Acer D255E Aspire One -- Lets upgrade to Debian 9.3 (Stretch)

So, if you've been following along; last year we installed debian jessie (the same revision of debian that runs on small computers like the raspberry pi) -- most of the big blog sites are still touting other revisions of linux for these small computers some of them are based on debian, some not.  My thoughts? -- well it depends on what you need.

I wanted a very crisp install, minimalist with very little messing around (we still have to manually install the SD card but it works, just fine).  I wanted modern word processing, as well as to be able to use the webcam for occasional web conference/ hangouts session.  I don't care as much about the QOL improvements offered by ubuntu (though i don't mind them, I just don't have the resources on this platform).  I wanted stable, free/open (as possible), well supported/secure.  This is how I landed on debian last time, this time I did again

Why Stretch?:

In a word, Jessie is old... it comes out of the box with old pre-configured packages... AND the big one ... Stretch seems to perform better on streaming video in almost every aspect, even with 1G of ram.  It's fairly amazing how well it works (still not perfect but it doesn't peg the CPU usage when Netflix is running for the time being at least.)   Debian is about as no frills as it gets, without REALLY roughing it.  You could throw DSL (Damn small Linux) on there and try it ... it would very be small but very much you bring everything to the party yourself. 

With regards to video performance I should have checked before I wiped the laptop if Debian Jessie was using the VESA drivers under X.  Sure seems that way based on the video performance, the other thing to keep in mind with that is the platform the graphics card runs on is completely not open (and lacks good support within the linux community)  I did check on the new install and it seams at least that Stretch is using intel branded drivers for the graphics .... perhaps this means all is well now?

What I Assume: 

 Again, assumed you know a bit about linux, about putting a ISO on a thumb drive to boot and install linux ... you  could google these things; none of them are obscure.  I assume the D255E you are using has the same hardware options as mine, and that you've updated the firmware all the way to the latest and greatest (though i don't know if this matters much).  Also I assume you have skimmed at least my last blog post about the D255E:

https://davesmindsoup.blogspot.com/2017/02/breathing-new-life-into-my-acer-d255e.html

Below are the directions for a clean install, you will want to have taken care of backing up your data first. You can do a in place upgrade but I don't like to do that between revisions.  I also made a complete drive image with parted magic of my working install before i started, I always recommend this with any full clean install.  Ok, Lets GO!

Let's Start by downloading the Netinstall:

I'm not so sure if you have to use the non-free installer anymore, I did, as its got a lot of non-open architecture in the laptop (the CPU / Graphics Card).  I did this to play it safe more than anything.  I did find it odd the laptop's memory card reader is still not supported in non-free by Debian. (yet the wifi adapter and the web cam are)

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/9.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso 

You will use a USB thumb drive to boot the laptop. (whatever method you choose)

I again did the non-graphical standard install at boot up.  I picked LXDE again, I still think its the best window manager for the laptop but you should play around and decide for yourself.

Not much to recommend about the install itself.  It went off fairly without a hitch.  I would recommend you write down your WIFI password if you don't rely on your memory for it ... otherwise you are going to have to reference the sticker on your router (or wherever you are keeping it) during the install.

Chrome:

to put chrome on (the distro comes with firefox).  You can now simply:

 wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb


You will want to install an ad blocking addon, i use fair ad blocking, but i turn everything on because i have to for performance reasons, there are alot of unoptimised flash ads and this will over tax the CPU making simple tasks on the internet unbearable.

The Memory Card Reader:

We still go over to:

https://github.com/rhertzog/firmware-nonfree/tree/master/linux-nonfree/ene-ub6250

Download all 6 files and put them in a new directory /lib/firmware/ene-ub6250

then we do:

depmod -ae
update-initramfs -u
reboot


(I got a warning ... it may be a bug with depmod because it still worked)

again you may have to cycle the memory card in and out of the slot to get it to show up in PCManFM, but it should automount memory cards now.

Again I came across the idea for this here, Thanks again dale for your blog:

http://blog.dale.id.au/ene-technology-inc-sd-card-reader-ub6250/

Running updates:

so when you are done installing running updates from within debian is fairly simple.
go to the root console and type:

apt-get update
apt-get full-upgrade
reboot


You may get a prompt to continue a few times but usually just one.  There are no automatic updates though i suppose you could write a script for this to be checked every time you boot up -- this is kind of at cross purpose from the nature of debian.

Breathing New Life into my Acer D255E Aspire One (Installing Debian Jessie with LXDE, and thoughts on doing so)

Lets face it netbooks were always cheep.  and it was already sluggish when I bought the thing. single core Atom N455 at 64 bit, 1 Gig RAM ruining windows 7 starter.  I initially ran Xubuntu after lack luster performance under updated windows 7 brought it crawling to a halt.  After updating it a few days ago I ended up messing up my boot loader and didn't want to mess around re-installing.  I opted to put on lubuntu, issues with wireless brought that to a screaming halt.  Again not wanting to mess around, also I wasn't happy with the performance, I switched to mint.  It worked out of the box, but again was sluggish and not really what was looking for in a lean distro so I scraped it.   I ran in to a project called crash bang (now defunct) who's former developer recommended Debian.  I'd heard of Debian, its been around since at least the late 90's  I've tried it a few times but looking back haven't really had much in the way of comparison -- alot of distro's I Have used before were based on it but never out of the box Debian.

For one thing Debian is fast, stable, and really well supported.  Here's what i did.

 Go over to my new blog post for directions on the latest revision of Debian:
https://davesmindsoup.blogspot.com/2018/03/acer-d255e-aspire-one-lets-upgrade-to.html

I downloaded the net install:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/archive/9.2.1+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.2.1-amd64-netinst.iso

I picked BitTorrent but you can use the ftp to get the image if you like waiting on a boggy server.

I put the ISO on a thumb drive (there are apps for windows to do this)  I just used cp in the root console:

cp iso filename  /dev/sdb


You will need to set up the bios with F2 to boot from the usb stick first after that it should boot and you can install Debian.

during the install i picked the LXDE window manager (its fast and light choose what you want this is the best for this laptop as far as I'm concerned)

After installing and setting up the WiFi I downloaded 64bit Chrome (you don't have to but I didn't want to mess around and Chrome is fast and supports extensions)

(you will have to mess around with dependency's after running dpkg to install the binaries but it's one and apt-get will basically walk you through the process.)

i did in the root console:

 dpkg -i chrome binary .db package name
 apt-get install libappindicator1
 apt-get -f install
 dpkg -i chrome binary .db package name


New directions:

  wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 apt-get install libappindicator1 (maybe, haven't tested this run if its needed)


after that it basically worked.

I installed Adguard extension in chrome to stop a lot of the boggy script activity, this was a lot of the issues I was having with web pages.

I set up the LXPanel to auto-hide and show battery levels and the mixer.

Its not perfect, there are still big issues with the CPU getting bogged down with flash but its not as bad as mint was for certain.  You could try the new LXDE distro linux.com just said it might be the most popular distro for low footprint computers this year. -- If anybody tries it on this model specifically I'd be interested to see your results.  The main difference is LXDE distro is running on Ubuntu.  You could install 32 bit Debian and get the same performance maybe slightly slower arguably there should be no performance difference under 2 gigs of ram.  I chose 64 bit to be able to support chrome you could look for a 32 bit version or run Chromium but I needed flash.  There are also open source flash players out there but I did not play around with them.


UPDATE:
Sd Card reader does not work out of the box.  I was able to get it to work by manually copying the firmware to /lib/firmware

from:
https://github.com/rhertzog/firmware-nonfree/tree/master/linux-nonfree/ene-ub6250

copy whole directory to /lib/firmware/ene-ub6250

then do in root console:

depmod -ae
update-initramfs -u
reboot

you might have to cycle the sd card a few times to get it to mount to /media

came across this fix at:
http://blog.dale.id.au/ene-technology-inc-sd-card-reader-ub6250/

A big thanks to dale for his blog.

UPDATE 2:

Netflix works in chrome if you go into your account settings and drop the quality all the way down, a bit of hesitation every once and a while but it is watchable. my guess is 2 gigs of ram most likely helps with this.  if you don't want to set back your main profile for other devices make a profile for low def and set it.  Works good for saving money if you are streaming over your data as well.

EDIT:
Netflix is night and day better on Debian Stretch, my link at the top will take you to my new install guide.

UPDATE 3:

New version of debian (stretch) image is at:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/9.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso 

I am currently working on a guide to use it.  (no idea of the performance difference, trying this out to see mainly.)  the old image link is broken... I will look into finding a new link for jessie soon hopefully, it should be just a matter of finding where backdated versions are stored in the repository.

UPDATE 4: (last update before new guide)

I found this link also researching the graphics hardware:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/intel-graphics-media-accelerator-3150-a-944496/ 

I am hoping to get the accelerator working to decode MPEG for the CPU.  Hopefully this will improve streaming performance on the computer.
Turns out intel drivers are rolled into 9.3 -- no need for this :D

Gateway ML3109 upgrade to vista with CCC 10.2 SOLVED

xp support ran out on this old ML3109 Gateway I had a extra vista 64bit licence laying about so I upgraded.
below is how i got my ATI XPRESS 200M to load to the 10.2 Catalyst Control Center drivers.

you will need :

the 8.6 catalyst drivers from here:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocards----ATI-Catalyst-(Modified)_c24.html
-- I picked the 64 bit version (the ones listed as DNA)

I also grabbed the updated drivers from here:
http://donotargue.com/2014/03/20/dna-drivers-database/

You will need to use the mobility modder to update the INF's from here:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/tools (the ATI one)

start up the install on the first one and cancel after the drivers extract.
run mobility modder to update the drivers (point mm at the directory inside C:\ati that the installer made.)

you may want to do a clean deinstall of the drivers i use:
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

after cleaning install the drivers clicking on the setup.exe in the extracted directory.
if your screen flashes during install it worked.  You may want to upgrade to the latest if
you do catalyst control center is bugged and you will have to do a custom install and deselect
 the control center and the profiles before installing the drivers. with this old of hardware I
doubt it matters though I did because I am a completionist. updating your drivers to 10.1 will break
ccc after a reboot no way around this  I don't use the control center for anything and all the info you need
can be gleaned out of GPU-Z.

Things To remember:

The newest version if CCC that supported by MM is 10.2 (and the support for the chipset in the XPRESS mobility)

I tried to get vanilla 10.2 drivers to work and it failed. (including every previous increment going back
to 8.6 vanilla)

there's no reason to assume this wont work on windows 7. I have not tried it however.

another thing to remember is since you are using heavily modded drivers it may complain during
the install that you are using unsigned drivers just click install anyway.

playing around with other versions of CCC may be able to get them to work with with this i just
ran out of steam and I'm by no means an expert.

the stock drivers on gateways website do not work on 64 bit vista (even the ones flagged to do so).  I
doubt that they will fix this given the age of the hardware

I did the gfx install after upgrading to SP1, and then SP2.. But before turning on automatic updates don't know if you would have better luck with the Vanilla Drivers after updating windows.

this guy is awesome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNphHUeARqw

hope this helps.

why twilight dosn't suck...

Ok i've thought about this for a while... yea i know your thinking, Dave your a sci-fi nut how can you say that! Well here's the skinny; twilight is not a vampire story ... sorry it's just not; it is a love story plain and simple. It stars supernatural beings (vampires, daemons werewolves etc...). All of that is just a back drop to a romance novel. First and foremost as hard as it is to admit; there's a thing called poetic license. That means without any room for argument that the author has every right to make changes to genera, past art, etc... This means even if it pisses you off because you are a die hard Ann Rice fan; or a Bram Stoker fan... you have to completely ignore past art when making a judgment (at least objectively). As in you can't judge the film or the book based on other vampire movies/books because it is not a vampire movie/book... its a romance movie/book about vampires. Taken that in to consideration, and judging the book/movie based on just that it is a romance story makes it much easier to look at as a whole ... and that's why i think it doesn't suck.

Happy Graduation!!!

Today is a special day, My wife is graduating from college!!! I am so proud of her! I just never know how to react or what to say when big things like this come up. So that said Happy Graduation Mary, I love you and am so proud of you.

SYNC Sync cable came in the mail today!

I got my USB cable for my samsung SYNC today. In 10 minutes, using directions from the sync hole (link listed to your right), I removed the pesky default apps from my phone and installed 3rd party application over USB WITHOUT USING THE INTERNET!!! God Bless this phone! More later, back to work after a quick bite to eat....

New Link Added - SYNC Users Rejoice

Normally I wouldn't post something about my own blog being changed, however I think this is an important addition to the soup. Ive talked in brief about the Samsung Sync here several times, Ive found a web site that has many helpful howto's as well as access to a community of sync users. Its called the sync hole. Check it out over on my links section.

Still working on the e-book project. I've not scraped it completely but there's some new things come to light after finding this community on line. I'm currently experimenting with getting java on the phone without internet.... I'll report back on my success/failure.

Samsung SYNC - My E-Book Project Part 1

Hi all, some thing's been bugging me for a while and it's about time I started things to set it right. Here is the problem, while reading Clay McGovern's blog about the SGH-A707 (dubbed the Samsung SYNC by recently purchased cellphone property Cingular, now AT&T) I ran into a rather great idea... this is the viewing of text on the SYNC with the web browser vrs. using the Picsel file viewer loaded on the phone for viewing text's spreadsheets and PDF files (see wiki for more info on file opening capabilities of the phone.) The Results with the web browser yielded much better results than opening with the provided file viewer, as the web browser sized the text better than the viewer could for the screen and seamed more simplistic to me. GREAT! I thought, project gutenburg here I come! Not 20 minutes into the endeavor I in countered problems, mainly with text formatting and the shier size of the text file being opened on the phone.

My proposal is simple, but direct, what are the size property maximums, for pre-formated text to display properly on the phone? Answering this question will allow the creation of a text filter for notepad++ or similar text editing programs (perhapses emacs and lisp?) for the splitting and creation of pre-formated .html files for opening on the SYNC. come back in the next few day's for a follow up on my findings and where this has all lead me.

ICO Violates GPL

Well normally I don't like to blast away at PS2's thunder. Seams to me the publishers of ICO could benefit more than suffer by releasing the source code and providing space for a community to thrive. However past experiences with this sort of thing tend to lead me in an alternate direction. hop over to Digg or the website linked below for the proof.

read more | digg story

5 ways to make your PC more like a Mac; But why?

Here's another example of what the spinning rim, black under lighting, and NOS installing wanna be Geek fan boy has brought to the table (along with crappy case mods, supporting an ever growing list of 3rd person shooters that suck, and daddy's trust fund money.) Theres a time and place for everything boys and girls; and that place is high school. But seriously; In the below linked article, (well written and lain out by the way), sets out guides for setting up the windows Vista/XP UI to be more like a Mac. The question I lay before you is WHY? If you want a mac, buy a mac, be an adult and say proudly: I'M BUYING A MAC BECAUSE I THINK IT'S USEFUL. Not that it's my personal choice; however, I use a lot of windows only applications in day to day tasks; its' not really an option for me. Which is neither here nor there. I submit however, that the never ending quest to make PC's more like macs has never gone well... Lets look at a few company's who've tried this. NExT - Steve Jobs pet project that was broken up and sold off in peaces. Be OS, a company started by cast off (cast off or left intentionally)mac software engineers with little clear cut goals besides making an alternative to windows. The new operateing system that sold abysmally, and they couldn't even really give it away either. Am i missing anything else? Not to sound overtly negative (like I have any chance of that now) however there's good reasons to doing as the article says ... however talk about it messing with system configuration files spells disaster for the very large percentage of users who would be using the software for the "flashing lights and neat buzzer" factor. I'd have played the article out as more of a guide for advanced users who are put off by the Vista / XP UI and need something else.

read more | digg story

Social Media is "The Godfather" of the Internet ... NOT

Well if social media is the mafia/godfather of the internet... then what is C|net or Slashdot or even Digg? Dose social media control the internet or is it merely a reflection of a post 90's generation need to be on the yearbook comity? Time Tells all but for one thing is certain cash is king and some of the above listed sights have a lot of it.... perhaps social media is not the godfather but a passing fad, a glimpse of right now; I say social media is the Crash Test Dummies of today... A great band in there own right; but who plays it anymore besides Lucy (XM54 in the us). Lets think before we compare greatness with ambiguity and passing fads.

read more | digg story

By Far the Best... Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

OK so is it' so bad to digg my own post? well anyways like the post on TV Guide says this is one of the greatest Christmas specials ever!!! really! it out Saturday the 8th on ABC Family.... its an adaptation of the L. Frank Balm classic story the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

read more | digg story

AT&T Samsung Sync (SGH-A707) - A poor man's iPhone

Okay, Okay I own a sync, and I'm a "loyal" AT&T wireless customer, now before you get all bent out of shape yes I work for the cable company. To a certain extent that makes me a hypocrite but because I am a AT&T wireless customer, that doesn't make me less of a cable man. First and foremost, the thing you have to understand is originally i subscribed to the service back when It was Cingular. Then AT&T came out and bought Cingular... well.. something like that; but at any rate it doesn't matter much to me cause the service works and I don't have to think about it.... and that's fine for me.

ehhem, with that said we can get down to brass tacks... I LOVE MY NEW PHONE! First off it's red, yeah i know it shouldn't matter but I haven't had a new phone in like FOREVER! so that being said it's great that finally I get a new phone. But that's not why your here I'm guessing you want to know a little bit about the phone before you buy one. Well first off; it's dirt cheep right now when you sign a contract... i picked mine up for $20.00 with a contract from AT&T, upgrade rate online deal... it was a steal (i thought) till i saw it at wall mart for free with a contract... sigh. Well all of that aside it's a nice little phone; that gets even better when you get yourself set up with Blue Tooth and a MicroSD card.

Everything I've read about this phone says that if you have head phones plugged into it it becomes bulky and the port cover is venerable; easily solved by investing in a set of blue tooth headphones; which the phone supports. I think this phone was originally conceived to take advantage of bluetooth; and it's highly miss rated by the community as bluetooth is not as hyped of a feature for phones. Because the phone supports so many bluetooth features you don't need to use the io port for anything but plugging in the power to charge the thing. Another drawback that's de-bunked by blue tooth is the SD port being fragile and hard to operate... both of these statements are true; however you can copy things to and from the SD card over Bluetooth as well as through the cable with no trouble. This eliminates the need to remove the SD card from the phone at all. I purchased a USB Bluetooth key for 20 at walmart, also the SD card was bought there but i don't remember how much that was... it was cheep though.

Video playback is tolerable and SUPER (TM) makes excellent quality files from most media formats; making watching video on the phone very easy to accomplish and low cost. The phone supports 3GP and MP4 container types. Limited to only Narrow Band AMR audio codec, but allowing mpeg4 Visual codec, as well as standard H.263 video (of the two the phone uses Mpeg4). I have successfully viewed videos up to 320x240 at 15 FPS with a Fixed bit rate of 350Kbps. the audio is monual 8000Hz 13Kbps (even though the unit has 2ch speakers). Minimal blockyness was seen on animated clips at this resolution but i haven't tried anything live action. Serial TV episodes (around 29-35 minutes) end up being around 54 MB. Recommended to accomplish this task is SUPER at a bare minimum but you may have to adjust the aspect of the Video in virtual dub so that video doesn't look so stretched out. One minor annoyance is the video playback bar stays peasant on the screen during playback. Long movies might be cumbersome to watch from the middle as there is no playback support for encoded chapters.

Audio playback supports (at least) WMA, and MP3. The phone Records in AMR format and play's it back. The unit was bought more or less as a video player so i don't know much more than this. it seams to play whatever I through at it in these 3 formats however.

The phone has quite Decent Internet Access, as I don't use it much, I have little to say about it. It supports bidirectional IM and that's all i need it for. Phone has 3G support so those of you buying the phone for streaming video or audio will be pleased as punch. It has built in SongID, from what I can tell from the 3 day trial it seams to work well.

The phone book is useful and intuitive, it integrates with the IM client to tell you if contacts are on line or not at a glance. I haven't tried integration with a calendar or outlook.

Over all The phone dose what I need it to. I couldn't be more happy with it, I hope this review sheds some light on a well thought out purchase. but feel free to leave comments here if you don't understand something or need additional information. I will gladly try to accommodate.

Fun with CCE or one of the things less fun than shooting yourself in the face.

This is just a quick slap up here, i've started to work with the MPEG output generated by my DVD player.... I am currently working on a project to convert some off air episodes to DVD (yeah i know i just recored them to DVD), with subtitles, and chapters... the easy part is pulling apart the commercials but when it comes to taking CCE (closed captions) thats where the fun begins. I have tools for riping them right out of the MPEG output generated by dvddcrypter... but; then i have to cut out the commercials leavening the subtitles badly out of sync... what's a boy to do? well currently i am trying a method involving a frame server and subrip. I want to eventually write a little app to cut the subtitles from one of the various output types that comskip generates; but as far as i can tell that's going to be a pain in the ass as well. well here's hopeing :)

Three computers too much for one desk?

Ok, so i have 3 computers on my desk... 4 if you count my pocket pc. I use one of the laptops for video conversion, one for document reading and software development and the third for games and ohter stuff. I don't see a problem with this. I payed for one of the computers the other two are hand me downs... anybody else think this is pathetic?

Final Fantasy VII PC on Windows 2000 SP4

Well, I dusted off my old copy of Final Fantasy VII for PC on a whim early this week. Mainly cause I was impressed with all the fan based patches that were coming out for it. I was flabbergasted by the lack of support for windows 2000 SP4. Not to mention that there's conflicting opinions about what patches to use; what makes playability better etc. What Annoys the hell out of me is that to finally make it work under windows 2k you need Micro$oft's Application Compatibility Toolkit V3.0; not surprisingly enough you can't find it simply anywhere... (wouldn't want people to get the idea that they don't need to upgrade to window$ vi$ta would we..) Well after googleing around much of the known universe I managed to find a copy. Then it was a simple matter of patching the hell out of the game to make it work. Since there's a lot out there and it's a popular TFH starter, i will refrain from telling exactly which patches I used. Suffice to say theres quite a bit of information floating around out there and you can decide for yourself what you would like to run.

Here's the ACT (Application Compatibly Toolkit) settings

Start the ACT Compatibility Administrator Tool - hit fix, Enter Name and Publisher (FF7//Squaresoft and browse to the ff7.exe Hit next. Select None, hit next, enable: Shrinker, EmulateWriteFile,Virtual Registry. Hit Next. SelectAll and then finish. Run should do it now! (thanks to: http://www.ffseven.com/faq.php).

After that you might want to save the database... I don't know if you have to but it worked for me. From here on out you can run FF7.exe by clicking on it and it will work. I don't know about the High Res Patch or the Sound Replacement projects I will be trying those later.

Usefull Links:
This is were the settings for the ACT came from.
Get All (most of) the patches here

Files:

The_SaiNt_High_Res_FF7PC_Patcher.7z (I had problems with alot of the distributions out there ... this one works)
act30pkg.7z ~ managed to pull this off a Russian tech help site... heres the download without the Russian

OH AND ONE OTHER THING:

Stay away from the XP patch... it's a hack of 2 different fan patches and it was done without permission, it has also been known to cause problems with midi playback.

Vampire The Masqurade ~ Redemption (on windows 2000)

OK, here goes! The Activision web site says you have to use a replacement .ins (setup.7z below) file and copy the setup directory from the first disk to your hard drive. Go ahead and follow those directions. THEN, what you need to do is download the modded registry files below and run that. You should then be able to patch the game's files and go from there. PLEASE NOTE, you may have to edit the .reg file to your system settings in the notepad before installing it or the patch wont work AND the game won't run. Pay special attention to Drive letters... if you install to C:\ then leave it the way it is but for certain, unless your CD drive letter is E:, your gonna have to change that. YOU WILL RUN INTO A LARGE NUMBER OF ERRORS while installing, this is OK as far as I can tell you just click through them. The game runs splendidly at 1024x768 32bit color; with all the settings at there highest levels, on the presario 2100. Better than i remember it running on my first athalon (733mhz).

Files:
vtmreg.7z - Modded Registry file
setup.7z
VampirePatch.7z

Radion IGP 320M

Boy, and i thought getting my IDE cards working right under win2k would suck.

TURNS OUT... GART support is NOT included with the Compaq drivers for the Compaq presario 2100... Well you can download the drivers from ATI, and then install them... i would suggest you do that before you install the drivers... or you might have to reinstall the drivers ... lol anyways the Machine supports AGP, the drivers work in PCI mode but MUCH better when you can enable 4x agp. I have the omega 3.8.252 drivers installed (the newest version that works right) and the newest GART drivers from ATI.

Below is a modded GART driver... and the IGP 320M Omega Drivers.

rad_w2kxp_omega_38252.7z
Radion IGP 320M modded GART drivers.7z

Bash head Here X....

OK so it's 7:53 at night and I'm reinstalling the computer... YES AGAIN! I've had it with Vista, and everything it stands for! I'm putting win2k back on and it's staying till something else comes along that's WAY more reliable. I went to win2k with the laptop about a week ago and i found myself doing WAY more than i wanted to do with the lap top, and it's slower and has less memory!!! well, anyway enough about that rant, on to something more my style... I have a question. How come you have to Reboot windows 30 or 40 times to reinstall something.... and were not just talking windows 2000 but even vista, you make the slightest system change and BAM! your rebooting your machine. I just think Micro$oft has been in the operating system business with PCs since what, 1983? perhaps earlier... here we are 2007, and ... Please wait wile we reboot your computer because you made a two character change to this configuration file. WTF? anybody who's been around to the other side of the block knows you almost NEVER have to reboot a mac or a Linux box for that matter. So what gives? is it just laziness or, no competition that drives this. Micro$oft seems to be so good at stealing open source software and getting away with it *Ehehm... Qteee ... eh, cough cough* sorry just clearing my thought; perhaps they should steal a few software engineers from the other camp to show them how to write a kernel better, or better yet; take a stand, realize that there platform is out of date, and stop perpetuating compatibility with older platforms at the cost of performance, reliability and system security. But what do I know, I'm just a cable guy. See you all on the flip side.

taken a break to reinstall winblows...

well there you have it, I've managed to screw up another perfectly fine XP install, and like the bone headed fool I am i wiped clean the system partition (not the project partition, OggCConv is safe, without checking any hardware versions or anything! well that sux but can I bring my Compaq 2100 laptop back from the dead without begging Compaq for help? the answer is yes and since there is literally NO information on putting windows 2000 on this machine available on the web i thought I'd write a little tutorial here.

First thing's first, make sure you have drivers for Ethernet, and a good install media available. It helps to have SP4 and the security roll up on cd too before you start but dont say I didn't warn you if you decide to do these with the web based install, I haven't tried it... just not my style. NOW first off getting some key info... I had to download Everest home edition and profile the system to find out most of this stuff but here's the specs for key hardware drivers not available on the Compaq web site.

MY specific model is 2108us.... *(atholon)*

Ethernet: National Semiconductor DP83815 10/100 Fast Ethernet Controller
Sound: Uli/Ali M5451 AC-Link Controller Audio Device
Modem: Uli/Ali M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller (shows up as a pci device under device manager)

I was able to Google all of these drivers, I posted them all along with 7zip and the Everest Home Edition tool (freeware downloaded off of Major Geeks). See the bottom of this post.

EVERYTHING ELSE is available on the Compaq web site, I just downloaded the display drivers and the Intel power management stuff.

Install Win2k, basic settings, reconfigure to taste and then install SP4 and the roll up (if that's your style, there are some hard core SP3 users out there, I don't know if this guide will run as smoothly though I haven't tested it.) After all of that is done install the drivers i've uploaded and you should be good and well on your way to installing AVG, Adaware and Spybot SD... or whatever else you install next on a fresh install. Hope all this helps; here's the link to the files:

2108US - Win2K Drivers & Utilities.zip

2108US - Win2K Drivers & Utilities.7z