Revived an old laptop

[glennzo]

Yesterday, out of pure boredom, I grabbed my old ThinkPad R32 and installed Fedora 17 XFCE on it. Much to my surprise it installed without a complaint. This is a vintage machine with low specs compared to today's machines. I think I've maxed out the memory at 512M. Anyhow, although a bit sluggish I've been able to configure this machine, updated to the the newest kernel, etc.

These are (approximately) the orginal specs as far as I can tell:

PHP Code:

Processor: Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 1.80GHz
Memory: 512.0 MB <-- I added memory
Hard Drive: IBM/Hitachi Travelstar 60GH and 40GN / 30GB
Operating System: Fedora 17 XFCE
Display Type:14.1 in TFT active matrix
Max Resolution: 1024 x 768 ( XGA )
Graphics Controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM
Network controller: Intersil Corporation ISL3874 [Prism 2.5]/ISL3872 [Prism 3] (rev 01)
Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801CAM (ICH3) PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 42) 


Although this machine is no more than a toy it would be, for all intents and purposes, fairly usable on a daily basis.

Now, if only I could get that darned Prizm wireless working

Linux thinkpad 3.6.3-1.fc17.i686 #1 SMP Mon Oct 22 16:10:29 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[Dan]

There's a PRISM 54 (24?) driver out there as I recall that works well. I've slept since the last time I used it, so that may not be the right name. Let me check my old drives and see if I can find the tar file.

[glennzo]

Yes. Take a look Dan, and thank you. As I recall, the bigger issue with wireless on this machine is that the card seems broken. I can no longer get it working under XP, or at least couldn't the last time I tried.. Up to a certain point, even when I couldn't get it working under Linux it was working under XP so I knew then that it was a driver issue. Now, not so sure, but I'd be willing to give it another shot.

As an aside, I remember changing out the wireless card for something else, but the BOIS would have no part of it, citing some sort of restriction(s), the likes of which I had never seen. I don't think that the machine would even finish booting with the "other" card.

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by glennzo

Yesterday, out of pure boredom, I grabbed my old ThinkPad R32 and installed Fedora 17 XFCE on it.

One man's old hardware is another man's backup hardware...

I keep an old Dell Inspiron 1100 in reserve as my back up hardware.

Intel Celeron 4 Processor running at 2.0GHz
1024MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM

I currently have F16 Xfce loaded, and I use a D-Link wireless card in the PC Card Slot for wireless connection. Not sure if that is a viable solution for your wireless problem - it was an inexpensive solution for this Inspiron.

[Dan]

Dang, Glenn! It looks like I've lost that driver. I've got a nasty feeling it was on the old Maxtor drive that went south two years ago, taking my old F10 (32 bit) install with it. <....>

[glennzo]

@Dan. I'm sure I can find the driver(s) that I would need. Thanks for looking though.
@BBQdave. I suppose I could view the laptop as a backup, although I currently play around with 4 desktops and another laptop. This ThinkPad is merely a toy at this juncture.

From lshw:

PHP Code:

*-network:0 UNCLAIMED
                description: Network controller
                product: ISL3874 [Prism 2.5]/ISL3872 [Prism 3]
                vendor: Intersil Corporation
                physical id: 7
                bus info: pci@0000:02:07.0
                version: 01
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
                configuration: latency=64
                resources: memory:f8000000-f8000fff 


Working from memory, there are modules that need to be loaded before the card will even think about working. hostap and orinico come to mind. Neither of those modules are currently loaded.

[John the train]

1.8 & 2.0 Ghz? My Dell Latitude laptop runs very nicely with 300Mhz, and 192 Mb RAM, admittedly running Macpup 528. If push came to shove it could do duty as my main machine, as I don't game - aside from solitaire - or watch streamed TV.

EDIT: I have been running my desktop using the Ediamax EW-7318Ug usb dongle, while my laptop uses the EW-7608Pg, both use rt series drivers which are in the kernel. Ironically the usb dongle seems to have handed in it's dinner pail, I'll have to try the laptop later to be sure it's the dongle and not my Home Hub at fault.

[rhricik]

Not sure if you got it running or not, but here are a couple of suggestions
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54
- or -
use ndiswrapper (use the Windows driver for it)

The Prism54 drivers used to work well, had a Toshiba with that chipset, worked like a champ.

Your problem with changing the network card is that IBM hardcoded specific network cards into the BIOS - if you don't use one of those cards the BIOS will complain and stop.

Somewhere on the infinite I'net there is a program that you could run against the BIOS that would patch that check out or let you program your MAC from your new card in. It has been about 5 years since i messed around with a ThinkPad (a T-30 or something like that) but that is what i used when the original card went bad in it. It would display an error on startup, but if you hit the escape key it would keep on booting.

Good luck - having a spare laptop is always a good thing!

[glennzo]

Originally Posted by rhricik

Not sure if you got it running or not, but here are a couple of suggestions
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54
- or -
use ndiswrapper (use the Windows driver for it)

The Prism54 drivers used to work well, had a Toshiba with that chipset, worked like a champ.

Your problem with changing the network card is that IBM hardcoded specific network cards into the BIOS - if you don't use one of those cards the BIOS will complain and stop.

Somewhere on the infinite I'net there is a program that you could run against the BIOS that would patch that check out or let you program your MAC from your new card in. It has been about 5 years since i messed around with a ThinkPad (a T-30 or something like that) but that is what i used when the original card went bad in it. It would display an error on startup, but if you hit the escape key it would keep on booting.

Good luck - having a spare laptop is always a good thing!

Thanks for the reply. I decided to go with ndiswrapper. Things were looking good until I rebooted. Now there is a kernel panic. There is a screen full of errors related to ndiswrapper, ending with "panic occurred. switching back to text console". Bummer.

[gnuuser]

one of the greatest things about linux
it can add new life to old dogs or work horses.
or in my case an old jack@$$