abarbarian Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 I'm still up to me neck in strangeness. As I can not get my new rig to play nicely an have not managed to sort out the travelling pc which is going to my sister at some point (it should have been her christmas present) I took a detour. The local freecycle site offered for free a Dell 4700 which apparently only need a hard drive. As it was only up the road from me an just round corner I thought that would do as a decent backup. Off I went to pick it up. Nice looking thing not too big and it has a Pentium 3.0 Ghz and a vga connector. Great I thought just perfect as a backup as I have a spare 120 GB ssd an IO couild make two partitions and have a stable backup os and room for a playing and fiddling os. Gave the thing a decent blow put with me trusty fire extinguisher compressed air tool, man was it full of dust, cough cough choke choke. Then I tried to install the clone I had made of Makulu which had reported as being a good copy when I made it with Clonezilla. Well Clonezilla would not work as the cd I had was for 64 bit pc's, made a 32 bit Clonezilla cd and tried to install the clone. now clever folk will have spotted already that if I gad a 64 bit Clonzilla the chances were that a clone I had made would be 64 bit. Well clever old you. Me I was really surprised that the clone would not work and that the pc seemed to have got a mind of its own as it not only reported a failure it also attempted to do a repair of the clone. this involved rapidly scrolling text on the screen which then turned into a real Matrix like screen that ran for ten minutes. I let it run as I was fascinated by this event. finally a message appeared telling me that the clone was not usable. Hmm.. what to do next. Well the first thing I did was to remember that the lady had told me that she had taken the coms battery out and she had given it to me and I had put it in my pocket. Then I noticed that the frnt panel button wiring was not properly seated in its slot. hmm maybe that was why the start button seemed dodgy, yup it certainly was the reason. Hmm..what to do next. I decided to get a copy of Robolinux 32 bit. Now I have a very useful copy of Robolinux 64 bit which I had tried to install to the Dell, before I realised that it was a 32 bit jobby, and the Robolinux 64 had startted to boot and then a message flashed up saying I had the wrong architecture. So I knew Robolinux would boot or I thought I knew. As the 32 bit Robolinux would not boot, all I could get was a black screen with a flashing cursor at top left of the screen. Tried the cd in my other pc and whoopee it boots so there is nothing wrong with the burn but it will not boot in the Dell.Hmm...what to do next. Oh look I already have a Arch dual .iso I'll try that. Burnt the cd and away I go. The thing would not boot, only got to a black screen with a flashing cursor. It is not a bad burn of the cd as it boots just fine in my other pc. Hmmm.... what to do. I'll try my Slax usb traveller. Darn it, it boots to a screen saying wrong architecture. I download a 32 bit version and whoopee it boots and runs from a cd. Sort of useful but no persistence on a cd so I need to put it on a usb stick and at least I will have a working backup. Computers don't you just love em. Is the Dell 4700 picky as to what it will boot ???? or am I infested with gremlins ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 Well the Clonezilla clone wouldn't work because it was 64bit as was the issue with the other distros. Now the blinking cursor part was probably due to the distros trying to load the current graphics driver version which may of not supported the older graphics card. Now I do not know why Slax worked but it could have included more versions of drivers as it is meant to be portable. These are just wild guesses but that could of been the issues. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 25, 2016 Author Share Posted February 25, 2016 Well the Clonezilla clone wouldn't work because it was 64bit as was the issue with the other distros. Now the blinking cursor part was probably due to the distros trying to load the current graphics driver version which may of not supported the older graphics card. Now I do not know why Slax worked but it could have included more versions of drivers as it is meant to be portable. These are just wild guesses but that could of been the issues. Yeah I could kick myself for not remembering about the differenced with 64 and 32 bit os's. That mistake cost me several hours but I did get to see my pc freaking out and doing a Matrix impersonation which was really cool. So you are surmising that both Arch 2016 and Robolinux v8.3 do not have the necessary graphics drivers to boot up the Dell, that sounds plausible. As the Dell has a PCI-E slot I may have a spare PCI-E graphics card lying around so I could try that and see if that works. Hmmmm...... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 So you are surmising that both Arch 2016 and Robolinux v8.3 do not have the necessary graphics drivers to boot up the Dell, that sounds plausible. As the Dell has a PCI-E slot I may have a spare PCI-E graphics card lying around so I could try that and see if that works. Hmmmm...... That would be worth a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Hello, Maybe just disassemble/reassemble all the internal hardware and wiring to make sure nothing is loose, plugged in incorrectly, mis-wired, etc? Also, might be a good time to check all the boards for blown caps and regrease the CPU's heat sink. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Compressed air can blow dust into the wrong places. I always use a vacuum. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Don't forget to sweep out all the slots with a small hogshair artists brush while vacuuming . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 7, 2016 Author Share Posted March 7, 2016 What an epic adventure I have had getting an os on this Dell. Finally managed to put MX-15 on it and it seems to like it and is running ok at the moment. Quite slickly in fact for such an old beast. I dumped the old 128MB X300SE graphics card and slotted in a dusty old Radeon HD 4670 I found when clearing up ready for my big move. This did not really help with installing or running various os's but it will give me better graphics. Added 2 x 1 GB Geill Dragon memory and when I get my sisters pc done I'll swap out the 2 x 256 MB modules for another 2 x 1 GB Dragons which should speed thing up a tad, not that this pc is a slouch as it is. It should speed things up quite considerably as I seem to recall that a pc with missmatched memory will run at the slowest speed of the modules installed. I have a fairly cheap ssd in it as the main drive and for surfing it is running almost as fast as my posh rigg. So I finally have a working spare pc, whooooopeeeeeeeee. MX-15 seems to be quite a neat little os apart from not letting me have the panel/dock thingy at the bottom of the screen. I can live with that as it reminds me of how I had XP set up. Very busy at the moment but will post more about 42 later. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 7, 2016 Author Share Posted March 7, 2016 Don't forget to sweep out all the slots with a small hogshair artists brush while vacuuming . Hogshair brush !!! how antiquated. I use one of these, Specially modified and rechargeable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Ha Ha !! That's exactly the model I have on the top of my wood burner stove . Bottom cut off, valve removed . Paint gone and steel burnished . Top boiling ring removed on stove and the *dome * in it's place .. 80% more heat for less fuel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 MX-15 seems to be quite a neat little os apart from not letting me have the panel/dock thingy at the bottom of the screen. I'm sure you can but no time to check now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Not surprised that MX-15 works well. I've had most of my luck with old Dells running a Debian based distro with Xfce. Mind you they have been mostly industrial strength Optiplex models with Intel video - or I managed to put in an Nvidia card. Don't rush to add more memory as a 32 bit O/S won't use the full 4 GB anyway. If I read it correctly you have 2.5 GB now. A couple of 512 MB sticks would do the job if you can find them - 3 GB is good for a 32 bit system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted March 12, 2016 Share Posted March 12, 2016 OpenSuSE has always liked my ancient Optiplex PIII, still limping along with xfce. Of course, it wasn't ancient when I first introduced them 11 years ago. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 13, 2016 Author Share Posted March 13, 2016 Ha Ha !! That's exactly the model I have on the top of my wood burner stove . Bottom cut off, valve removed . Paint gone and steel burnished . Top boiling ring removed on stove and the *dome * in it's place .. 80% more heat for less fuel. That is brilliant !!!! Got me thinking , if I could find enough empty ones they would make a fine chimney, top an tail em and weld em together, they would last forever as they are quality steel. MX-15 seems to be quite a neat little os apart from not letting me have the panel/dock thingy at the bottom of the screen. I'm sure you can but no time to check now. Looks like you can add different docks so it is no deal breaker an this is supposed to be a backup pc so as long as I can surf anything else is a bonus. Mind you I seem t be spending a lot of time on this pc at the moment Not surprised that MX-15 works well. I've had most of my luck with old Dells running a Debian based distro with Xfce. Mind you they have been mostly industrial strength Optiplex models with Intel video - or I managed to put in an Nvidia card. Don't rush to add more memory as a 32 bit O/S won't use the full 4 GB anyway. If I read it correctly you have 2.5 GB now. A couple of 512 MB sticks would do the job if you can find them - 3 GB is good for a 32 bit system. Thanks. I have DDR2 memory by the bucket load and it aint worth selling so I have plenty to go round. I must say for what is quite an old pc it runs very well indeed for simple stuff like surfing and picture/video viewing.. I have Vector linux running on it too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 Not surprised that MX-15 works well. I've had most of my luck with old Dells running a Debian based distro with Xfce. Mind you they have been mostly industrial strength Optiplex models with Intel video - or I managed to put in an Nvidia card. Don't rush to add more memory as a 32 bit O/S won't use the full 4 GB anyway. If I read it correctly you have 2.5 GB now. A couple of 512 MB sticks would do the job if you can find them - 3 GB is good for a 32 bit system. I always thought this to be true also, but I just had a thought. Couldn't a 32-bit system use more than 4GB of RAM if one installed a PAE kernel? I've never quite understood the full ins & outs of PAE, but isn't the point of PAE to remove the 4GB limitations? Perhaps someone can explain this me. Not looking to argue with Ray . Just looking to be educated. If you know the answer Ray, please share the knowledge with me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 Well PAE does let you get past the 3.5gb limitation but there are still some restrictions. Even though PAE allows your machine to see more than 4gb of ram, you still cannot use more than 3.5gb per process. Also since PAE cannot run 64-bit code, it still has the same virtual memory limitations as any other 32-bit kernel does. Basically if your processor support 64bit (no matter the amount of ram), you should be running 64bit anyway: http://www.techsuppo...t-explained.htm And Linus' opinion on PAE: https://cl4ssic4l.wo.../tag/pae-sucks/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 (edited) Well I guess you could try PAE but Josh has already covered the negatives. I was thinking more in the Windows universe with my 4 GB limitation. In theory you could go up to 64 GB but it makes more sense to go 64 bits if you can. I've never had a situation where it made sense to try PAE. Maybe this is one where you could experiment, given that you have lots of old memory available. Most kernels support PAE and the only limitation would be if the processor in the older PC does. It still seems like a real kluge job to me, and I sure don't like the limitations a 32 bit system puts on virtual memory. Edited March 14, 2016 by raymac46 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 thanks for the info. I have never come into a situation where I had to investigate PAE; I was only aware of its existence and its most basic function. What I'm hearing is that PAE is only really useful in a very narrowly defined and niche setup. Sounds like it could be of benefit to the OP, but as Ray points out, a "real kluge job". Of course, the flip side might be that anything that addresses a limitation of a 32-bit system, and can be added at no additional cost, is probably worth doing...even if only beneficial in limited operational circumstances. I LOVE linux...Windows users don't get this option! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I LOVE linux...Windows users don't get this option! Well as much as it pains me to point this out but windows can also do PAE: https://goo.gl/vmLEwn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I have only two 32 bit systems left in the museum now - both are Atom machines and one has 512 MB of RAM and the other 1GB, I'm not going to upgrade either one. My latest junker netbook is capable of running 64 bits and that's what it's got even though it only has 2 GB of RAM. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I LOVE linux...Windows users don't get this option! Well as much as it pains me to point this out but windows can also do PAE: https://goo.gl/vmLEwn well i guess i have to concede and give windows credit where its due. but i still like linux better! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I LOVE linux...Windows users don't get this option! Well as much as it pains me to point this out but windows can also do PAE: https://goo.gl/vmLEwn well i guess i have to concede and give windows credit where its due. but i still like linux better! I wouldn't go that far. It was simply a workaround on servers that needed more than 3.5gb of ram Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 26, 2016 Author Share Posted March 26, 2016 I'm definitely haunted by gremlins. The Dell had two sticks of 256 MB ram, it ran ok, I popped in another two 1 GB sticks in the empty slots, it ran ok, I puled the two 256 MB sticks and replaced them with two more matching 1 GB sticks, I now get reports that slot two is empty and I have 3 GB's of ram in the pc. Bangs forehead on wall repeatedly. At least the Dell is working ok apart from that. Rushes of to find bandages and aspirins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 Is it 64bit/PAE? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 What does your BIOS have to say about it? Also if you take out one of the 1 GB sticks and replace it with a 256 do you get 3.25 GB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 27, 2016 Author Share Posted March 27, 2016 What does your BIOS have to say about it? Also if you take out one of the 1 GB sticks and replace it with a 256 do you get 3.25 GB? Bios show only three GB. I'll try to do a swap around and see whats what but am a tad busy at the moment as with Bambi's help I now have a gaming pc running again. Josh the Dell has a Pentium 3 Ghz cpu and I am running MX-15 32 bit but have forgotten if it is a PAE version or not. What with all the non starting os's and all the swapping around of kit I lost track of what is what. I was just happy to manage to get a pc running again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 Honestly as old as that machine is, I do not know if the bios will see over 3.5gb of ram anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 The MX-15 32 bit ISO ships with 2 kernels. one PAE and one non-PAE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted May 4, 2016 Author Share Posted May 4, 2016 Honestly as old as that machine is, I do not know if the bios will see over 3.5gb of ram anyway. Memory: Array-1 capacity: 4 GB devices: 4 EC: Single-bit ECC Device-1: CHANNEL A DIMM 0 size: 1 GB speed: 533 MHz type: SDRAM Device-2: CHANNEL B DIMM 0 size: 1 GB speed: 533 MHz type: SDRAM Device-3: CHANNEL A DIMM 1 size: 1 GB speed: 533 MHz type: SDRAM Device-4: CHANNEL B DIMM 1 size: 1 GB speed: 533 MHz type: SDRAM This old pc does indeed handle 4GB of ram BUT only if you make sure they are installed with both clips correctly fastened 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 This old pc does indeed handle 4GB of ram BUT only if you make sure they are installed with both clips correctly fastened It happens to the best of us... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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