Mike Salsbury’s Blog

The laptop experiment continues.

I realize that earlier I didn’t explain why this laptop is going to be running Linux. I looked for a system capable of running Mac OS X 10.3 and there weren’t any on eBay, even some that needed work, in the under-$100 range I was aiming for. Otherwise, I would have considered picking up a Mac so that I could continue to find Mac-related topics to write about here, since I’m doing less Mac work at the office now. (However, if you have such a laptop lying around that you’d like to give me, by all means feel free to so. My email address appears in the “Contact” section on this site. Let me know you want to send me a Mac laptop and I’ll give you the address to send it to. If it’s one of the Intel models, I’ll even refund your shipping via PayPal.)

I could have considered running the “Hackintosh” (i.e., hacked OS X) environment on a non-Apple laptop, but that would have meant not only breaking the law (which I wasn’t about to do) but also acquiring a system with at least a Pentium 4 CPU (to have SSE2 and/or SSE3 instruction sets needed by OS X). The only laptops in that performance range on eBay when I looked were well outside my $100 budget constraint.

In fact, the only laptops within my budget constraint were Pentium III and below. In the Pentium III category I found several in my price range, including the one I eventually purchased. It had 128MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, no battery, no CD-ROM or DVD drive, no AC adapter, no carrying case, and no operating system or operating system sticker on the bottom. Fortunately, I had a couple of used batteries that were compatible in my basement from when I used to repair Dell laptops on the side. I also had a “universal” laptop power adapter that could power the unit. I even found a 64MB SODIMM to boost it to 192MB of RAM. I also had a PCMCIA wireless card I picked up a couple of years ago, made by Hawking. Amazingly, it all worked smoothly together and I was able to cobble together a dual-battery wireless system with only $46 out of pocket.

The only thing missing at this point was an OS. I think I still had a Windows 98 license around somewhere, but I didn’t have a legal license to Windows 2000 or Windows XP, so I couldn’t load those on the machine. Windows 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft and isn’t such a great OS for random wireless browsing anyway. That left options like ReactOS (which is a Windows clone that isn’t quite yet ready for primetime, but getting there), BeOS, Linux, and the like. Linux has the best hardware and software support of all those, so I opted for Linux. The next question was which Linux “distro” (distribution) to get. I already had CDs/DVDs for Red Hat Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linspire, Debian, Gentoo, and 1-2 others I’d made for past experiments around the house. I ended up trying several of them. Ubuntu would boot into Live CD mode file, but the CD-ROM drive just ground and ground on the copies I had. Eventually I gave up because I would click an install option and have to wait an hour to see the result. For whatever reason (and I admit that it makes little or no sense to me), Kubuntu 6 worked and Ubuntu 7.04 didn’t. So I chose Kubuntu because my copy of that distro’s disk happened to be the one that worked.

Now that my eBay Special was up and running with the latest Kubuntu release, I was ready to start actually trying to use it. I was able to connect it to a nearby WiFi network successfully after loading it with Kubuntu, a Ubuntu Linux variant. While connected to the WiFi network, I upgraded it to the latest Kubuntu release (7.04 – though a newer one is about to come out) using instructions I found online. At that point, I was ready to begin loading it with applications, and I have to tell you it was easier than than either OS X or Windows would have been… by far!

To get the apps I knew I wanted loaded on the machine, I launched the Adept Installer, selected those applications from a list, and clicked “Apply Updates”. Kubuntu obediently downloaded the applications and their dependencies, and installed them for me, all from that single click. Within minutes, I had FireFox, Scribus, Inkscape, and all the other applications I planned to use on the machine running for me. It was very slick and very impressive. And the apps all seem to work.

I loaded FireFox with some of my favorite extensions, including NoScript, AdBlock, Extended Copy Menu, DownThemAll and a few others. I populated it with bookmarks to all my sites (like this one) and some of my personal favorites like woot.com.

To make it completely usable for all my web work, however, I would need to find a Linux replacement for a tool I use to monitor game manufacturers’ web sites for my game news site, gamerhotsheet.com. The tool I had been using up to this point was written for Windows using one of the Microsoft visual development tools, so it would not run as such on Linux (at least without WINE, which I would consider if I couldn’t find a good alternative).

I’ve also decided that the 128MB of memory (plus another 64MB SODIMM I had lying around) wasn’t going to be enough to keep this system running at peak efficiency. In fact, it seemed to be a bit sluggish already. I found some 256MB SODIMMs on eBay going at below $20 each and bid on those. If I get them, I’ll be able to max the system at 512MB. That should help performance.

I’ve also decided that since this machine might be banging around in the car a lot, it might be good to ruggedize the data storage. Toward that end, I found a CompactFlash to 2.5″ IDE adapter online and bought one. I’m hoping later to pick up a good-sized, fast CF card to place in it, then replace the old internal IDE drive with the adapter and CF card. That should minimize the potential for shock damage, at least to the data. To protect the screen, I ought to be able to find a decent-sized sleeve to put it in when I’m not using it, maybe something made out of thick neoprene.

To this point, I’ve spent $46 for the laptop, including shipping. If I can get the SODIMMs cheaply, I should be able to go to 512MB for $40-50, keeping inside my $100 budget. However, to implement the CF-to-IDE idea, I’m going to have to go over budget. The adapter was only $16. The CF card, though, could be a lot more – especially if I choose something like a 16GB Ultra III, which is perhaps the right thing to do. First, I want to test the adapter with one of my existing CF cards to see what the speed is like. If the adapter with an Ultra II flash card performs reasonably well, then it’s worth investing in the bigger card. If it is too slow to be usable, then I can abandon the adapter and look at other options (like a decent backup or a spare drive).

I should point out that I am still waiting for word back from Dell on the master BIOS password to the unit so that I can fix some of the errant settings in the machine, such as date/time information and boot order.

admin General Computer Topics 3800, dell, eBay, experiment, inspiron, laptop, Linux, ubuntu

Given that WiFi seems to be proliferating throughout the areas where I live, work, and vacation, I thought it might be nice to have a laptop I could keep in the car with me and pull out whenever I happened to be stuck somewhere bored and do some blogging, writing, or whatever. My requirements for the system would be the following:

Total expenditure: $100 or less. That way, if someone breaks in the car and steals it or I smash it in some way, I’m not going to be too devastated since I will hopefully have gotten my $100 worth out of it.

Technology: Needs to be WiFi capable. Needs to be able to run something “reasonably current” in terms of operating system (e.g., Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.3 or later, Linux 6.x kernel). Needs enough storage to hold a basic set of applications, including but not necessarily limited to the OS, an Office Suite (probably OpenOffice.org), web browser(s), GIMP, and other apps useful to me in blogging and writing.

I began searching eBay for used laptops. The ones listed as being in actual working order were all close to $200 when they sold. That was way out of the budget for this little experiment. Eventually, I settled on a Fujitsu LifeBook S-4546 that was listed without a hard drive or power adapter for about $40. I managed to win the auction and receive the laptop. Unfortunately, it’s either dead or I haven’t found the right power supply for it. I put it aside when I found that it also was missing a hard drive interface cable.

I searched eBay again, and managed to get a Dell Inspiron 3800 for around $50 shipped. Like the Fujitsu, it was missing an optical drive, battery, and AC adapter.. However, unlike the Fujitsu, it happened to use parts I had on hand from an old Dell Latitude CPxJ 750GT that I once used. I slapped a battery and DVD-ROM drive into it. Unfortunately, some idiot left an admin password in the BIOS and I couldn’t convince it to boot from an operating system CD.

Since I work with Dells a lot, I know that they have a “master BIOS password” that can be used to unlock a system if you forget the password you (or someone else) has set. To get that password, however, you have to be able to prove ownership and possession of the laptop. I started a chat session with a Dell tech and managed to convince them to have someone look the password up for the system. Unfortunately, the techs who did that particular task were gone for the day.

The next day, I chatted with another Dell tech. They went to get the password for me, but found that their internal communication system was down and they couldn’t reach the appropriate person(s).

Later in the same day, I chatted with another tech, who told me that they were having internal communication issues and she couldn’t get the password either.

In the chat log she sent me, there was a reference to an address I could email to get help if the chat system wasn’t doing it for me. I compiled all the information Dell’s technicians had previously asked me into simple paragraph and emailed it to that address last Friday. It’s late on Monday and no response yet.

In the meantime, I borrowed a Dell Latitude CP laptop (which is very similar to the Inspiron) and swapped hard drives with the Inspiron. I planned to load Ubuntu 7.04. Unfortunately, something about Ubuntu 7.04 just didn’t get along with that laptop. It literally took 5-10 minutes to boot (from multiple copies of the CD). I then tried Linux Desktop XP 2006, which worked fine but I decided I didn’t like. I then tried the new Vixta.org distribution, which loaded fine and looked great, but wouldn’t install for some reason (even though the system met the specs). I pulled out an old Ubuntu 6 CD and booted from that. It installed without a hitch. I put the drive back in the Inspiron and it was once again functional as a laptop.

Ubuntu had appropriate video drivers, keyboard drivers, mouse drivers, sound drivers, etc. Everything seemed to be working properly when I went to bed last night.

The next step will be to plug a Dell wireless card I have into the machine and see if I can make it “speak WiFi”. If so, I’ll move on to working with the software configuration on the machine.

admin General Computer Topics dell, eBay, experiment, laptop, notebook, ubuntu, wifi