Re: resurrecting old laptops

["George N. White III" <gnwiii@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 23, 2022 at 12:08 PM <jim.cromie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

so Ive got some old i686 computers,

electronics recycle day approaches, but before I do that,

I thought Id try to get them working

1st one (toshiba satellite core2 laptop) threw a hard-drive,

clunking noises, then finally falls back to pxe-boot.

I put fedora-30-live on a usb (last one with i686 support)

but booting it, I get a 2-line error:

This kernel requires x86-64, but only detected i686

unable to boot - ...

I know f30 supports i686 - I have 1 old desktop still running it.

next is hp pavilion g7

pressing power gives brief spin-up of fans, nothing else.

f2, f10, esc during boot dont help,

screen brightness or vga monitor dont help either

I pulled hard drive and memory to force BIOS / POST

to do something different, NO CHANGE.

Any suggestions?

I used to work in an oceanographic institute where there

were old instruments that relied on DOS management software,

connected by serial, parallel, SCSI, etc. (often using a 

PCMCIA card).  Some of your old working systems may be 

irreplaceable antiques to people still using old instruments.

Even broken systems may be valuable sources of spare 

parts.  It may be worth checking for listing of your models on 

for sale sites -- desirable models have inflated prices, but 

the goal is to help some lab keep an old instrument going.   

 

but at least I have a new/old hard-drive for the toshiba.

I also have a dell pentium2-233,

running knoppix with a 2.6.19 kernel,

its reluctant to do anything (aptitude is trying forever)

I think its too old to have a bios that can usb boot

I have used fedora-live-usb to rescue machines

in the past, but Im running out of options.

I would welcome other distro suggestions for tired old hardware

--

George N. White III

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