Dell Inspiron 600m Laptop

[thane]

I recently acquired a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. I want to install TCL to the hard drive and get the wireless connection to work (I have a wireless router).

Has anybody had experience with this hardware? Fools errand or worth the trouble? This is a completely throw-away piece of equipment so no loss if it turns out to be a paperweight. Thanks in advance for insights.

[curaga]

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2154

Pentium M 725 1.60GHz Processor, 2MB L2-Cache
ATI Mobility RADEON 9000 AGP 4X video graphics at 32MB
14.1-in SXGA Monitor
60GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 4200RPM
512MB, 266MHz RAM

Yikes, the quality of throw-away laptops has improved drastically if they're that specced.

Should work more than fine, but needs a pcmcia wifi card.

[Juanito]

You'd need to check what wifi hardware it has first - since there's many flavours of internal dell wifi hardware, it might be a good idea to boot from cd and use pci-utils/usb-utils to check

[curaga]

Right, I should've said "may need" not "needs".

[thane]

Playing with the Inspiron now. Did a frugal install of TCL + wifi tools to the hard disk and was able to connect to my wireless router.

Tried rebooting a few times and occasionally get an error where the wifi device isn't found.

Like I guess everybody I don't like the touchpad for mouse control, but it's usable.

So far a lot less trouble than I thought it would be (natural pessimist).

[Rich]

Hi thane
I have Tinycore running very nicely on a Dell Inspiron 8000 and a Dell Precision M70. I've disabled the touch pad
on both in favor of a Logitech M110 mouse. The M70 has wireless built in but I don't use it since I don't own any
other wireless gear.

[thane]

Thanks Rich. Bought a wireless mouse that seems to work, but having a problem with Fluff file manager not recognizing the left button click (pops up menu). Probably an issue for another thread though.

Still having intermittent problem with wifi (eth1) not being detected when I boot. Based on a posting here I added the nodhcp bootcode to see if that helps.

[MikeLockmoore]

but having a problem with Fluff file manager not recognizing the left button click (pops up menu)

Weird. 

Does this happen in any other FLTK apps, like the standard Tiny Core apps?

[thane]

It might be a mouse issue -- the touchpad works normally. With the mouse though if I start Fluff from wbar, a left or right click-and-hold anywhere on the screen (besides on Fluff) pops up the Fluff File Manager menu. If I l click and hold on the Fluff panel itself I get the Fluff Directory Menu, then it goes to the Fluff File Manager when I release the button. Other windows seem OK, but I'm running a very minimal setup (basic TCL/wireless installed from CorePlus, Namorka, and Fluff).

Since Fluff works fine on my desktop box I'm hesitant to call it a Fluff issue. I haven't really looked into whether I might need a different driver or something for this mouse.

[curaga]

You can check with xev, click on the xev window to see what events get sent.

[thane]

Well well, in an effort to get xev I downloaded xorg 7.4 and booted with that instead of xvesa, and now the mouse works fine with Fluff (and as far as I can tell, everything else). Will play around with this a little more and hopefully be able to mark it solved. Thanks for everyone's help!

[curaga]

Should've mentioned Xorg-7.6-bin has it and can be used with Xvesa.

[thane]

<bump>

After letting it sit around for several months, I've started using this laptop as my backup computer while my place is being remodeled (wired computer has been disconnected and put away).

About half the time when I boot the wifi doesn't detect any networks. When it does though I'm able to connect and everything works fine. Wondering if it might be a timing issue. I've seen reference to a sleep=x bootcode and thinking maybe I need to add this to my bootcodes.

Any other ideas?

[aus9]

Any other ideas?

1) Yeah altho I am a wireless novice. eth1 suggests you have kept eth0 which I assume is your wired?

I jump from desktop wired to wireless manually, but you can use a blacklist bootcode to disable your wired module instead of bootcode nodhcp

eg "blacklist modulename" as per http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/faq.html#bootcodes

I assume you know how to find that modulename?

2) If you suspect USB needs to settle roberts has updated USB stuff (yes I can name drop as I am shameless  )
http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html#pendrives

also see
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:waitusb

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,14234.msg80126.html#msg80126

[aus9]

I have just seen a recent reply from Rich that might interest you?
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=15447.msg89557#msg89557