Hey,

I'm new to Linux, and new to antiX. I am in the process of refurbishing/giving some TLC to some older Digital Equipment Corporation machines. Currently I'm working on a Digital Hinote VP765 laptop, which a PII 266, with 144MB Ram, 4GB IBM Hard Drive, CD-ROM/Floppy combo, and a single USB 1.1 port (happily).

After looking at several linux options I decided to go with antiX 15, BASE 386 version. The Live CD loads up fine, and almost everything runs on the laptop correctly (the old crystal audio sound chip isn't picked up, but I'm sure that's fixable) It picks up the USB and can see the Netgear Wifi Adapter connected to the port. I'm happy enough that I want to install to the hard drive.

When I ran the installer initially I had problems with it hanging at 3% then erroring out with 'Failed to prepare chosen partitions' and returning to the beginning. I re-downloaded the ISO and re-burned it very slowly on a different burner, and that problem went away.

Now I have a new problem. At 72% the installer hangs up, with no error message, it just sits there with a small amount of disk access going on, and some CD access going on (some of the time). It's going nowhere, eventually I just had to turn off the machine. It does this every time at 72%.

Any recommendations to get it moving forward would be appreciated.

Thanks

Rich

You need tons of /swap for the gui installer. Why not use the cli installer instead? It is there for old machines like youra.

Good luck with it. If me. I'd make a /swap partition on USB drive



Edit: wondering if pcmcia slot is so old it uses the older pcmcia contacts instead of the later pcmcia contacts.
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I have a old laptop that fits what I am describing.
If not and it takes the later made pcmcia cards. You can go with a pcmcia to usb like I do on here,


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I'd bookmark it if I was you after you finish a install or make a text file with the url so I could find it later and keep it in documents.
Iceweasel is going lock up on you.
Dillo and Links will work OK.

Howdy and Welcome and good luck with your endevours.
Happy Trailz, Rok

Thanks for the advice Rok. I got to the point in the install where it's finished copying the installation to the drive but then it nosedives into errors trying to read/write files, and then goes into a loop where it cannot set passwords for the user and for root. I suspect the Drive is iffy, or I've still got problems with the installation disk. It's a 4GB dodgy old IBM drive, so I wouldn't be surprised if it is the problem. Since drives are cheap I ordered a 40GB from Ebay which should give more room anyway, then I'll re-attempt the install. I also ordered a PCMCIA 10/100 NIC which will let me network through a wire for now, as it now seems to have an issue recognizing the netgear usb wifi. I'll try again at the weekend if the drive arrives by then, and let you know how it goes. If I still have errors I'll post more significant detail

Just out of interest which brand/model of PCMCIA USB Card did you use? The machine does support the newer cards, I think it was pretty much the last laptop produced by DEC.

I'm off to a Vintage Computer Festival on Saturday so I'm hoping I can pick up more interesting old gear to play with.

Thanks

Rich

Just out of interest which brand/model of PCMCIA USB Card did you use?

Cheapo back when I bought it. Cost was round about 5 bucks a chrd with 2 usb 2.0 and 1 firewire port and 1 mini firewire port. From China.
No model number. Uses Via chips in it. Looks like



May I suggest
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? Only If you live in the States and do not find anything at the computer festival/show?
The kernels pick up the pmcia slot OK on my older gear with yenta and lspci -knn will tell you if it is working OK. Mine still do on automounting usb in
spacefm even though via chips in them. So I would not sweat the brand and go with the cheapest I could find.

'm off to a Vintage Computer Festival on Saturday so I'm hoping I can pick up more interesting old gear to play with.

What I walked around in when I bought a couple of cheapo parts (keyboards and mice) in Austin Texas when visiting with family. It was the Goodwill Computer Store. For those outside of USA. Goodwill industries helps the homeless. It survives on Donations.


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Everything but Apple/Mac was 1/2 price. They had laptops in plastic tubs arranged like old records and missing a few parts for sale like 5 to 10 bucks.
My wife kept me under control in there though. LCD monitors were as low as 20 bucks. Towers were 30 bucks or more.

Okay. Cool. Yes 4 USB ports would be nice, that looks like an option, the price is certainly right. I deliberately picked up a network card which has a small cable/dongle out rather than one with some chunky ports on the ends, so I could guarantee room for the chunky end of the USB card.

Nice looking store, if I get down that way I'll take a look. My wife will no doubt keep a tight hold of me at the computer festival. She's told me, nothing over $20 __{{emoticon}}__ Supposedly they have a pile of free stuff so I'll be checking that out.

I found a good source of new ram for my older stuff that isn't price gouging, so the 486 will get a ram upgrade to 64MB sometime soon, they supplied the RAM for the DEC laptop, which originally only had 32MB and that's been reliable.

My main focus is on DEC gear right now, I'm hoping to find more of their branded laptops/base units at some point. I used to have a VAX 4000 machine that lived in the garage for a while but those are rather too chunky __{{emoticon}}__

Thanks

Rich

An update on progress:

The IBM hard drive was causing all the installation issues. I replaced the drive with a 40GB Hitachi Travelstar yesterday, and antiX now installs fine. I didn't need to use the cli, it worked through the main installer.

I was able to configure the Netgear WG111v2 USB wifi adapter (that's currently on the single USB 1.1 port) easily through ceni, and I now have network access. You were right about Iceweasel, it pretty much locks up. Dillo works fine. I also have just installed a 3COM 3cCFE575CT 10/100 PCMICIA network card, which is working perfectly without any work.

Remaining issues that I'm beginning to investigate:

1) No Audio output. PC Speaker only. The Crystal Audio Soundcard is not visible to the system, it was working under the windows 95 installation, and the system had great sound, so I'd like to fix that. Sound Card is enabled in the Bios.

2) Incorrect Screen resolution. Currently it is set to 800x600 and doesn't fill the entire screen. The Card/Chipset is a 2MB Neomagic NM2160 (MagicGraph 128XD) , capable of 1024x768. xrandr only shows 800X600 as the max resolution. It currently lists the driver as vesa when I review the specs using inxi

Having looked at this thread toruble-with-video-card-resolution-solved-t3689.html If I understand correctly I will have to enable a neomagic driver instead in order to get this fixed. My lack of experience here is crippling me. Would I be right in thinking that a correct command to switch the driver would be:

apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-neomagic will that work? I just replaced trident from that thread with neomagic

Also on this link
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I see it's noted:

On some laptops using the 2160 chipset (MagicGraph 128XD) the following options are needed to avoid a lock-up of the graphic engine:

Option"XaaNoScanlineImageWriteRect"
Option"XaaNoScanlineCPUToScreenColorExpandFill"

Any corrections or advice welcome, since I have very small linux experience. I don't want to lock up the laptop video just after getting it running.

Thanks

Rich

the xserver-xorg-video-neomagic is already installed. hmm...

see if you have a file called xorg.conf in / etc/X11/ . If so, I would try renaming the file xorg.conf.bak and see if the system picks up the right driver on reboot.

Thanks dolphin_oracle. Renaming the file did the trick, on reboot it picked up the neomagic driver, and loaded the correct resolution.

Another issue gone. Just the inoperative sound card to fix now.

Rich

so everyone can see what is going on then.

Here it is...

After doing a websearch on"linux crystal audio" I ran across this suggestion: open a terminal, become root and enterThere are also supposed to be snd-cs4231 and cs4236 modules you could try.

Okay, I tried the modprobe command as shown.

Allegedly the soundcard in the laptop has CS4237B, the nearest driver is the one you suggested.

The command returns modprobe: FATAL: Module snd-CS4236 not found.

Am I right in thinking this means that particular module is not in the kernel?

Looking at:


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There's a lengthy set of instructions to insert that driver into the kernel. Not sure that is correct. Again any advice welcome

Thanks

Rich

Looks like maybe you didn't first become root? I tested that command before I posted and the module is definitely there.

I'm confused then. I'm certain I'm logged in as root.

From the terminal, I used:

su root, and entered the root password when requested

the command prompt becomes

root@antix1 : then I execute the modprobe command as shown, but I get the error: FATAL: Module snd-CS4236 not found.

whoami confirms I am root.

Is it possible we have different versions of the kernel? and that your version includes the driver and mine does not? I read something online about some proprietary drivers not being included by default.

Thanks

Rich

It is sensitive to capitalization--notice the difference between what I posted and what you typed!