Fluffing about

So...  I'm officially in the in-between at the moment.  A little bit of time off before starting yet another grind.  I'm rather happy for the breathing space.  It's been a bit of a haul, and I'm hoping that the next round of work is a bit more even.

So, back in town for a bit, I decided to make a run to the Computer-Shop-Across-the-River, to check on a couple of errant computers I've left in their care for far too long.  Alas, the great Dell behemoth that I should never have bought is still dead in the water, as the owner of the Shop continues to try and find me a GPU for a decent (rather than Dell-approved) price.  We shall continue that saga later.

The crusty little Thinkpad T23 that had originally went in to let them replace the fan unit, and which had suffered a broken piece of keyboard had, however, been fixed.  Lovely!  I was happy to take it home, even if I have absolutely no use for the poor thing.  A Pentium III with no wireless card, and me lacking the desire to upgrade it.  (I did install the CMOS battery that I'd bought shortly after getting the system way back when.  Works like a charm now.)  (And, alas, no I'm not using it to write this via Ethernet...  This is the T30, though running an identical copy of Puppy Slacko 5.6 for good measure.)

Amusingly, the shop owner ran back to his little computer stocking shelves, and came back carrying a great heap of black plastic & metal.  "Got some stuff here for you!"  Seems that someone from the local "recycling center" had dropped off a load of computer junk with him.  (I'm going to sound a total fool and say I didn't even know we had a recycling center here.  But I don't get out much...)  I found myself staring at a stack of 3 Thinkpads in various states of disrepair.

What was there?  Well, the best of the lot appeared to be a T43, on which was a note saying that battery wouldn't charge, but it would boot, but there seemed to be some Windows problems.  Going down the list was an X41 Tablet computer, missing a hard drive, a single key off the keyboard ("g"), the central Trackpoint click button.  Oh, and the screen latch was shot.  And last on the list was an ancient Thinkpad 600, the note on it stating that it would start to boot, and never stop.  And it was missing the cover to the memory slot.  A memory stick was hanging out of it, which I quickly clicked back into place.

Since I was more interested in getting the T23 up and running, I only really played with the T43.  I think the battery wasn't properly seated, which was the charging problem.   The greater concern was that it seems to have some more serious problems.  The copy of WindowsXP on it keeps asking to be registered, which I really don't want to do.  A Linux run showed that it would boot into both Puppy Raring and Puppy Slacko, go to the desktop, and then freeze.  Puppy Precise wouldn't boot at all.  I was going to give Puppy Wary a go, but was getting a bit on the tired side, so...  A quick check of the X41 showed that the right Trackpad button was also stuck.  I'll look into fixing/replacing later.  If I can get it to boot a Puppy from USB, which I'm not sure it's capable of, I might even think about a replacement hard drive.  As for the 600, I really haven't a clue.  Not even sure if it will turn on, and haven't really given thought to a replacement memory slot door (if you could even find one without just buying another unit, which would be pointless.)  And, to be honest, I think my 380XD eats the 600 for breakfast, and it's really just scraping to run Puppy Wary.

Still, I've got the things, and it might be good for a weekend of fiddling around.  Who knows?

The things I get myself into...

Yeah, I know...

I said I was going to be a bit more diligent, didn't I?

The trouble is, this real life stuff keeps intruding.  And I haven't had a moment to breathe in ages.  However, I may be up for a switch here soon.  Don't know if that mythical "breathing room" will become available or not, but...

I did manage to make it in off the road this weekend, if only for a day or so.  So, after unpacking and assaulting the washing machine, I dug into some tech stuff to relax for a bit.  Won't get into it too much, but a quick overview...

Dug out my old Sony Vaio FJ (the mysterious "Russian" system; remind me to explain that sometime), and nuked a copy of MacPup off of it, replacing it with a fresh install of CrunchBang.  Works fine, of course, save for the fact that #! just does not cotton to the ALPS touchpad on the system.  Everything works fine, mind you, save for there being no tap nor scroll capability.  Quickly grabbed/installed a copy of tpconfig, but that's a no-go.  Oh well, I can deal with clicking a button.  For now...

The second system I wanted to play with was a Lenovo IdeaPad U310 that came to me via a trade of some old junk.  The IdeaPads are decent systems, from what I've seen.  ThinkPads they are not, but they aren't bad.  However, this one had an odd bit to it.  Whoever had had it prior had installed a really thin copy of Windows 7 Home Edition on the 32 GB SSD.  (!?!)  When I looked in Windows Explorer, the 500 GB HD wasn't there.  Oooo-kay...  A bit deeper digging showed that there was something there, but Windows couldn't see it.

Well, I just don't do things the easy way.  Being the jerk I am, I dragged out an old Puppy Raring thumb drive, and booted from that.  And it didn't see anything.  At first.  But...well, you all know what it was:  The freaking HD wasn't formatted.  Basically, the system had nothing at that point save for basically a 32 GB drive.  And that, with a Windows install, was getting mighty thin...

Feeling particularly jerkish, I just fired up gparted and quickly did a format of the drive.  Not feeling particular industrious, I didn't reinstall Windows to the larger drive, and set the SSD up as cache.  The thing works, and as long as it does, I don't care.  No one else will be using it, so...  Boots really fast, by the way...

Still trying to figure out what idiot lets a system out into the wild like that.  It's making my head hurt...

Beyond that, did a real quick update to Kubuntu on the old ThinkPad T410s.  Not really sure this install is going to stick around, but it'll do for now.  I just haven't found anything that feels right on the T410s.  I know that sounds weird, but...

It's getting late, and after many hours on the road, I think it's time for bed.  This just might be enough tech for the night...