LOL. Running this tonight on a thowAway 128MB flash card out of a broken ooooold Kodak camera. BASED on Debian Squeeze + Puppy Linux. Running it on the dual core laptop, (wifes). It is sparse and lean though with no flash or java. Screenshot was done with scrot. Openbox with Tint2. Outdated repos.
Save file for changes is on the Windows 7 drive. As far as SSD vs CF vs IDE Platter. CF is the slowest and wears out the fastest if not formatted as Ext2 file system. IDE will last laonger and write faster. But it depends on what ya wanna do I guess. I wrote posts on on making ssd last longer. Ext2 file system is the safe way to go for begineers. No /swap either on the SSD or CF if ya want it to last. Maybe a swap file instead of a partition but I have never had a reason to go that route.
Well, the first question is whether the CF => SSD adapter module presents an acceptable translated geometry for the BIOS setup. I'll know next weekend, though; I've got an adapter (which holds two CF cards, so I can expand later if needed, or for cloning if/when I start to find bad blocks from wear) and a 16 GiB CF card on the way; that's well below the size of the largest HDD I've gotten to auto-type on that machine, so as long as it looks like a physical HDD to the controller and has (or can be configured to have) the right emulated geometry, it should work. FWIW, the adapter was $10.99 shipped, and the CF was about $17. If this works, then I'll get a RAM upgrade (I can still buy 128 MiB modules, and replace the 32 MiB with one to get 288 MiB) and a battery ($62 for an extended capacity unit, as of a few weeks ago) and have a usable laptop again (adding a PCMCIA Wi-Fi card is on the list after that).
Roky, I was planning to format ext2 specifically to minimize wear; I probably can't use a RAMdisk, though, and I'm not sure I can get by without swap, even with 288 MiB installed (after the planned RAM upgrade; current RAM is 192 MiB). I'd rather have a platter drive, but I can't seem to find one that still works and will cooperate with the 1998 BIOS -- I have a 30 GB Toshiba that autotypes, but won't let me write a disk image (to put the Win98 install on it), and a 40 GB that works perfectly on a USB test adapter, but the laptop's BIOS won't recognize, so I'm presuming that my limit is about 32 GiB with translated geometry of 63 sectors, 16 heads, and up to 65535 cylinders (those are the largest values I can hand enter for a user drive type, and match what the 30 GB drive presents). If this works well with the CF and adapter, I might try to get a genuine SSD while the small ones are still available (but they cost more than the same size CF and this adapter).
I was originally planning to replace the Win98 with antiX in the 4 GB original drive, but I found that the NeoMagic sound hardware in the laptop has never had an available Linux driver, so I need to use dual-boot for the laptop to continue fulfilling its current role as a bedside stereo (the Win98 install has a suitable sound driver) -- and that means I need at least 8-9 GiB drive capacity, to have room for antiX in addition to Windows.
Generally on an SSD I would recommend using ext4 to take advantage of
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although it might not be available through the CF adapter.
Instead of CF. I went with Platter called a Microdrive made by Seagate with a IDE to cf Adapter. This was the only way bios would see the microdrive. CF to PCMCIA was useless for bios recognition.
I did this long ago with AntiX on my IBM 390E. The microdrive was 8gig though and I think 3600 rpm.
I did my research and learned to stay away from any micro-drive that was pulled out of or listed as
compatible for a IPOD. Those microdrives have firmware that makes them proprietary only for a IPOD
and Won't work in a Laptop. They are relatively cheaper than cf, or ssd but 8 gig is the biggest I ever saw
them come in. Seagate is my recommendation for a brand if going with a Microdrive. I can't swear for the
Hitachi ones. One will have to do their own research as this was done by me years ago. Antix ran real good
on that microdrive and journaled file systems like ext3 and swap could not hurt it.
Well, the CF (16 GiB, 300x, Professional brand) and adapter (Best Connectivity brand, supports two CF cards connected to a single laptop IDE connector -- but required me to clip pin 21 to connect to the laptop's caddy and to my USB test connector, which have that socket blocked) arrived in today's mail. I can now say this will work, if I can get the installation side worked out; the drive autotypes in the laptop BIOS setup and I was able to get a boot to GRUB after restoring the Win98 clone and installing antiX 13.1, then correcting the disk designators in /boot/grub/menu.lst (subbing sda for the laptop installation in place of sdc, as the drive appeared when I installed antiX). FWIW, this adapter is apparently capable of higher transfer speed than any of the hard disks I've tried in this laptop (they topped out at 100 MB/sec, while the adapter is rated for 150 MB/sec, and I'm pretty sure the laptop's controller isn't any faster than 100 MB/sec anyway) -- in other words, assuming the 300x rating of the CF card means anything, it should actually compete favorably with the platter drive I'm trying to replace.
The bad news is, Win98 reports"Invalid boot disk" after the chainloader command executes from GRUB, and antiX quits with a report of"critical temperature reached (245 C); shutting down" shortly after the"decompressing Linux" report. Now, there's clearly nothing inside my laptop reaching pizza oven temperature, so I've got a a bogus temperature sensor detect -- and no idea how to disable that sensor or its monitor. As for the Windows side, this may be a"normal" result of trying to use a Linux bootloader to start Win98 (I got something similar when I tried to put the PLOP Boot Manager on the old hard disk, hoping to be able to use that to boot from USB); I'll try restoring the clone image again and not doing anything else to the drive (not even expanding the extended partition to fill the 8+ GiB of unallocated space left after the clone restore), to verify it reaches a bootable state, before I try anything else; failing that, I might attempt to plug the CF into one of my memory card readers and clone the Win98 hard disk directly, device to device (a process I have a little more confidence in; I've done that a number of times, most recently a week or so ago when I replaced a failing main drive in my primary desktop system).
I have gotten antiX to boot on the laptop several times from CD and/or USB (the latter via PLOP Boot Manager, since the laptop BIOS won't boot from USB), so I'm confident this isn't something that happens with Live; I seem to recall seeing something go by in the Live boot sequence about"no sensors detected" -- did I leave a service on at the end of installation that I should have disabled?
Yep, adding acpi=off to the end of the antiX boot command line fixed that -- started right up, running better than it has in years. I can't really compare speed between the CF and the old HDD -- like I can't compare Win98 performance to antiX performance, because they're on different storage hardware. Clearly, though, the CF will work, within its lifetime limitations (and CF is cheap enough I can replace this unit every couple years if I have to). Upgrade RAM and get a new battery, and that old Gateway will have a new lease on life.
Now, off to Google what I need to do to dual-boot Win98...
Edit: Wait a minute, I didn't have to do anything special to dual boot Win98 and Linux on my second desktop machine -- just rebooted to Windows to check. I wonder if I didn't select the wrong Windows entry when I edited down the GRUB to remove options on the desktop machine I installed from, before moving the CF to the laptop. The installer found both XP and my old (no longer bootable) Win98 install on the main machine. Grub repair from LiveCD might fix that...
Wahoo!! My laptop (bought lightly used in 1998) is now booting to both Win98 and antiX 13.1 from the"cobbled up" 16 GB SSD (300x Compact Flash card in a 2.5" IDE adapter). I'd gotten a boot to Linux previously with this setup, so the issue had been getting Windows to boot after transferring from the fifteen year old 4 GB platter hard disk. After beating my head against that wall for several hours yesterday, the light came on -- becaus Win98 still uses a boot sector loader like DOS, I don't have to clone a Win98 drive to get it to boot, I just have to do a file copy and then use the sys.com command from a bootable disk of the correct version (and the file copy took less than an hour using Grsync from antiX directly on the laptop, with the old hard drive connected on a USB adapter). The complication here is that Win98 doesn't know about USB storage, and I'd never bothered to install the extension that for that on either of my Win98 systems (the laptop isn't connected to the network/internet anyway, at present, though it will be soon), so I couldn't just connect the redneck SSD to one of the Win98 systems and sys the drive via USB.
Downloaded FreeDOS to a USB stick (unetbootin will download this automatically, presto pronto -- literally takes less than a minute), used Plop Boot Manager to boot the laptop from the USB (its BIOS is too old to find a USB for boot), located the sys.com command (in c:\windows\command folder, though that drive was reading as d: due to the FreeDOS stick showing up as c:), and was told I couldn't target the default drive. Changed to the next partition, was informed that there was"no system on default drive". Hmmm, says I; changed back to d: volume in the \windows\command folder, issued sys e: -- and made the second partition"bootable". Win98 can only boot from the first partition on the installed drive anyway, just like DOS, but that allowed me to change to e: and issue d:sys d: and have a"system" to"transfer" back to the first partition. Shut down, pull the USB stick and PLOP CD, restart, selected Win98 at the GRUB menu, and it starts up -- in about half the time it used to take on the platter hard drive (15 years old, remember, only 4200 rpm and 100 MB/s maximum DMA speed, compared to near-zero file access and up to 150 MB/s for the redneck SSD). It's running in its old"bedside stereo" role now, in Win98, but I can have antiX on the screen in about two minutes (the software restart cycle on this laptop is painfully slow by modern standards).
That means this coming payday I need to order another RAM module for it (still available and only about $25) to boost it to the maximum of 288 MiB, and next mid-month (I get a monthly bonus above my regular salary, on the mid-month check) I'll order a battery (extended life lithium-ion unit about $63 plus shipping). I spent (in the end, after two refunds for DOA drives) $13 on the 40 GB hard disk the BIOS won't recognize (I'll probably buy an external enclosure and use that as portable backup/storage, locally $17), $27 combined for the used CF card and adapter, and I'll be in another $90 or so for RAM and battery plus $12 to $40 or so for a PCMCIA WiFi card (the latter only needed when roving; I don't have WiFi at home and will run a wire to the laptop for home use) and $12 to $20 for a USB sound card, if I can't get Linux to talk to the NeoMagic sound hardware -- total, about the same as the cheapest used/refurbed laptop I've seen go by on Tiger Direct (albeit those were fairly modern units with Windows 7), but with the money spent in nickel and dime mode, which is easier on a tight budget than dropping $200 at a single whack.
If one were building something like this from the ground up, for Linux only (say, for a school kid to learn general computer operation or have an e-mail and homework machine), laptops in this category go for $50 or less on eBay; often with still-working batteries (though a battery this old is likely to have little running time even if it still takes a charge); the SSD setup is more robust against bumps and weather exposure than a platter drive, and can easily be sized to the maximum the BIOS can recognize by calculation from the biggest"user" drive parameter. The end cost is comparable to a netbook, but with a bigger screen and near full size keyboard, and usually a CD drive (they vanished as internal devices to make machines thinner after BIOS and OS USB support and built-in network connections came along in the early 2000s) -- and your choice of Linux versions tailored for the hardware capabilities. PLOP, Puppy, antiX, and Tiny, at a minimum, will run on 256 MiB or less RAM, while abiword and gnumeric should nicely cover schoolwork needs without the large system overhead of LibreOffice -- antiX looks like it'll still run reasonably well in 128 MiB with a swap partition, and the web pages say it'll run in as little as 64 MiB (though that might be command line only); mine doesn't look like it'll touch the swap often with 192 MiB, as it runs about 40-45 MiB used at the fluxbox desktop.
Anyway, the conquest is complete -- every one of the five computers in this house now has Linux of some flavor, at least on dual boot (two of those running antiX 13.1), and four of them are running Linux as first choice (the laptop will run Win98 most of the time until I resolve the sound issues caused by NeoMagic sound hardware), despite at least two being hardware capable of running Windows 7 (if not 8, but I'll never intentionally have Windows __{{emoticon}}__ .
Congrats on getting a plan coming together. I have been fighting Sparky Linux Live and Visido Linux live as far as touchpad and mouse clicks go .
Have to use a external mouse on my
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with ALPS Glidepoint touchpad with those 2 distros. I am going to say screw it and install AntiX full 13 with Sid on this netbook.
I have 3 of these style netbooks now, (I have been posting about them for awhile now but the sale is over). AntiX 13 wheezy full on the 64gig SSD one. SolydX on the 30 gig platter one. So I figure I might go with Sid on the last one.
Downloading 32 bit full right now as I am replying. Those netbooks were under 50 bucks in the USA (batteries were good also so far). I got the A/C adapters for $7.00 a pop also. Found out that IBM and MSI were the same A/C adapters the M&A uses.
rokytnji wrote:Have to use a external mouse on my
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with ALPS Glidepoint touchpad with those 2 distros. I am going to say screw it and install AntiX full 13 with Sid on this netbook.
You might check the BIOS settings relative to the touchpad; my Gateway has the ability to turn off the touchpad in BIOS settings, which I used to do when I was typing on it regularly because the touchpad is below the space bar and the slightest touch on the surface would pull focus off the app I was typing in. That said, for that reason, if you're typing on a touchpad equipped laptop or netbook you might be ahead to leave the touchpad off. When enabled, though, the hardware passes touchpad entry, including two-finger and three-finger taps and hold against edge, as mouse movement and clicks apparently below the driver level (and/or antiX has a driver built in for the touchpad on the Gateway, but I always used to use the standard MS/Logitech mouse driver in Win98, with or without serial mouse).
If I find myself roving this this machine again, I'll probably spring for a full size keyboard that will fit in the carrying case -- the one I used to have with it is the one I'm typing on now, because the one that came with my Laser 286 (in 1989) died three or four years ago (yes, that's 20 years on a generic 102-key that predated"Windows" and"menu" keys). Maybe I'll get a roll-up type this time, if I can afford it; there's a pocket in the case that would fit that sort perfectly.
You might check the BIOS settings relative to the touchpad;
I've been there and tested that. I traced it down to the new A/C power adapters I bought. With them plugged in. The TOUCHPAD is erratic and goofy responsive. With the adapter unplugged. Touchpad works OK. The adapter charges the battery OK though so must be a irq conflict somewhere
which is way above this bikers skillset. Distro used does not matter. It is a hardware thing.
I'll have a time figuring this one out as I already paid and left feedback on these adapters. Google was the one telling me after reading the Chinese part number on the stock working adapter that what I bought should have been compatible. __{{emoticon}}__
Roky, what you describe sounds an awful lot like noisy power -- laptops and netbooks don't just charge the battery and run the system off the charge, at least if running on the charger; that's not really even possible (short of a two-battery system to let you run on one while you charge the other). Instead, they power the DC bus, which both charges the battery (though some fairly smart circuitry, with modern Li-ion batteries, to prevent overcharges that can lead a battery to catch fire or explode) and runs the machine. The problem with doing it that way is that if the filtering in the charger is bad, you can get voltage spikes and noise (from the switching process that is supposed to produce nice, smooth DC directly from 120 V or 240 V AC mains power) on the DC bus. Now, that doesn't cause much trouble for digital circuits; as long as the average voltage is right and the noise spikes aren't too big, the CPU, RAM, and so forth will be fine, and the angular inertia of the spinning platter will prevent small spikes from causing trouble with a hard disk (though a big enough spike can write something that wasn't intended onto the media).
When you get to an analog/digital device like a touchpad, though, noisy power can lead to noisy touch position sensing, which will create the erratic response you're seeing. If you're competent with a soldering iron and have access to an oscilloscope (including a software version that works through a sound card), you can verify this with the scope, and fix it with the soldering iron -- the latter by putting a filter capacitor across the DC output of the supply. That will be an electrolytic capacitor of moderate size, typically a half inch diameter by an inch long, or a little bigger, for the kind of power a netbook will want -- can't help you with the capacitance value (needs to be big enough to do the job, but not so big your power takes too long to come up, which could damage the switching unit, or lead to unsteady voltage because it bollixes up the regulation feedback), but the voltage rating needs to be at least twice the nominal output voltage of the supply.
I get something similar to this -- a whine in the audio -- with my cell phone if I play music through my car stereo while the phone is on charge (if I play music without the charger, the phone will run down the battery, good for four or five days of standby, in about an hour and a half); any switching power supply or digital voltage regulator can produce noisy power, and in my phone's case, that comes through via the analog portion of the sound output.
