium III, 192MB RAM, 10GB HDD) in near perfect condition. She had used it from 1999-2001 and then let it sit since then, because she wanted something faster (after paying $1600 for it but two years earlier). Also, I found it to be perfectly speedy, then I installed sidux and now it's even faster.
And I don't talk about this one, but I do have another Thinkpad T20 (700MHz Pentium III [Windows lists it inconsistently as 540MHz and 426MHz, but I don't think they sold T20's like that], 128MB RAM, 12GB HDD) but I need it for robotics so I use XP on it. I'm buying more RAM for it now, as XP really really really sucks with 128MB RAM.
Names:
Dell Mini Inspiron 9 is named Centrikle, the Inspiron 1200 is Fahrigon, the 486 and the 7th eMachine are yet nameless, the Gateway is named Antikron, and the T20 with XP is named Neezltrak.
Monday, October 27, 2008
The new Family Computer
I checked the tracking today and it said it was coming tomorrow along with my Ubuntu keyboard from ZaReason, but I looked outside and there was a UPS truck carrying a bunch of packages.
UPS must be pretty fast.
Anyways, I have unboxing pics. ZaReason uses a moderate amount of packaging and this computer is really small for a desktop.
A picture is worth approximately 1235304 words (at this resolution anyways), so I'll just post 'em.
The two packages.
The Ubuntu keyboard, which is _awesome_
Unfortunately we do not have an extra USB mouse so I have to use the one I have for my MacBook so I can't right click on the MacBook for now.
That's the computer's package. I'm actually glad it had all those peanuts, because the UPS lady wasn't exactly treating it like it was fragile.
And now, for the big reveal...
What were you expecting? A pony?
To give you some perspective...
Apparently blogger won't let me rotate the image, but there you have it standing on its side next to Eckle.
That's a bunch of random crap that came with it, including...
I won't need it of course, but it's nice to have something official.
There it is all set up and stuff. I actually have a Webcam I'm going to install (Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, supposedly it works out of the box with Linux), but it's late here on the East Coast.
So there you have it. Eckle is no longer tasked with being the family computer, and now it can be used for testing the Icebuntu developments I should hopefully have soon when I get a crappy old Dell to develop it on.
Did I say this computer is really quiet?
It is.
Really quiet.
Oh, and it's based on the MSI Wind PC, just in case anyone here has never heard of ZaReason and was thinking "that looks familiar".
UPS must be pretty fast.
Anyways, I have unboxing pics. ZaReason uses a moderate amount of packaging and this computer is really small for a desktop.
A picture is worth approximately 1235304 words (at this resolution anyways), so I'll just post 'em.
The two packages.
The Ubuntu keyboard, which is _awesome_Unfortunately we do not have an extra USB mouse so I have to use the one I have for my MacBook so I can't right click on the MacBook for now.
That's the computer's package. I'm actually glad it had all those peanuts, because the UPS lady wasn't exactly treating it like it was fragile.And now, for the big reveal...
What were you expecting? A pony?To give you some perspective...
Apparently blogger won't let me rotate the image, but there you have it standing on its side next to Eckle.
That's a bunch of random crap that came with it, including...
I won't need it of course, but it's nice to have something official.
There it is all set up and stuff. I actually have a Webcam I'm going to install (Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, supposedly it works out of the box with Linux), but it's late here on the East Coast.So there you have it. Eckle is no longer tasked with being the family computer, and now it can be used for testing the Icebuntu developments I should hopefully have soon when I get a crappy old Dell to develop it on.
Did I say this computer is really quiet?
It is.
Really quiet.
Oh, and it's based on the MSI Wind PC, just in case anyone here has never heard of ZaReason and was thinking "that looks familiar".
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sidux on Esteguan
One of the things I didn't like about Dreamlinux was that it was based on etch, which meant old packages.
So I've installed Sidux 2008.3 on Esteguan and it's pretty good. Lightning fast, Xfce by default, really recent packages, and all that good stuff. I'll post further on it later, as I've literally had it running for less than 5 minutes now.
In other news, I have great news regarding Icebuntu. As soon as I get this "crappy" Dell I've been promised (the owner got a MacBook from her new workplace) I'll be able tow work on Icebuntu more.
First thing I'll do is replace Ubiquity with inxtaller. Unfortunately you won't be able to use it with dualboots (until of course it's updated to work with multiple partitions).
I might have to rename Icebuntu because of trademark issues with Canonical, any suggestions?
So I've installed Sidux 2008.3 on Esteguan and it's pretty good. Lightning fast, Xfce by default, really recent packages, and all that good stuff. I'll post further on it later, as I've literally had it running for less than 5 minutes now.
In other news, I have great news regarding Icebuntu. As soon as I get this "crappy" Dell I've been promised (the owner got a MacBook from her new workplace) I'll be able tow work on Icebuntu more.
First thing I'll do is replace Ubiquity with inxtaller. Unfortunately you won't be able to use it with dualboots (until of course it's updated to work with multiple partitions).
I might have to rename Icebuntu because of trademark issues with Canonical, any suggestions?
Monday, October 6, 2008
BasicLinux on Nettlewark
It's installed to the hard disk, LILO and all.Now, for the interesting part -- boot time.
Coldboot to "Please press Enter to activate this console. " is...
Around 45 seconds (not a scientific measurement).
On a Pentium I.
Wow.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Today's changes
So, I started last night by replacing Fluxbuntu (which is, AFAIH, a dead project) with AntiX M7.5 on Siplebop.
(Sorry about Mr. Blurrycam, my camera doesn't like taking pictures without flash)
As you might not care, Siplebop is the family computer now.
But he is soon to be replaced for lack of Flash abilities by a ZaReason Breeze 3110.
That's LXDE by the way.
I might update this post if I resolve some Vector Linux issues and get around to installing BasicLinux on Nettlewark.
(Sorry about Mr. Blurrycam, my camera doesn't like taking pictures without flash)As you might not care, Siplebop is the family computer now.
But he is soon to be replaced for lack of Flash abilities by a ZaReason Breeze 3110.
Anyways, I went on to replace the apparently broken FeatherLinux on Zalaf with INX 1.0, which I posted about earlier.
There's your CLI only INX pics.
And in other news, instead of replacing Syllable OS with INX as I said I would earlier, I decided to use the newly released Vector Linux Light 5.9, and it's been a mixed experience.
Partially insanely buggy and hard (the installer) and partially amazement at how fast it is, even with kdm.
That's LXDE by the way.
I might update this post if I resolve some Vector Linux issues and get around to installing BasicLinux on Nettlewark.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
INX Is Not X -- but still awesome
I'm on Siplebop right now, typing this in links2 -g.
But why you ask? Can't I just use Kazehakase you say? Well, I'm not running Fluxbuntu on it (surprise), I'm running something called INX (stands for INX is Not X).
What's special about INX?
No X.
None.
It's a CLI only distribution, and it's not meant for servers either.
Because of this, even from the LiveCD, it's _really_ fast.
I'm not installing it on Siplebop, but I'll be installing it on Nesuro.
It also has a new experimental installation script called "inxtaller", which I could modify to use on Icebuntu when I get off my ass and work on Icebuntu.
Get it here:
http://inx.maincontent.net
But why you ask? Can't I just use Kazehakase you say? Well, I'm not running Fluxbuntu on it (surprise), I'm running something called INX (stands for INX is Not X).
What's special about INX?
No X.
None.
It's a CLI only distribution, and it's not meant for servers either.
Because of this, even from the LiveCD, it's _really_ fast.
I'm not installing it on Siplebop, but I'll be installing it on Nesuro.
It also has a new experimental installation script called "inxtaller", which I could modify to use on Icebuntu when I get off my ass and work on Icebuntu.
Get it here:
http://inx.maincontent.net
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