Another 'Get Linux Running on This Box' Thread

[Guest LilBambi]

Yeah, me too. I never used xine, well that's not entirely correct, I did try it, but it didn't hold a candle to mplayer or vlc, so i went back to them. The new xine is pretty easy to use though. Must be lighter weight or something (for Puppy).

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Clutter, as mentioned by others here, 512M of RAM is really not sufficient to load a full-fledged LIVE Linux CD. If it loads at all, it will be VERY slow. I think you mention that the RAM in that machine currently is PC2100. I believe I have numerous sticks of PC2100 out in my shop. If you're interested, let me know. I'll take a looksee and see just exactly what I have out there. I'm pretty sure I can get you up to at least 1G of RAM. How many slots does that Dell have on the mobo?

 

Awaiting your reply...

 

P.S. The RAM I'm offering is gratis, brother. I'll mail to you ASAP as soon as we determine what you need for that machine.

[burninbush]

* Let me elaborate- that XP bootloader seems to be able to override my settings and ignore a bootable CD in the optical drive when that second HD is hooked up. It's a junkyard dog! I think I'm going to wipe both drives. I just don't want to be hasty. First I want to rule out any hardware failures. It seems unlikely there is anything wrong with the Intel 845 chipset- but one never knows... >cluttermagnet

 

+++++++++++++

 

Ahhh ... here's something I know; when your optical drive is unable to read your optical media, then bios will quickly default to the second choice. Until that happens, then neither XP [nor any other OS] has any presence in your machine; bios does not know that level of detail. There is no way the XP bootloader can override or force bios to boot it first.

 

If you want to get control of this, then just disconnect both hard drives, leaving your optical drive as the only thing connected to an ide cable [thus eliminating any jumpering conflicts]. Then go through your stack of boot cds, and toss those that still won't boot.

 

It would likely be worth spending 30 minutes or so running mtest86 [look for that as an alternate boot choice, surely on some of those live cds], just to verify you don't have a secondary problem confusing things.

 

There is nothing wrong with the basic spec of your machine [p4 w/512mb] that would prevent most live cd distros from booting. I can see that disks that boot to kde4 might take a very long time to come up -- better to play with something like puppy until you get it going.

[abarbarian]

Advanced Troubleshooting

 

To help you troubleshoot a problem, your computer is equipped with four lights on the back panel labeled "A," "B," "C," and "D." These lights can be yellow, green, or off. When the computer starts normally, the lights flash. After the computer starts, the lights remain green. If the computer malfunctions, the color and sequence of the lights identify the problem.

 

Replacing the CD drive

 

Ensure that the jumper setting on the new drive is set for "cable select" (see the documentation that came with the drive for information).

 

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Wow! You guys are the greatest! I'll Answer in greater detail late tonight. A few thoughts-

 

Barbarian- This box unfortunately has had the MS label on the case neatly razored off. It seems to offer two different XP installs at bootup. Yeah, it looks questionable so far as a 'legal' setup. Don't know how well you know about my history with Windows, my Win to Linux transition, and my generally bad attitude regarding proprietary OS's today. In short, I blew my stack at the 'Mother may I' antics of MS around the time of XP's introduction, and I stayed with 98SE a good several years longer. Although I'm familiar with XP, having worked on others' machines, I have never personally owned a running copy of XP under my own roof. I could go on and on... yet OTOH Win has its utility and there are those rare occasions when one has a piece of useful utility software written for Windows. I have access to Windows machines at friends' houses. To date, I have never gotten around to it, but I do have a couple of radio engineering programs I've been wanting to try out for filter calculations, antenna calculations, etc. All freeware.

 

In short, I have better options so far as getting a legal copy of XP under my own roof, so the situation on this box is of no consequence. I don't care about the two XP installs, only that I have a usable hardware platform to put Linux OS's on. BTW I lost a dear friend of some 50 years, early last year. I therefore inherited some computer hardware, and among that lot was a new, still in shrinkwrap disk- the System Installer version of XP with SP2. That would be the best way to get going for me. Also, I now do have 1-2 other computers with legal/ transferable copies of XP on them. I just defrag and shrink XP, add partitions for Linux, and then I have a WinXP item in my grub boot menu. 'One of these days' I may get to working through the learning curve so as to have it available, but frankly it's not a priority here. I virtually never boot into Windows, even if I have the option- and I never let Windows see the internet unless it is absolutely necessary- for updates or whatever. I don't like being a target. But yes, it's out there. Lots of folks make a living working on Windows boxes and say "Thanks, Bill, for all the fish." Personally, I'm grateful for the education Win 95 and 98 gave me into the desktop world, but I outgrew their way of doing things. 'Nuff said.

 

Eric, thanks, man! That's a very kind offer. This box would be maxed out with a couple of 512M DDR PC2100 sticks. Only 2 slots on the mobo. If you happen to have a couple of the 512M you are willing to part with, I eagerly accept your offer.

 

Fran- meanwhile I suspect there is no risk in plugging in two 512M PC3300 as a test. I just don't have much of the slower DDR here. They moved the speeds up pretty soon after it came out.

 

All- I am seeing that I do need to try a few more truly lightweight distros. I'll spend the next couple of days getting updated releases of all the major ones. I do have a few older lightweights to try out right now.

 

I agree with the general sentiment that 512M is a little sparse and the a full G of RAM will make all the difference. Barring the misfortune of actual damaged silicon on the mobo, I think this box will live again under Linux- and who knows, maybe even with XP again at some point. Life is full of surprises. BTW I have access to Win7 on Betty's laptop. XP is fading fast, and will go to non-support some time soon. I hate to invest too much time in it.

 

BTW on a tangentially related subject, Betty's Lenovo G570 laptop is going back for warranty service. They specified a part, the RJ-45 Ethernet jack, a little too light. Normal use, no abuse involved- inserting and removing the Ethernet cable plug- caused little tiny parts of the plastic connector body to chip away (over about 6 months). The Ethernet plug no longer latches in that jack. I've tried many known good plugs. It is definitely a jack issue, so off for warranty repairs it goes. Internet is 'spotty', even resorting to wedging the plug in with a heavy pair of duckbill pliers leaning 'just so' against the plug body...

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[Guest LilBambi]

You might want to get the latest BIOS for that computer if the newer RAM doesn't work with it. I have seen some that they say will work with the newer RAM like you have, but wouldn't work until the BIOS was updated.

[raymac46]

AS long as you have DDR it should be backwards compatible. I've used faster DDR in slower mobos without problem.

[Cluttermagnet]

* Let me elaborate- that XP bootloader seems to be able to override my settings and ignore a bootable CD in the optical drive when that second HD is hooked up. It's a junkyard dog! I think I'm going to wipe both drives. I just don't want to be hasty. First I want to rule out any hardware failures. It seems unlikely there is anything wrong with the Intel 845 chipset- but one never knows... >cluttermagnet

 

+++++++++++++

 

Ahhh ... here's something I know; when your optical drive is unable to read your optical media, then bios will quickly default to the second choice. Until that happens, then neither XP [nor any other OS] has any presence in your machine; bios does not know that level of detail. There is no way the XP bootloader can override or force bios to boot it first.

 

If you want to get control of this, then just disconnect both hard drives, leaving your optical drive as the only thing connected to an ide cable [thus eliminating any jumpering conflicts]. Then go through your stack of boot cds, and toss those that still won't boot.

 

It would likely be worth spending 30 minutes or so running mtest86 [look for that as an alternate boot choice, surely on some of those live cds], just to verify you don't have a secondary problem confusing things.

 

There is nothing wrong with the basic spec of your machine [p4 w/512mb] that would prevent most live cd distros from booting. I can see that disks that boot to kde4 might take a very long time to come up -- better to play with something like puppy until you get it going.

 

OK, clearly I wasn't doing a very good job of explaining my plight. I saw the mobo able to recognize and read the Linux CD. I saw the usual intro message about Peter Arvin and copyright and what not. I saw a lot of other low level stuff scroll by the screen as the disk attempted to load a RAMdisk. This is not what you folks have been talking about- utter, total failure of the optical drive to communicate with the mobo. That is not my problem. The computer can at least get as far as trying to setup the transfer of the Kernel to RAM, but it apparently chokes at that point.

 

All the other comments in this thread about more RAM and trying ultra light distros do make sense. That's the direction I'm taking when next I'm back home, probably later this morning.

 

Probably I would be able to get mtest86 to run. I'll definitely try that. It would tell me a lot- but again, FWIW, this set of RAM has already proven fully capable of successfully booting into an XP install.

 

If you want to get control of this, then just disconnect both hard drives, leaving your optical drive as the only thing connected to an ide cable [thus eliminating any jumpering conflicts]. Then go through your stack of boot cds, and toss those that still won't boot.

 

That strikes me as another worthwhile test, and it might prove enlightening.

I have plenty of fresh ideas to work with now, next session.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Clutter, as mentioned by others here, 512M of RAM is really not sufficient to load a full-fledged LIVE Linux CD. If it loads at all, it will be VERY slow. I think you mention that the RAM in that machine currently is PC2100. I believe I have numerous sticks of PC2100 out in my shop. If you're interested, let me know. I'll take a looksee and see just exactly what I have out there. I'm pretty sure I can get you up to at least 1G of RAM. How many slots does that Dell have on the mobo?

 

Awaiting your reply...

 

P.S. The RAM I'm offering is gratis, brother. I'll mail to you ASAP as soon as we determine what you need for that machine.

 

Thanks, Eric-

 

My reply to you is buried in post #35, but anyway, if you have some PC2100 sticks, my Dell 2350 would be maxed out at 1GB (2x 512M). Only 2 slots on that board. Much appreciated!

 

P.S. I emailed you.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[raymac46]

Having just dealt with a recalcitrant graphical installer on a Linux Mint 13 live CD, let me add my support for installing a distro that has an alternate install CD. You need less memory to start with, and things always seem to go better for me. Xubuntu 12.04 Precise would be a good choice to try. Unfortunately Linux Mint doesn't have that option right now. Mageia 2.0 can be installed without a Live CD/DVD, but it's a huge DVD to download and the old Dell doesn't have the graphics for it. Maybe KDE but not Gnome Shell.

Vector Linux always had that non-graphics install option so it or another Slack based distro is a possibility. Or even Slack itself.

[Cluttermagnet]

Hi All-

 

Just a quick post before I run downstairs to a 'real' computer to get on the net. I am posting from the subject Dell 2350. Running a dsl distro, something like 4-10 but I can't remember and the disk is in the drive. I did the suggested memtest86+ test using a MInt 10 CD. Took a while with 99MHz FSB, but eventually passed, 0 errors. So "dsl vga=normal" gets a normal, uneventful boot of dsl. I'm running some old FF version right now. More later- I'm going to go fire up a real computer because this is painful to use- 640x480, etc. Lots of scrolling. BTW I found the config I had last wired was one HD on primary IDE and the CDRW alone on the secondary IDE.

 

 

Edit: It was dsl 4.4.10. Turns out to still be the most recent version.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

This was my first thought, not enough RAM to run a standard LiveCD environment.

I would try PartedMagic, and use the boot option for Low Ram (option # 3). The default requires about 312 MB, but I have seen it fail to boot on some older machines with 512 MB. The Low Ram boot option takes a lot less and usually boots on old hardware. Another option which I have used successfully on systems which won't boot a standard LiveCD is the Alternate Graphical Environment (meaning basic VESA).

 

PartedMagic will also let you check your Hard drives for failure/error. Gparted is on PartedMagic. As well as DBAN, dd, and a few other utilities to wipe the hard drives.

 

I burned a copy of Parted Magic. Way cool! I'm running FF12 from it right now on the Dell 2350 w/ 512M RAM (PC2100). Now I'm going to run gparted and take a look at the drive... bbl...

 

 

Man, I really like this Parted Magic disk, amenditman. Very nice! This will definitely take a place in my main CD wallet.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[securitybreach]

I burned a copy of Parted Magic. Way cool! I'm running FF12 from it right now on the Dell 2350 w/ 512M RAM (PC2100). Now I'm going to run gparted and take a look at the drive... bbl...

 

Excellent

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Yay! Gparted ran beautifully. It shows a typical Windows installation. It's a 500G IDE drive with a small Dell Utility partition at the beginning in FAT16, then a huge NTFS partition consuming the rest of the drive. It's about 88 percent unused. BTW this drive is not the one with the aggressive Win boot utility, I have that one disconnected right now.

 

I think I'll go on to trying to get a look at the other hard drive, and try some fast DDR 512M sticks. I like that Parted Magic has a way to run DD comands, if that becomes necessary.

 

BTW another try to boot into Mint 10 today- I see a message that it's "unable to find a medium containing a live file system" and the thing hangs at the line "initramfs" with a flashing cursor, just as I mentioned before.

 

So we know (I think) that the basic hardware is sound and will boot XP (installed) and dsl Linux (live) so far. At this point I am thinking that there may be no issues in the optical drive (?)

Edited May 23, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[raymac46]

Sounds to me if you get some more memory in there, Bob's your uncle. You could also try Bodhi Linux as I know that'll run in 512 MB of RAM. I have Bodhi on an Acer netbook that has 512 MB and is only upgradeable if you tear it apart.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Eric, thanks, man! That's a very kind offer. This box would be maxed out with a couple of 512M DDR PC2100 sticks. Only 2 slots on the mobo. If you happen to have a couple of the 512M you are willing to part with, I eagerly accept your offer.

 

 

I'll get out there in the next day or so and hunt down what I have for you. I already have your snail mail addy. If I find what you need, I'll package and mail to you... and I'll let you know it's on the way so you can keep an eye on the mailbox.

 

EDIT: That's odd. I didn't get your email. I may have to check and make sure you didn't end up in the SPAM box. You didn't send to my old Gmail account, did you? That account is dead now. Use vtel57 AT yahoo DOT com.

[Cluttermagnet]

I'll get out there in the next day or so and hunt down what I have for you. I already have your snail mail addy. If I find what you need, I'll package and mail to you... and I'll let you know it's on the way so you can keep an eye on the mailbox.

 

EDIT: That's odd. I didn't get your email. I may have to check and make sure you didn't end up in the SPAM box. You didn't send to my old Gmail account, did you? That account is dead now. Use vtel57 AT <random carp to throw off harvesters> yahoo DOT com.

 

No, FWIW I mailed to the hotmail account linked from your web page. Aha- I see I should have used Yahoo. Anyway, thanks very much, I'll appreciate that slow RAM in this older Dell box!

[Cluttermagnet]

Sounds to me if you get some more memory in there, Bob's your uncle. You could also try Bodhi Linux as I know that'll run in 512 MB of RAM. I have Bodhi on an Acer netbook that has 512 MB and is only upgradeable if you tear it apart.

 

Ahhh, there's the rub- this box refuses to work with Bodhi 1.0.4 as well as Ubuntu 10.04 and Mint 10- yet it does load a live session of dsl 4.4.10. Strange. Later tonight I try it all again with more RAM. That may be all it takes.

Edited May 24, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

You might want to get the latest BIOS for that computer if the newer RAM doesn't work with it. I have seen some that they say will work with the newer RAM like you have, but wouldn't work until the BIOS was updated.

 

Hi, Fran-

 

I'd do that, but only as a last resort. To date, I have never actually flashed a BIOS, although I do know generally what's involved. I used to have some working UPS's. Lately I don't. Makes me queasy to think about the slight chance that the local power utility drops power just as I'm getting into the operation. BTW I'll probably try two fast sticks of 512M later tonight. You may be right and it will refuse to work, but odds are, it will be backwards compatible. Fingers crossed...

[Guest LilBambi]

Hopefully it will work well! Fingers crossed for you....

[V.T. Eric Layton]

No, FWIW I mailed to the hotmail account linked from your web page. Aha- I see I should have used Yahoo. Anyway, thanks very much, I'll appreciate that slow RAM in this older Dell box!

 

No. The Hotmail account is fine, too. I'll go there now and see if you got SPAMMED.

[amenditman]

Sounds to me if you get some more memory in there, Bob's your uncle.

There it goes again.

Someone making me someone's uncle.

 

I have recently been upgraded to a grandfather, but no new neices or nephews here.

[Cluttermagnet]

Well, I'm not too encouraged. Aside from the great annoyance of a Comcast cable internet outage this morning that lasted at least 4 hours (like 2 to 6AM, affecting night owls), things were not going very well on the Dell 2350. I'd have to characterize its behavior as erratic overall, with the main problem seeming to center around the CD and floppy drives. Having now experimented with different physical drives, 3 CD and 2 floppy, and also cables, I'm coming to suspect there may be some bad silicon somewhere on the mobo after all. I have a recently burned CD with Parted Magic on it which once worked briliantly on this Dell, now it does not. In fact, it has gotten so bad that even dsl 4.4.10 will no longer load. I think this mobo is just flaky, and it may end up that I just give up on it and canibalize it for parts. BTW it seems intermittant, as one time I did see the pmagic disk start to load up just fine, but I didn't let it complete at that time. I suspect the vast majority of the hardware is good, including the processor, probably both hard drives, etc. I may play with it on and off for a couple more days, but I'm starting to lose patience. BTW if I let it boot into XP, that all seems completely functional. Except for maybe the flaky CD. But when I looked, XP seemed to be reading the CD mostly 'OK'

 

Meanwhile, I do have a couple of my other older towers which developed various problems- one has a bad ATX power supply I suspect, so I may start working that angle with the idea of moving some of these Dell parts around. No hurry.

Edited May 24, 2012 by Cluttermagnet

[abarbarian]

Advanced Troubleshooting

 

Did you look at this from post 34

[Guest LilBambi]

I am beginning to think bad PSU or caps.

[sunrat]

Have you got the CD drive plugged in to the Master plug on the cable, and jumper set to Master or Cable Select? I recall once having trouble booting like this, and found later the drive was plugged in to Slave, which it didn't like. Changed to Master and it was fine.

[raymac46]

A desperation move would be to:

(1) Take the boot hard drive out of the offending machine.

(2) Install hard drive in a similar PC that's working OK.

(3) Install your distro on that PC on the target hard drive. Make sure bootloader is on that drive.

(4) Remove hard drive and reinstall it in the dell 2350.

(5) Try booting as usual. You might have to play around a bit with hardware and video settings but at least you won't have Windows Genuine Advantage nagging you about the hardware.

[Guest LilBambi]

That's a great idea! My Jim done that at least 3 times for a Toshiba Portégé® that had no CD drive and no connections at all and no native wireless either. It was interesting. He removed the drive and put it in another computer, and installed Redhat 9.x on that one.

 

My Jim also once did some interesting things with Redhat 6.x. He also found that there was an installation that required 8MB RAM (at that time), but would run on 4MB RAM), so he borrowed RAM from one computer to do install and then moved back to running RAM of 4MB.

[Cluttermagnet]

Advanced Troubleshooting

 

Did you look at this from post 34

 

Actually, not yet. And it's a darned good idea. I will.

[Cluttermagnet]

I am beginning to think bad PSU or caps.

 

Also a good idea. Well, it's only a little 200W PSU. I may have something to try in its place to rule that in or out. Bad caps are a bit more subtle- I have a pretty good eye, however, and am good at catching details like that, once I start looking.