While fiddling some more with the Shuttle, I noticed that it seemed to be running hot. Then I noticed the case fan wasn't running. I switched the fan connector from its fan header on the motherboard to to the fan header right next to it, and the fan came alive. I verified via some Googling that the Shuttle XPC T62K motherboard is notorious for blown fan headers, and that the only workaround has been switching to one that still works (I'm presumably out of warranty).
Now the Shuttle is performing beautifully, playing several videos simultaneously at high frame rates. I've installed Windows XP with no problems, and am planning on giving the box to Sherry and her boys.
It's amazing how CPU overheating manifests itself. The computer shutting down is one thing, but I never realized it could degrade performance.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Resurrecting the Shuttle
My cute, little, white Shuttle XPC (T62K "Zen" barebones, I think) has been sitting in the corner of my office for 6 months, since being demoted from venerated role of house server. It had been running Fedora, but it kept shutting itself off every few days.
Now I'm wondering if I can do something useful with it. My first thought was a computer for Sherry and her kids. But that would require Windows, and I couldn't get through the early stages of the Windows XP installation process without the machine freezing up; I have no idea why.
Now I'm trying Linux to see if I can turn it into a useful machine for Unc. Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installed painlessly. The only manual tweak I've had to make was to give myself more options than 640x480 and 800x600. This required editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and adding in two lines for the horizontal sync and vertical refresh (I got the specs out of the Sylvania F70 user manual, which I fortuitously managed to not lose after 10 years of ownership). A reboot later and I have lots of good resolution options.
But now I'm seeing bizarre CPU pegging, and consistently having Firefox lock up. I tried to log into blogger.com and the page loaded but then the machine started to crawl, to a degree that I was unable to get my login password typed in. I forced Firefox to quit. Loading the NetFlix page produced one of those "unresponsive/slow script warning messages. This is a low spec machine, but it's not THAT bad: 300MHz Celeron, 512K RAM. Something else is going on.
I installed the Adobe Flash plug-in for Firefox, went to YouTube, and the video framerate is bad. What the hell? Rebooting.
Now I'm wondering if I can do something useful with it. My first thought was a computer for Sherry and her kids. But that would require Windows, and I couldn't get through the early stages of the Windows XP installation process without the machine freezing up; I have no idea why.
Now I'm trying Linux to see if I can turn it into a useful machine for Unc. Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installed painlessly. The only manual tweak I've had to make was to give myself more options than 640x480 and 800x600. This required editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and adding in two lines for the horizontal sync and vertical refresh (I got the specs out of the Sylvania F70 user manual, which I fortuitously managed to not lose after 10 years of ownership). A reboot later and I have lots of good resolution options.
But now I'm seeing bizarre CPU pegging, and consistently having Firefox lock up. I tried to log into blogger.com and the page loaded but then the machine started to crawl, to a degree that I was unable to get my login password typed in. I forced Firefox to quit. Loading the NetFlix page produced one of those "unresponsive/slow script warning messages. This is a low spec machine, but it's not THAT bad: 300MHz Celeron, 512K RAM. Something else is going on.
I installed the Adobe Flash plug-in for Firefox, went to YouTube, and the video framerate is bad. What the hell? Rebooting.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Tecra 550CDT and Puppy Linux
I like the sound of this distribution. The Tecra booted successfully with the 2.14 CD, but the D-Link PCMCIA ethernet card (DFE-690TXD) was not detected. I put in the D-Link wireless PCMCIA card, rebooted, and it wasn't detected either.
I fiddled with the Puppy network wizard but came up empty. It does have an option for ndiswrapper, which is apparently some sort of Windows driver file compatability layer. I downloaded the Windows 2000 driver for the DFE-690TXD on my MacBook, used StuffIt Expander to unarchive it, copied the inf file onto a USB memory stick, put it in the Tecra, and the Tecra doesn't seem to see the stick. Rebooting. Still the USB stick is not being detected. I wonder if the USB port even works.
Burned the inf file onto a CD, but when I try to load it via the network wizard I'm told the driver file is invalid. Tried the Windows XP version, but it still didn't work. Tried the wireless card drivers...no luck.
I think Puppy Linux and the Tecra 550CDT were not meant to be.
I fiddled with the Puppy network wizard but came up empty. It does have an option for ndiswrapper, which is apparently some sort of Windows driver file compatability layer. I downloaded the Windows 2000 driver for the DFE-690TXD on my MacBook, used StuffIt Expander to unarchive it, copied the inf file onto a USB memory stick, put it in the Tecra, and the Tecra doesn't seem to see the stick. Rebooting. Still the USB stick is not being detected. I wonder if the USB port even works.
Burned the inf file onto a CD, but when I try to load it via the network wizard I'm told the driver file is invalid. Tried the Windows XP version, but it still didn't work. Tried the wireless card drivers...no luck.
I think Puppy Linux and the Tecra 550CDT were not meant to be.
Tecra 550CDT and BeaFanatIX
Yesterday I wasn't able to get BeaFanatIX (BFX) to boot on the Tecra, which was weird, given that the same disc booted on a recent model Dell. I did a full erase on the CD (I think I had done a "quick erase" last time), reburned it, and now the Tecra can boot with it.
I don't know if the problem really was the "quick erase" but in the future I need to be mindful that just because a disc boots on one machine doesn't mean the disc isn't bad.
BFX is properly detecting the PCMCIA ethernet card. It's also doing a very good job with the display, at least when it boots with my 17" monitor attached (otherwise it gives only one resolution option, which is way too low).
Everything is performing pretty well, except video (I had to install the Flash plug-in manually). It may be that the Tecra 550CDT simply isn't capable of playing video at an acceptable frame rate.
I don't know if the problem really was the "quick erase" but in the future I need to be mindful that just because a disc boots on one machine doesn't mean the disc isn't bad.
BFX is properly detecting the PCMCIA ethernet card. It's also doing a very good job with the display, at least when it boots with my 17" monitor attached (otherwise it gives only one resolution option, which is way too low).
Everything is performing pretty well, except video (I had to install the Flash plug-in manually). It may be that the Tecra 550CDT simply isn't capable of playing video at an acceptable frame rate.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Tecra 550CDT and Linux, Again
This time I'm trying to build a machine suitable for Unc, a freind of the family in his early 80s. He's got an original iMac upgraded to the last pre-X Mac OS, and it simply isn't cutting it for him. He's unable to open most of the attachments people send him; YouTube videos play like crap.
I never did get Xubuntu 6.10 to recognize the network cards.
I tried Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) but I get a TTY error on installation.
Xubuntu 6.06 Alternate went better. It installed -- slowly -- but immediately recognized both the D-Link wired and wireless PCMCIA cards.
It's really not bad. Only 2 complaints so far:
The performance of YouTube videos: it's bad.
Firefox is pokey. On several pages, including Netflix and Yahoo! Mail Beta the error message regarding long-running scripts pops up several times.
For grins I tried booting the machine with the BFX CD but it wouldn't boot.
I'm wondering how much things will improve if I install a lighter-weight window manager. I installed all the Matchbox packages using Synaptic (after turning on the "unsupported" repositories). A reboot still didn't display Matchbox as an option under "sessions" on the login screen.
I never did get Xubuntu 6.10 to recognize the network cards.
I tried Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) but I get a TTY error on installation.
Xubuntu 6.06 Alternate went better. It installed -- slowly -- but immediately recognized both the D-Link wired and wireless PCMCIA cards.
It's really not bad. Only 2 complaints so far:
The performance of YouTube videos: it's bad.
Firefox is pokey. On several pages, including Netflix and Yahoo! Mail Beta the error message regarding long-running scripts pops up several times.
For grins I tried booting the machine with the BFX CD but it wouldn't boot.
I'm wondering how much things will improve if I install a lighter-weight window manager. I installed all the Matchbox packages using Synaptic (after turning on the "unsupported" repositories). A reboot still didn't display Matchbox as an option under "sessions" on the login screen.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Amazon Unbox under Parallels
I'm trying to get Amazon Unbox working on my MacBook under Parallels. The first problem I encountered was that I didnt have enough disk space for the movie downloads. This is understandable, in that I wanted to keep the Windows partition just big enough for the OS and the odd application.
The first remedy I tried was changing the settings to point to a folder on my "OS X" partition, which to Parallels looks like a network drive. I didn't get far: first Unbox inexplicably wouldn't let me save the settings, but then ultimately gave me an error message suggesting movies can only be downloaded to local drives.
The next approach was increasing the size of my Parallels partition. A little Googling quickly scared me away, however: it sounds like a bit of a painful process.
The next strategy: add another virtual hard drive to Parallels. Problem number one: I couldn't figure out how to edit the virtual machine settings because I had configured Parallels to start the VM automatically upon launching and quit once the VM quit, and a VM's settings can only be modified when the VM isn't running. A lot of Googling led me to a solution: if the command (apple/clover) key is pressed and held immediately after launching Parallels it does not automatically start the VM.
Once I got the VM settings opened, it was easy enough to specify that I wanted another hard drive. But when I launched the VM no second hard disk appeared in "My Computer". More Googling, and I found a solution: the drive has to be formatted. In Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management I went through the Dynamic wizard that came up automatically. Then I selected something like Action > All Tasks > Add volume and went through that wizard. That did the trick.
Now I've changed the Amazon Unbox settings to point to my "E:" drive...but the movies I bought are still refusing to download. I'll give them time...
The user interface made it look easy enough
The first remedy I tried was changing the settings to point to a folder on my "OS X" partition, which to Parallels looks like a network drive. I didn't get far: first Unbox inexplicably wouldn't let me save the settings, but then ultimately gave me an error message suggesting movies can only be downloaded to local drives.
The next approach was increasing the size of my Parallels partition. A little Googling quickly scared me away, however: it sounds like a bit of a painful process.
The next strategy: add another virtual hard drive to Parallels. Problem number one: I couldn't figure out how to edit the virtual machine settings because I had configured Parallels to start the VM automatically upon launching and quit once the VM quit, and a VM's settings can only be modified when the VM isn't running. A lot of Googling led me to a solution: if the command (apple/clover) key is pressed and held immediately after launching Parallels it does not automatically start the VM.
Once I got the VM settings opened, it was easy enough to specify that I wanted another hard drive. But when I launched the VM no second hard disk appeared in "My Computer". More Googling, and I found a solution: the drive has to be formatted. In Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management I went through the Dynamic wizard that came up automatically. Then I selected something like Action > All Tasks > Add volume and went through that wizard. That did the trick.
Now I've changed the Amazon Unbox settings to point to my "E:" drive...but the movies I bought are still refusing to download. I'll give them time...
The user interface made it look easy enough
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