TH2002
Experienced Member
Love me some Bundaberg Ginger Beer, would 'ya mind sending me some?
In all seriousness, great job on the repair and upgrades. I'd say brittle plastic is one of the most underestimated enemies to some of these systems.
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Compaq Presario 5522
- Thread starter Caluser2000
- Start date
In all seriousness, great job on the repair and upgrades. I'd say brittle plastic is one of the most underestimated enemies to some of these systems.
Caluser2000
Banned
Thank you very much.
You are correct brittle plastic is a pain in the dairy air. Early 90s Apples and Indigo systems are particualerly prone to plastic breaking.
Caluser2000
Banned
I went feed the speaker leads though the steel chassis and noticed one of the thinner wire was broken. Obviusly not robust enough for its intended use. I pulled one speaker assy apart so I could remove the thinner leads completely while watching telly. It took a bit of time. I used a battery power dill to remove the plastic pin sucuring the speaker in place and used a craft knife to seperate the speaker from its housing. While doing that I'd accidentally separated one of the solder tabs for soldering the speaker wires to from the molded plastic ring holding the speaker in place.. Repaired that with a small cable tie an a few drops of PVE cement.
Last night I came across my original Red Hat Linux 7.3 installation pack I purchased at retail price from the local Whitcoulls book store, which is still at the same location, about 6 months after it was released. I was very keen to try out this Linux thing I'd heard a few years ago.. Ok course NoBody will believe me but I've been using Linux as my personnal desktop OS for 18 years
. XP was my last MS Windows version I used on a regular basis. It has been a great learning experience just like Dos was when I got me first x86, a brand spankers 286/16 with vga monitor and 9 pin dot-matrix printer. I've attached pics of the speaker repair and side covers I had to make up and plastic locating pins, out of nylon screws, then weld them to the side covers.to secure in the project bikes locating grommets.
Last night I came across my original Red Hat Linux 7.3 installation pack I purchased at retail price from the local Whitcoulls book store, which is still at the same location, about 6 months after it was released. I was very keen to try out this Linux thing I'd heard a few years ago.. Ok course NoBody will believe me but I've been using Linux as my personnal desktop OS for 18 years
. XP was my last MS Windows version I used on a regular basis. It has been a great learning experience just like Dos was when I got me first x86, a brand spankers 286/16 with vga monitor and 9 pin dot-matrix printer. I've attached pics of the speaker repair and side covers I had to make up and plastic locating pins, out of nylon screws, then weld them to the side covers.to secure in the project bikes locating grommets.
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Caluser2000
Banned
The speaker conversion is basicaly completed. I've used Selleys Quikfix to hold the speakers to the inner molded shelf of the housing and hook and loop aka velcro to hold the whole assemblies inside the system. Looks like I'll have to make a small bracket out of a bit of tin sheet bolted to the original speaker assy upper screw mounting points with a small piece of velcro on on. That'll take less than half a hour.
I've attached a pic of my project m/c tank.
If anyone has any questions wrt anything I've done just sing out
I've attached a pic of my project m/c tank.
If anyone has any questions wrt anything I've done just sing out
Caluser2000
Banned
It turn out I never needed to make up a tin bracket. I just cut two square rubber pads (the ones right next to the cork pads at Bunnings) in half and joined them together an place a velcro pad to each . Cut the velco pads to the same dimensions as the rubber pads the affix the whole between the system frame and the top of the speaker assemblies. They are a lot firmer now and the extra dampening should
be good for the speakers.
Pulled the whole system foward to hang over the edge by around an inch( 2cm or so). This makes it far easier to fit the drive bay cover that sits under the monitor. Others you had to lift the whole heavy all-in-one system up to get the cover on. Learnt this tinkering with the Compaq Presario 454 system I mentioned earlier in this thread. With the panel fitted the system looks great!
be good for the speakers.Pulled the whole system foward to hang over the edge by around an inch( 2cm or so). This makes it far easier to fit the drive bay cover that sits under the monitor. Others you had to lift the whole heavy all-in-one system up to get the cover on. Learnt this tinkering with the Compaq Presario 454 system I mentioned earlier in this thread. With the panel fitted the system looks great!
twolazy
Veteran Member
Great job! Waiting for the end Beauty shots. Never considered using plumbers PVC cement...
Caluser2000
Banned
Cheers twolazy.
I try to think outside the square when solving problems. You would be quite surprised at what can be achieved by doing this.
I try to think outside the square when solving problems. You would be quite surprised at what can be achieved by doing this.
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Caluser2000
Banned
When sliding the mobo tray in from the back of the system you need to make sure the hdd and cdrom are out of the way otherwise the tray wont go in an d seat correctly and engage its edge connector to the slot it fits in
to the slot on the drive circuit board rear edge situated inside the lower front of the system steel frame. . I put some Kwikgrip adhesive on the fan power lead connector so it wont accidentally become disconnected.
I' ve a few other tasks to do this arvo so will power it up either this evening or tomorrow morning
to the slot on the drive circuit board rear edge situated inside the lower front of the system steel frame. . I put some Kwikgrip adhesive on the fan power lead connector so it wont accidentally become disconnected.I' ve a few other tasks to do this arvo so will power it up either this evening or tomorrow morning
Caluser2000
Banned
Slid the mobo in fired it up :
Just have to reconfigure Xwindows to use the 2 mouse and click with both buttons for cut and paste routines. that is easy peasy to do The system in was originally in had a 3 button mouse...
Just have to reconfigure Xwindows to use the 2 mouse and click with both buttons for cut and paste routines. that is easy peasy to do
The system in was originally in had a 3 button mouse...
Caluser2000
Banned
Just one reboot and:
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Caluser2000
Banned
I have quite nice selections to try out on this system. In a few hours I'll pull this hdd out and fit an appropriete hdd in the system and see hour it gets on with SUSe 7.2.
Stay tuned.......
Stay tuned.......
Caluser2000
Banned
What I hope to achieve is to demonstrate just how easy it is to install Linux on a single i586 system. I'll be using 1998 though to present Linux(/GU) Distros. You definately don't need pull out a 64-bit system with a zillion gigabytes to install and succesfully install/run older or new Desktop oriantated Linux(/GNU) Distros if its targeted at i586/Pentium 1 class hardware. My Compact Presario 5522 from 1995 with three 16-bit ISA , 2megs of vram and 72megs of system ram is the ideal system for showing this. I'll throw a few BSDs in the mix as well. Once I've run Cat 6 network cable from our ISP supplied router we'll which of these computer operating systems can be connected to the internet via the ISA EtherLink III network card I've installed on this system.
Kindest regards.
Mark from Kiwiland.
Kindest regards.
Mark from Kiwiland.
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Caluser2000
Banned
When I first had a look a Corel Linux I fascinated that it could load hardware on the fly when I installed a suitable network card. No reboots to update the registry like Win9x and NT. Nore config.sys update like OS/2. I kept notes of and put them in a large ring binder I keep for interesting to me computer related stuff. Below is a picture of other Linux Distros I intend to test out. And is just some of them They are in no particular testing order.
They are in no particular testing order.
Caluser2000
Banned
Don't get the impression my posts in this thread will only be positive towards Linux. It will also show negitive aspect like the failed installation of SUSe 7.2 during my first attempt at using it's text based installation. It borked at getting kdebase. On the second try I'd used the graphical installation routine. Started it off, selected the choices what I wanted as well as set the root and users passwords just left the installation process to do its thing.
I then started to install the 20mtr roll of Cat 6 cabling by drilling a suitably size hole in tin siding, put in a grommet in said hole to protect the cable from being damage after a long period. Once I've finish cable routing I'll put black silicone in the grommet for weather protecting.
I then started to install the 20mtr roll of Cat 6 cabling by drilling a suitably size hole in tin siding, put in a grommet in said hole to protect the cable from being damage after a long period. Once I've finish cable routing I'll put black silicone in the grommet for weather protecting.
Caluser2000
Banned
The graphical install so far....
Caluser2000
Banned
Just to let yoa'll I've been collecting and testing OSs for around 27 years as part of my computer hobby 
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Caluser2000
Banned
Just been checking the Slackbook pdf prior to attempting to install Slackwere 13 on this system. Golly gosh it is right there in the system requirements subsection of Chapter 3-Installation. Wonderful!
Caluser2000
Banned
It was getting dark so last night I turned the lights off in the shed and shut door. Then went inside and left SuSE 7.2 instalation routine to continuing to do its thing, hoping in the morning I'll see the cd drive tray open ready for the cd to removed, tray closed, remove the boot disk then reboot into a virgin install of the OS. Got up this morning had a cup of coffee, went for my morning 1/2hr walk and opened the shed door and glanced over to the computer. The hdd and DVD drive LEDs were hard on with no sign, no image on the monitor. It should have power saving mode and its monitor led flashing by now, So not a good sign at all
Went over to the system to see if there is any response from the keyboard or mouse. Nup! Dead as a Dodo.The DVD drive was locked. I didn't dwell on it or cry. Removed the boot disk, hard rebooted the ol gal so I could remove the SuSE 7.2 installation cd.
I wont try again today. Just put the cd back in its jacket and try again in a day or so. I might try using PLOP boot manager and the DVD next time. I've successful booted Damn Small Linux in lowmem mode on 486 class systems in the past. May even start another thread showing only the successful Live operating systems that come up on i586 system
Ok next up I'll be going back a few years and give Red Hat 5.2 an shot so stay tuned.....
Went over to the system to see if there is any response from the keyboard or mouse. Nup! Dead as a Dodo.The DVD drive was locked. I didn't dwell on it or cry. Removed the boot disk, hard rebooted the ol gal so I could remove the SuSE 7.2 installation cd.
I wont try again today. Just put the cd back in its jacket and try again in a day or so. I might try using PLOP boot manager and the DVD next time. I've successful booted Damn Small Linux in lowmem mode on 486 class systems in the past. May even start another thread showing only the successful Live operating systems that come up on i586 system
Ok next up I'll be going back a few years and give Red Hat 5.2 an shot so stay tuned.....
GiGaBiTe
Veteran Member
Careful with those old Linux distros, some of them had nasty bugs.
I forgot which version of Mandrake it was, but it would brick LG optical drives I think it was. There was a buggy IDE driver and/or firmware bug on the drive that would think that FLUSH_CACHE meant UPDATE_FIRMWARE, so it would program whatever data was being fed into the drive as the new firmware and brick the drive. I lost a then expensive DVD drive back in the day to Mandrake.
Since Mandrake was based on Redhat, the bug may be in other RH based distros.
Your experience with installs failing was the norm back then, Linux installers back in the day were much less refined and had a much narrower hardware support list. Deviating from standard widely used hardware would quickly land you in driver hell that was time consuming and difficult to fix.
I forgot which version of Mandrake it was, but it would brick LG optical drives I think it was. There was a buggy IDE driver and/or firmware bug on the drive that would think that FLUSH_CACHE meant UPDATE_FIRMWARE, so it would program whatever data was being fed into the drive as the new firmware and brick the drive. I lost a then expensive DVD drive back in the day to Mandrake.
Since Mandrake was based on Redhat, the bug may be in other RH based distros.
Your experience with installs failing was the norm back then, Linux installers back in the day were much less refined and had a much narrower hardware support list. Deviating from standard widely used hardware would quickly land you in driver hell that was time consuming and difficult to fix.
Caluser2000
Banned
Yeah managed to successfully install the Macmillan Software Mandrake 6.1 after the fourth try. It is ment to only install
on i586 systems but it successfully in stalled on my Compaq Presario 524CDS with 64meg of ram and half a meg of vram first pop. I've posted the screen shot a few times of that including the failed old Slackware installation thread. Of course rpm faioled to cooperate because of the incorrect cpu type.
When I start to investigate what this Linux thing with the cute penguin mascot was all about I came to the conclution the red hat version and variants such as Mandrake and Turbo Linux version 7 and below are vary picky on the day of the week, time of day and what color socks you were wearing. Then when you did do a success LILO would fall over and on the first reboot you end up staring at a black screen with the letters LI up in the top left hand corner.
Next up Turbo Linux 6.0
on i586 systems but it successfully in stalled on my Compaq Presario 524CDS with 64meg of ram and half a meg of vram first pop. I've posted the screen shot a few times of that including the failed old Slackware installation thread. Of course rpm faioled to cooperate because of the incorrect cpu type.
When I start to investigate what this Linux thing with the cute penguin mascot was all about I came to the conclution the red hat version and variants such as Mandrake and Turbo Linux version 7 and below are vary picky on the day of the week, time of day and what color socks you were wearing. Then when you did do a success LILO would fall over and on the first reboot you end up staring at a black screen with the letters LI up in the top left hand corner.
Next up Turbo Linux 6.0
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