I heard about antiX on the MEPIS Community forum. They said it was good for making your old computer into a usable machine again. I'm trying to put it on my fifteen year old laptop; if I can ever get the backup of the old data, it looks like antiX will run pretty well. Meantime, to make sure it wasn't the CD burn that was giving me trouble, I put it on my secondary desktop system, and aside from the spurious clicks it seems to generate (which might, possibly, be coming from my KVM switch, though it never produces those when set to the primary machine), it runs pretty well with about 20 GiB total space and seems stable (been up for almost six days at present, mostly just running BOINC). That machine had been powered down for the past two or three years, aside from occasional startups to do a web search when I needed to fix my primary system's Windows; now it's back to being up and ready to use with a couple key taps.

I prefer a more full featured system and"rich" look for my primary desktop (MEPIS 11 is doing that job just fine), but antiX looks like just the ticket for the older machines.

I've read your posts at Mepis Forums. All I can say is Howdy and Welcome here. I will be in and out as I have some construction projects going on.

Welcome here. According to my tests on virtualbox, we need at least 96 MB of RAM to watch youtube videos on iceweasel (firefox) 21 without problems. I hope you have that on your laptop.

Eperbab wrote:Welcome here. According to my tests on virtualbox, we need at least 96 MB of RAM to watch youtube videos on iceweasel (firefox) 21 without problems. I hope you have that on your laptop.

Oh, yes, I have 192 MB RAM, and until last night, 4 GiB of hard disk. Unfortunately, the 15 year old hard disk appears not to have been up to the stress of running the Win98 FAT32 conversion on three partitions, along with moving a good size slug of data around to reduce the size of the C: volume enough to convert with that amount of RAM (apparently 1.4 or so GiB is good to go, 1.8 GiB isn't, in 192 MiB RAM). With all the conversions and defragementing done, I was trying to move the relocated data back to its original locations and started getting messages of"HD0 fail" and the machine wouldn't even reboot. I've removed the HDD and its entry in BIOS, and it boots from LiveUSB (with the assistance of the PLOP Boot Manager); I've got a bid in (for around $10) on eBay for another HDD that I think will work with the laptop (it says it has cylinders, heads, and sectors within the"user" assignable range that should be up to about 8 GiB despite reporting a capacity of 40 GiB -- we'll see).

Meanwhile, I can't seem to get the Live antiX to see the sound hardware, and I'm not sure if that's a limitation of LiveUSB or if the laptop's sound hardware is too old for antiX to recognize (everything else seems to work fine). I'm not going to spend much time on it until I can get the new hard drive installed; it'll have some usefulness even without sound, or I have the option to reinstall Win98 SE (if the new drive actually reads as 40 GiB, I could even dual-boot Win98 and antiX; I'm doing that in that amount of space on my second desktop machine).

Speaking of which -- does anyone know of any software tools that might let me get at data on the failed HDD? Or do I need to try to find a working unit (same brand and generation, if not model) and transplant the control board to try to get the (presumably intact) data off the platters? I know I'll need an adapter to connect the 44-pin 2.5" drive to the standard 40-pin plus power 3.5" connectors I have in my desktop machines, but those aren't hard to find.

Silent Observer wrote:Speaking of which -- does anyone know of any software tools that might let me get at data on the failed HDD?

Try the package gddrescue, the binary is named ddrescue. I also found the package magicrescue, but I don't know that.

Or do I need to try to find a working unit (same brand and generation, if not model) and transplant the control board to try to get the (presumably intact) data off the platters?

I guess the rotating disks and heads are broken since you wrote a file needed 10 minutes, which could be copied within seconds.

I would read"man ddrescue" and then switch the hdd on. Don't use high"max retries" in the first run, maybe just 1. In the second run you can use high values, maybe 100. Then try to read from both images.

Thanks, Tom, I'll keep a reference to this thread for when I get the new hard disk in and get the adapter to connect the old one to my main (fastest) computer. The high retry is a good one to let run overnight; I've done this once from Windows and got back all the critical stuff from a drive that had a bunch of shock damaged (i.e. head impacted) sectors. FWIW, I doubt it's physical damage; the laptop was sitting on a dresser, running continously, for literally years.

In other good news, I found an online source for an extended life battery (6600 mAH, half again the standard level) for only $63; that's less than half the last price I had for one. On the bad news side, it appears this Gateway Solo 2500 (one of the oldest versions of that model) has a Neomagic sound chipset, which is very problematic to get working in Linux; that would be why Live doesn't recognize the sound hardware and doesn't bode well for the machine fulfilling its previous role as a bedside stereo once I get antiX working on it. Looks like dual-boot is the way to go, since any portable use will require a shutdown for transport anyway; I can run Win98SE on the dresser, and switch to antiX when I need to go online or get actual work done.

Most old audio were compatible with Sound Blaster, IIRC.

Silent Observer wrote:On the bad news side, it appears this Gateway Solo 2500 (one of the oldest versions of that model) has a Neomagic sound chipset, which is very problematic to get working in Linux;

How about a USB Soundcard?

Tom wrote:

Silent Observer wrote:On the bad news side, it appears this Gateway Solo 2500 (one of the oldest versions of that model) has a Neomagic sound chipset, which is very problematic to get working in Linux;

How about a USB Soundcard?

That's a possible option. Another is, as noted above, that Gateway claims the Neomagic Wave 300 chipset is compatible with Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro"for gaming" -- though I never found many games that would run on the laptop, there was a LucasArts demo of some sort on there (I don't recall if I ever ran it), and there certainly was a Windows driver; as noted, I should have room on the new hard disk to dual-boot Win98 and antiX, and switching between the two should take less time than switching between XP and MEPIS on my 2.5 GHz dual core, 4 GiB RAM desktop system -- antiX will boot from USB in under two minutes and should be faster on HDD, and Win98 was booting from hard disk in about the same. It certainly doesn't look as if antiX is detecting the Neomagic sound, though I won't be certain until I get an install (I'm never sure what gets left out of a Live boot). I don't much like the idea of a USB attachment sticking out of the side of the machine all the time, but I don't think I've seen a sound adapter that will fit an old (narrow) PCMCIA slot. The Newmagic video causes no trouble, but it's VESA 2.0 compatible at the hardware/ROM level.

I did find a Neomagic 256 driver, of sorts; apparently Neomagic is very uncooperative with free/open driver developers, and further does some odd stuff:

[/url]

Given this is the case, I expect there'll always be problems with this sound hardware, since video drivers will regularly and routinely overwrite the audio buffer. I suppose I'll have to shop around for a USB sound adapter, if I find it too annoying to run Windows for"stereo" mode and switch to antiX for web browsing and actual work.

Well, more on this -- apparently the hard disk in the old Gateway wasn't as dead as all that, and the machine is running again on it, but the first one I ordered to replace it was; fortunately, eBay stepped in where the seller had apparently stepped out, I got my money back, and got another (working) HDD; better still, the laptop's BIOS has no problem stepping up from 4 GiB to 30 GB capacity. The bad news is, I haven't yet managed to get a successful boot from the new HDD (mainly because I'm trying to get the existing Win98 onto the new drive first, so the machine can still fulfill its bedside stereo role -- installing Windows after antiX would result in Windows wiping out the GRUB MBR). I can't get the machine to keep running the CD drive long enough to install Win98 (looks like I may have a heat problem that doesn't come up in the routine operation playing surf sounds by the bed; I may have to figure out how to open the case beyond the drive and RAM covers in order to vacuum the dust out). I may have to find a way to make a bootable Windows volume through USB from one of my other machines -- that won't happen directly from the Win98 CD, since Win98 didn't recognize USB storage devices natively.

In other good news, I can get a 128 MiB SDRAM module for the Solo 2500 for under $25 shipped, still; that would let me (for instance) run PartedMagic on it (though for now I'm getting good mileage with the HD out and connected to my MEPIS or antiX machines via a USB bridge). Replacing the original 32 MiB module with another 128 would put me at 288 MiB, which is plenty for distros like antiX as well.

Have you considered taking the working win98 drive out of the box and using a second, working box, to clone the win98 paritition to the new drive? I use one of these things for just this kind of operation.


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002"
linktext was:"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812232002"
====================================


Pretty handy to have in your tool kit when dealing with hard drives.

and a good dusting is always recommended! If you are using canned air, do it outside! Your sinus's will thank you.

dolphin_oracle wrote:Have you considered taking the working win98 drive out of the box and using a second, working box, to clone the win98 paritition to the new drive? I use one of these things for just this kind of operation.


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002"
linktext was:"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812232002"
====================================


Pretty handy to have in your tool kit when dealing with hard drives.

and a good dusting is always recommended! If you are using canned air, do it outside! Your sinus's will thank you.

That's exactly what I've done, with a very similar piece of hardware that I bought locally -- got a good image backup from the drive after removing it, restored the backup to the newer drive (including the bootloader part of the MBR), and the system won't boot from the newer drive. I can't get it to run from the CD drive long enough to install Win98 (same problem I have when trying to boot a LiveCD); it's better after leaving the machine off for a while, which is what makes me think it's heat. This coming weekend I should have time to open the case and blow some dust out (no canned air, I'll be using my tiny compressor and real air from a blow gun), which ought to help. It occurs to me, I should also run my CD laser lens cleaner CD in that drive (it's got a row of soft bristles glued on the data side that remove dust from the lens; my DVD player won't run a rental disk without running the cleaner CD first).

Still working on getting my 1998 laptop to a dual boot with Win98/antiX. I used Clonezilla (from a Parted Magic LiveCD) on my main desktop system to make an image of the complete old 4 GB Win98 disk, and coudn't get the image to restore to the"new" 30 GB disk (which replaced the 40 GB that wouldn't spin up on arrival). After several failed attempts (and a hint from my 2 year old 1 TB drive reporting immanent failure via S.M.A.R.T.), I ran the Drive Health utility, and found that this latest drive was reporting unrecoverable data errors and address mark errors, despite only 639 hours of power on time. Another refund, and I've ordered another"user refurbished" drive -- can't be any worse than the last two, and carries and explicit 30 day guarantee.

Does anyone have any idea how big a drive the BIOS in a 1998 vintage Gateway Solo 2500 can handle (it happily auto-typed and recognized capacity on the 30 GB drive)? I might be ahead to skip forward to an 80 GB, just to get a newer drive, as long as it's IDE (SATA didn't exist yet in 1998). Failing that, I wonder if I can get a bottom end SSD that will plug into a laptop IDE connector?

Answering my own question, I guess. The latest hard drive from eBay (after two that were non-functional in one way or another) is a 40 GB Hitachi Travelstar -- and it won't auto-type in the laptop BIOS settings (in fact, it freezes the setup, I have to use the power switch to get out). Too bad, because it works perfectly on the test cable; it came with leftovers of a Dell WinNT on it, overwrote without a speck of trouble under Clonezilla"restoredisk" option -- but the laptop won't recognize it. Next step, I guess, is to look up the instructions I had a while back for installing a BIOS update from CD (non-OS dependent, uses a FreeDOS CD with the BIOS updater inserted into the ISO before burning) and try updating the BIOS to latest version and see if that adds capability to recognize larger drives (I expect it won't, I think the sectors/heads/cylinders geometry is set by the controller chipset and a drive that doesn't emulate a compatible geometry just isn't going to work), then fall back to finding another working drive with the right emulated geometry (no more than 63 sectors, 16 heads, and 65535 emulated cylinders, using LBA to access the actual drive geometry/capacity).

Good news is, I've still only spent about $12 (got refunds for the first two non-working drives), so next payday I can shop for drives again...

Edit to add: It just occurred to me that an SSD in the size I want (no bigger than 32 GiB, potentially as small as 8 GiB) might be cheap enough to compete with the used hard drives I've been buying -- looks like I can get a new 16 GiB SSD that plugs right into the existing IDE drive caddy for $40 on eBay. I found an Instructable on doing this conversion using a Compact Flash out of a camera and an adapter (I can get an adapter for $11 that holds two CF cards, and 32 GiB CF cards appear to start at $15, both BIN including shipping -- and this would be sturdy enough for portable use) -- am I correct in understanding this would be significantly slower than a proper SSD? How would it compare on access time and transfer rate to a 4200 rpm magnetic HDD of 1998 vintage? And what's the lifetime running on camera-type CF compared to actual SSD modules?

as far as I know, it will probably be a bit slower than a modern ssd, not much slower than an old one, but still a lot faster than an old slow hdd.
I have no idea how long it would last, but if you use some of the ssd type settings, to reduce wear, it would probably last a long time.