Old hardware brought back to life

[JKyleOKC]

Great story, Jamie! The linked thread has been closed for a while so I had to come back here to congratulate you!

And I agree with others that you're likely to go far. I have grandkids more than twice as old as you and I'm glad to see that the coming generations are doing great!!!

[Mike_Walsh]

One thing I have noticed with this new SSD is that they seem to run quite a bit hotter than a traditional HDD. The old Hitachi Travelstar would run between 42-44C; this Transcend SSD averages between 55-60C.

Googling this subject, it appears this is normal for these devices. Unlike a mechanical HDD, which has spinning platters that cause air movement inside the case, an SSD is, of course, banks of chips in a completely sealed case. It's basically an oversized flash drive.....and I know, from running Puppy off a flash drive, just how warm they can get.

According to the manufacturers, operating temperatures between 0C-70C are acceptable. Another learning curve...!

http://uk.transcend-info.com/product...0_520_1228.pdf

Amongst other things, I've learnt that to help prolong the life of the device, you need to leave about 10% un-formatted. This gives the controller room to play with as it shuffles used blocks around, prior to deleting them & marking them as ready for re-use.

It's like learning basics all over again.....

Unfortunately, the only thing the PATA interface doesn't support is the most important one; TRIM. Bugger..! Now, how do I get round that one? Hmmm... Anybody got any ideas?


Regards,

Mike.

[sudodus]

Unfortunately, the only thing the PATA interface doesn't support is the most important one; TRIM. Bugger..! Now, how do I get round that one? Hmmm... Anybody got any ideas?

1. Use the mount option noatime (in fstab)

2. Avoid swapping as much as possible

3. Run the ext4 file system without a journal (can be tweaked with tune2fs). This makes the files system more sensitive to errors, so there is a tradeoff.

4. Maybe use a trick I use to keep USB pendrives alive and responsive:

a. Backup the content if necessary
b. Wipe the whole device (overwrite with zeros)
c. Restore from backup

See this link.

[Mike_Walsh]

Hi, sudodus.

Thanks for the link, and the ideas. I wasn't aware you could run an ext4 partition without the journal; surely that kinda defeats the purpose of having it, doesn't it? Still, I don't mind admitting, I've got a whole lot yet to learn. I'm a 'hardware' guy; I'm happy pulling things to bits, seeing how they work, then putting them back together, and improving upon the original assembly wherever possible. I'm not so 'hot' on the software side of things....but at that, I guess my 'learning curve' is about the same gradient as most other folks...

As far as I can tell, with what I've gleaned off the 'net in the last couple of days, you can only use 'noatime' with the SATA derivatives; I don't think it's supported by the PATA types. But hey; what do I know?

I'll investigate the link in a bit. Thanks again, Olle.


Regards,

Mike.

EDIT: Just had a quick skim through.....I think I've read that before. I know I've read Duckhook's explanation about 'gridlocking'; quite informative.

[SuperTrainStationH]

Thanks everyone. So here's what happened.

For whatever reason the audio settings started working in Xubuntu.

I was able to turn off the internal bell speakers and get either external speakers or headphones to work with the headphone jack in the front, but not the one in the back. After a deal of fiddling around it seems like the jack in the back may be legitimately defective, but honestly the external speakers I have are so bad that I'd be more likely to use headphones anyway, and even so I'm not using this for multimedia, so I was pretty happy.

Still couldn't get the network connection to work.

So friend gave me a DVD with Fedora on it.

I ran it "live" off the disk. I instantly had internet access without touching a thing, but I couldn't get the headphone jack to work, or turn off the bell speaker, even using the same means that worked with Xubuntu.

I guess I'll just try different flavors of Ubuntu till I find one that just wants to work alright.

What you fellows have walked me through has pretty much got me to a point where I feel comfortable trying to peck my way through this and see what does and doesn't work, and if I have trouble I'll ask in the specific boards or threads dedicated to specific problems.


Thanks everyone!

[Mike_Walsh]

Hi, SuperTrainStationH.

This is only a suggestion (feel free to ignore it, by all means!).....but why don't you give Puppy Linux a try? It's very lightweight, and designed specifically to breathe new life into elderly, yet still useable hardware. Specifically, this one:-

http://smokey01.com/rg66/X-slacko/iso/

X-Slacko 2.3.2 is more stable than X-Slacko 3.0, or 3.1; both of which are still in beta, and hence still rather 'buggy'. It's based on the 'classic' Slacko Puppy 5.7.0, with the addition of the XFCE desktop environment (so if you like Xubuntu, you'll feel right at home with it).

I've been using this for at least 6 months now, on a 2005 Compaq Presario desktop (post the HP takeover, but definitely manufactured before.....hence much higher quality components).....and it's as stable as a rock.

Same procedure; download, burn to disc (CD, in this case, 'cos of the small size), and run from the LiveCD. You'll soon find out what works, and what doesn't; but I'll be very surprised if you don't have external speakers and an internet connection working right from the word 'go'. You will find Puppy running from the LiveCD is a lot faster than Xubuntu running from the LiveDVD, as Puppy runs entirely in RAM. And this particular Pup has everything but the kitchen sink installed as standard..!

Just a suggestion, as I said. Make of it what you will.

EDIT: BTW, it is worth spending a bit on a halfway decent set of external speakers; at least a separate amp, and powered sub-woofer. Makes a world of difference!

And to answer one of your questions from the other thread, Puppy Linux Forum member rcrsn51 has created a major thread on installing printers in Puppy, including loads of links to specific brands & models, what does work, what doesn't, etc. He's our printer 'guru'! See here:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=59015

Hope some of that helps, anyway.


Mike.

[SuperTrainStationH]

My machine's basically running flawlessly except for one thing.

The screen will occasionally spontaneously become corrupted.

When this happens its usually when I'm doing things like using the Software Center, or very occasionally when I have my Settings panels open.

The Software Center is pretty much the most heavy duty thing I do on this computer aside from maybe browsing the web, as I'm basically using this thing for early 90's DOS games, looking at photos of trains, and word processing, and its rarely had this problem while doing any of those other things.

Moving windows around helps un-distort some of the corruption, and my upper left main menu is fine, to the point where I'm able to log out, and then log back in, which always fixes the corruption.

Below are screenshots depicting before and after images of the corruption.

Thanks in advance everyone.

If a solution is found for this my new (old) machine will be everything I wanted of it.

Oh, and 'm using xubuntu 15.10.

[mörgæs]

Please begin with reading the initial posts, especially #4.

[bcschmerker]

Thanks for keeping a Thread available for rebuilders. As of February 2016 I am weighing my options for the old Hot Rod gPC™ (Advanced Micro Devices® Athlon64® X2 5600+, AMD® RS780G/SB710 chipset), which will soon need new drives and a second-upgrade video card (which the previously-fit Antec® TruePower® New™ 750 Blue™ should have no trouble supplying). The case can take four 3.5" hard drives; both the Fujitsu® PATA drives are coming due for replacement, and the Gigabyte® GA-MA78GM-S2HP 'board can take five internal (SATA0 through SATA 3 in AHCI, SATA 4 in IDE/ATAPI) and one external (in IDE/ATAPI) SATA devices in addition to two devices on the one PATA header (which I plan to reassign to an optical drive). Only issue I don't know is whether this rig can handle the Gigabyte® GV-R726X-2GD, which has one of AMD's late-model RV1260XP 128-bit chips from the Volcanic Islands series; I was unable to use an Asus® EAH6850DC in this rig, probably due to the lack of 256-bit support in the stock Phoenix® Award® BIOS, but it runs a Diamond® HD 5450 with its 1 GiB 128-bit memory just fine.

This rig runs like a champ on its old hardware under Ubuntu® 12.04.6-LTS (upgraded to Kernel 3.13.0). I anticipate needing NAS-grade hard drives for the rebuild for Ubuntu® 16.04.0-LTS, as my system has to endure Central Valley (CA, USA) summers where the ambient temperature can approach 40°C; my target max safe operating temperature for the new HDD's is 60°C. The Western Digital® WD7500BFCX Scorpio Red model is larger than I planned on for each of four (i plan to put /, /var, /home, and potentially /usr on separate drives for ultimate performance in normal operation), but it's WDC's smallest capacity for the temperature range I need. The GA-MA78GM-S2HP probably having been built for SATA 1.n, any recommendations on alternative models of hard drives for highish temperatures for SATA 1 through 2?

[Mike_Walsh]

** UPDATE **

I've now swapped the 32 GB Transcend SSD for a 64 GB version. Just wanted more space to play with ( and install another Pup or two!) Still running very, very well.....and transforming a 14-yr old Inspiron.


Mike.