Tiny Core Linux
Off-Topic => Off-Topic - Tiny Core Lounge => Topic started by: cast-fish on August 31, 2014, 09:29:35 AM
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hello-i-was-wondering-just-how-to-solve-wi-fi-issues?...dongle-lost-then-found-PER-several-boot-ups-intermittent-speeds-falling-to-unusable--drivers-appearing--then-dissapearing-for-the-USBdongle---very-difficult-as-it-appears-corrupt-but-not-really-able-to-be-clensed---
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First, we need more info
Make/model/firmware revision of USB device
result of LSUSB
ifconfig
iwconfig wlan0 (or appropriate device)
Which driver and firmware loaded
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Hello there,
Listen, thankyou very much for replying to me. It's a tiresome,loathsome feeling in the gut having
to use my resolve for this computing issue. It seems unfair to drag others into it. ALso it was not
mentioned i am talking about windows XP. SP3 version.
It's a compaq laptop, and has been exhibiting the blue fatal screen on occassion....which
in my extremely limited experience can often point to a hardware discrepancy (external device)
For some lengh of time...wi fi worked fine....but would ofcourse, signal drop on occassion
and it's all new to me because i never used Wi-Fi before.....proper.
So yes, a friend online was saying have staunch resolve and get things solved...but
my experience says, this situation is a lot of hasstle for me right now.
I can't figure it down to either hardware, USB, driver issues, the OS and conflicts...
also throw in signal strenghs all over the shop....and also weather...
A right cooking pot of a mess there....and i feel the effort looming could not yeild much
change....it's still going to be unreliable...
The laptop was working pretty fine and nothing gremlins related appears to be the issue
and it has not been miss-used on the web....etc....(there are no indications of virus etc)
It's looks like a melting pot of unreliability and old gear...mixed with a not all-together smart
operator...that's me...
with the laptop still working for word wide web over cell handset....although this isn't
a nice dsl wi-fi signal.....it's usable...and i am Loathed to have to start rebuilding machines
and software stacks....to find degrees of un-reliablilty at the end of that effort.
sorry to go on....
ridiculous when a kid could probably settle it in no time.....but for me it's a gutt ache.
it seems wiser to me to leave the laptop...with this limited working word wide web...until
wired internet falls my way late next week....hopefully again...
thanks
V
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lol ok well maybe you need to upgrade the USB wifi device, wifi devices and routers have made great progress recently
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hell coreplayer2
THankyou, yes that is what most people would do (right)
Uh....it has worked perfect for reasonable lenghs of time. It's just a real
agrivation now...you know.
my instinct tells me stuff, but it's nothing educated. (like i say, a kid could probably solve it)
Well the WI-FI dongles are so innexpensive...indeed this would make sense coreplayer2.
use another piece of kit. THat's less risk and perfectly reasonable proposition.
This is the laptop right now ...you see....Connected and operating on the world wide web.
really thanks,
Vince.
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Yes.
Thankyou
Vince.
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Yes.
it got me can of worms....thinking. That's typical for me.
1) Planned obsellesence? (are wi fi stacks and FW updateable over air?) The regs say the telco can change soft/w anytime it likes.
2) Tried the registry make over. Though it did not help re-installs of the wi fi dongle.
just unkowns again......anyway, thanks again
Vince.
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Hello,
Oh my
just how unreliable do you find WI FI?....
it seems like a pot luck thing.....i mean could you even manage any computing interactions
over connections like this?
hmmm
V
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Hello,
The wi fi story continues here.
COmpletely flattened the laptop machine. Striped the drive. It reported an error at block Zero.
Completely striped the hard drive again "killdisk", this time it was a success.
Completely re-installed win32.
Installed the WI IF usb dongle. (8 seconds)
INstalled word wide web browser and are on the word wide web now as you see.
Wi FI worked perfectly.....
This clearly prooves that my initial gutt ache had been a deep problem inside win32 and nothing
to do with WI FI hardware. (was correct)
This takes a couple of hours to proove out. ONly annoying thing is all the lost data
from the hard drive.
Now i been using WI FI quite some while and signal can go from 54 meg bit down to maybe 11
that's 54 36 24, 11.....and that's a solid signal.
Why post this?
WEll in truth i wanted to give you a heads up and " no brainer" comment about Tinycore.
Yes it's for wired internet connections is Tcl. But is it just Core PLus...(infact a different OS) that can do TCL with wi fi......kind of a larger step
If the tcl WI FI extension was just real easy, (for example, my telco on win32 is one click to install a wi fi dongle using one extension file. it Buzzes away yellow and your connected to the world wide web in approx 8 seconds.
Is it the case that tinycore could offer to email an Extension?....so that even a nomad city dweller
with just a cell phone could get hold of this and apply it to his THumb drive...and boot TCL to the
word wide web.
Just an idea.
It is just an idea. Most people are happy with the WWW their smartphone right....
One good thing came out of all the above. I get A really nicely re-worked SLEEK laptop here and
it's in perfect condition and doing what i want it to do
1) CD quality 5 million track web juke box free
2) STreaming hollywood movies...fullscreen
3) GOogle maps
4) Youtube
5) Adult fun 9ha ha
6) THousands of live online Radio stations
7) 60 live UK tv channels (TVcatchup)
etc etc
The laptop was free.....too
so all in all...something worked out
Thanks
v
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Hello
May not have mentioned in this WI FI thread, but i was using a "hole" in my telco
which gave free DSL wi fi at 54 megbit. This is kind of fate and luck because it still
works in my new apartment also.
THe Telco is British Telecom UK and the hole is pointed through using Chromium browser
and a special free plug-in extension from the store. The telco have not discovered this hole
in over 7 months now.
It will perhaps not work globally , depends upon the telco although it will work on all
global British Telecom wi fi zones....which is 12.5 million , of which 6 milllion are outside
the UK.
i realize that for a mamoth corporation they are not concerned about such things.
I calculated that for just the UK, the hole may have lost them maybe 1 .5 million dollars
so far. The fact they still have not discovered this , well?...could i inform them and get
a free clap on the back?
I don't think anybody is much bothered, but i share , so if you need a free DSL
broadband signal in the UK, and you smell British Telecom wi fi signals at your home.... let me know. In return , you could pay it forward sometime to other friends.
Vin
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Hello
Well, if you see the OP here, there were computer malfunctioning symptoms manifest in software at
desktop level not working right.
A complete overhaul of the HDD and OS seemed to solve this issue.
After a couple of weeks usage, which is about as much as win32 can take, well here we are again, the hard drive will just suddenly lock into read loop. Light solid.
This is exactly what happened a while back, maybe a month and it first manifest in badly executing
desktop apps and software. It seemed to tolerate it's own demise....win32...for a few weeks
with bad software Initializing of apps and what have you. AGain, you would still sometimes after long usage see the hard drive lock into write mode.
eventually the comuter became hasstle and really not usable or reliable and that is when i did
the overhaul mentioned above which seemed to solve it.
1) I stripped the hard drive. (On the first attempt it indeed reported a hard drive error at Sector Block zero)
2) started completely again and from power up stripped the whole HDD again. THis time it was successful and these were both single ONE PASS attempts....just writting Ones.
SO THAT WAS A SUCCESS
3) the OS went back on with just ONE non read file, it correctly read that file on the second attempt
after pressing enter.
4) The win32 computer worked fine, like i say above, for maybe 3 plus weeks.
So now here we are, again , after prolonged 14 hour usage yesterday i actually "realtime" saw the fault take place and as i was watching NYC live on earthcam the hard drive went into a read loop.
http://earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/#?cam=tsrobo3
I believe that this hard drive has a fault, but i am more sceptical than that because it;s my nature
and i am wondering if this compaq motherboard was a recall ?....way back in the 2000's (all these machines) as they may have had some issue with certain brands of hard drives. It has a HITACHI
inside it.
The machine is currently working again now, exactly as before , as if perfect, until the next time a
crossover point is reached of either temperature?....caching hard drive reads?...or an intermittent
hard drive heads/sectors problem.
Point in note, the OS has hardly ANY software even installed on it....completely blank Fresh OS
and the perifpherals are all installed correctly with correct win32 drivers.
All these thread details about WI FI is a kind of stick in the mud, distraction from what was really causing the issue, a deep problem inside win32 or the hard-drive hardware is failing....well the former is NOT the case, because win32 is FRESH on this next overhaul i did. So it' all points to a hard-drive problem.
THe tool i used on the hard-drive is military grade. It DID say that the drive has an error.(Bad sector) It could be compounded further by intermittent long term usage Temperature issues on the laptop. 0___0
Guys at TCL.....it looks like the real safety net of Tinycore is going to come into play again for me
here as a solid usable OS on dinasour hardware.....and i thank you for the product indeed.
Vin.
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If Windows has problems reading or writing to a drive for a specific amount of times, it switches from DMA to PIO and stays there (For this drive only; Check via Device Manager). Totally useless for CDs, happened a few times to me. I'm sure the same thing happens to HDDs, too.
Have you scandisk'ed the drive?
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It happenes to HDD's too, at least in XP/VISTA.
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Hello members,
thankyou for your replies.
It's exactly that (second to last reply)....windows decides it can't read OR write (how it likes ) to the hard drive and it goes into a stuck read loop (light on)
No guys, i can't compound this issue further, just not smart enough me,
but the error message blue screen of win32 says...."shadowing" and caching could be an issue
disable shadowing systems etc... (i use a shadow tool called "time freeze" free)
THe HDD also has the Check mark...to improve performance by caching up better....its an option
in win32 desktop options...
imagine the laptop has been on a very very long time. It reaches a point in the Shadow "snapshot" virtual session file it's creating. (via Time freeze) and all the blocks are used up...so to speak....it gets unhappy win32.....and a blue screen....complete shutdown. (windows detected an error)
who knows?....
but , you know, in my microcosm world....nothing eeks me more than (a what if) computer.... 0___0
i will have to make do.... Tinycore will certainly, (and has) worked fine on this laptop so its so so
thankyou for your replies. (you seem to be saying, win32 will just get unhappy with external peripherals HDD etc...it's intrinsicily the OS's demise)
forgot to say...the laptop is again, working perfectly right now, several hours (win32). Exactly as was........... a mirrored operation
Vin
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Yeah Thanks,
did do the usual things....scandisk etc and they show up faultless.
It's somekind of win32 to HDD issue......it's possible chip creep over many years
of sustained prolonged usage. 13 years
Vin
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Hello,
THis same problem manifest again here. very recently...
Again, this is after very prolonged usage....maybe over 15 hours and it does exactly the same
thing and locks into a hard drive read loop. Basically, the fault shows up about every 1 percent of usage time and persists for about an hour.
The Laptop, otherwise has performed perfect for a fortnight of heavy usage....and also the 13 prevoius years.
THis error, it hangs around.....maybe say a while, a couple of boots.....and it seems that after
the machine is left and temperatures cool....it works fine again.
I am certain it's an intermittent hardware fault now and somekind of chip creep error...after 13 years of heavy usage...electronic equipment can develop traits in it's performance.
The Hitachi hard drive (incompatability issues is a remote possibility). ALso this machine will perform slightly intermittently on Tinycore......graphics will lock and black screens....then maybe a day or so later.....the exact same approach with loading extensions will work fine....
it could be chip creep....over 13 years of excessive usage of this laptop. Leaves intermittent faults.
i am not happy at a machine that wont be rock solid on some OS....will further test Tinycore and
maybe try Slitaz.
It would not be so bad it it was fixable software fault.....but it's looking to me like a hardware issue which persists...
O___0
Vince.
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interesting.
Gparted tool won't do anything with this hard drive. It instantly reports an error.....say if you try to re-size the partition that is on there. NTFS win32 partition (only thing on the drive and fresh)
so why won't gparted do anything with this hard drive...?
the stripping military grade tool i used earlier DID report that this drive had an error and block zero
and interestingly gparted "hicups" almost the instant it starts trying to perform an operation like say re-sizing the partition
This is strange.
I think there could literally be some-kind of compatabliity error with certain hard drives and this
motherboard....and it could have been a compaq laptop re-call way back in the 2000's
Hitachi hard drive
why do i think this?
well the hard drive works perfectly on win32 and linux....for prolonged periods of time...months
really....and only has a slight error as mentioned above in a microscopic amounts of that running time..... and the error goes away after an hour or so...or when temps have dropped and reboots issued.
strange indeed.
faulty hard drive?....or somekind of re-call laptop thing on HDD compatability?
Still, this does me no favors....i can't put a 1 gig SWAP file onto this hard drive for TCL.....gparted does not like the drive
next may even try unetbootin...to put TCL onto the actual machine
You see, TCL performance is very poor on a USB 2.0 swap....
Vince.
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Did you try to use ntfsprogs directly, rather than via gparted?
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Hi cast-fish
Prior to resizing you should have Windows de-frag the drive a couple of times. Also, the drive can not be mounted when resizing.
the stripping military grade tool i used earlier DID report that this drive had an error and block zero ...
Are you are referring to a track 0 error, or maybe no free blocks available for remapping?
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Hello,
THanks for the replies.
Juanto.....nope. I have used Gparted years and it's very rare to refuse to do something to a HDD.
THe HDD Is fresh....fresh OS too.
Rich, the drive was not mounted. The drive was not defragged...did not need it .....win32 reported.
The military grade tool which reported "Block Zero error "sector" zero etc....nothjng about tracks.
(but completely re-running that military grade tool a second time from a cold boot reported NO problems ....and succeeded.....mentioned earlier)
You see, electronic equipment gets a thing called "chip creep" after long periods of time. Many industrial situations never ever switch off hardware, during it's entire lifecycle for this reason.
Gparted don't like the HDD....points to a faulty HDD. The other tool also reported a fault on this hard drive. It's actually the Hard drive that manifests the fault mentioned above....not other parts of the machine like screen, or keyboard signals or bios's unhappy
therefor
Vince
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Hi cast-fish
he military grade tool which reported "Block Zero error "sector" zero etc....nothjng about tracks.
Sounds like the MBR might be failing. Partition size is stored there.
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Hello Rich and members, readers,
Uh , Rich....look what i googled
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HP has announced it will recall memory modules in up to 900,000 laptops manufactured between March 2002 and July 2003. Lockups and bluescreens can occur due to faulty interaction between various manufacturer DRAM modules and Intel chipsets. HP’s replacement program will allow a customer to receive a small kit containing a screwdriver and new memory modules to replace the faulty memory.
The following HP notebooks are covered by this recall:
* Compaq Evo N610c, N610v, N620c, N800c, N800v, N800w, N1000c, N1000v
* Compaq Presario 1500, 2800, x1000 and x1200
* Compaq nx7000
* HP Pavilion zt3000
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it is an n800v here. And the years are those
Vince.
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http://www.notebookreview.com/news/recall-hp-notebook-recall-on-memory-modules/
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the figures are interesting
basically 1 million laptops....... at 2340 dollars each. RR list Price in 2002
is 2.34 billion dollars.
but as it is the "memory modules" those averaged about 200 dollars then maybe 250
so 1 million multiplied by 250 is
a quarter of a billion dollars........ (1/4 of ONE billion dollars)
Vince.
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yeah also Rich
thanks for the advice on de-fragging the drive , before trying gparted resizing.
Did the de-frag and indeed, gparted worked. The drive how has a Linux swap.
Thanks for that.
Vin
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yes.
It is Samnsung memory in this laptop also. Are they not the best? Still, it is listed as defective
if Samsung and in one of these 2002 n800v machines. (will cause fatal blue screens and lockouts
which is exactly what happens)
Found that removing the ram card , 30 secs then replacing it. Booting into an OS then plugging
in the hard drive solves the issue, once again.
The machine does not like the RAM mixed with the hard-drive and MB.....if you remove the hard
drive, tinycore works no matter what. But introduce the hard drive, and even TCL won't boot
nevermind win32. This performance all stops if the conflict resolves itself as mentioned in the
first paragraph and the laptop works fine , for possibly very long periods of time. Weeks.
So there is not all lost here....at all. Makes you wonder how a mutli billibn HP empire can't
test 2 peripherals plugged into a device before selling a million of the devices. They only had
6 types of RAM to try in 6 laptops. The problem appears to be the RAM was manufactured wrong
possible due to a wrong specification qouted to the taiwanese ram factory commissioned to
produce HP's ram modules.
Yes
Vince.
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Sounds like a weak power supply or dried out capacitors on the motherboard.
Sometimes old junk just needs to be recycled.
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Gerald,
You think so?
THe power brick is ever so slightly overpowered or under (not sure which).
but it would not explain how it works fine for long periods then duf. Randomly as if
like connected with RANDOM access memory.
The symptons are exactly as the manufacturers defect describes.....blue screens and locks ups
is exactly what happens here.
its certainly possible to sort it out though. Which seems to me to be indeed, as if, the peripherals
are re-calibrating with the mb and nulling out some specific bottleneck over reboot. Which indeed points to me to be a hardware interaction problem..... as the manufacturers defect describes.
V
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Hello,
Well i can quite confidently say that this laptop "intermittent fault" appears to have stopped now.
This seems to have been down to a re-configuration of the Hardware peripheral connection order by me in an unconventional manner while the Laptop was powered on.
1) THe hard disc was re- connected in an unconventional way "while" the laptop was powered on
and running TCL.....and this may have nulled out a software lower than firmware. It could be connected with the initialization from the MB to the peripherals and upscaled from there from Factory originals.
It could have been some eprom initialization issue due to the order in which hardware peripherals
were connected to the mainboard.
Will have to continue happily with this happy conclusion.
Vince.
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oh dear...
same symptom again....it corrected itself almost instantly after some rebooting and power removals.
it is some intermittent temperature issue manifest without warning....but is completely correctable.
it's even possible it could be stuck keys.
Anyway, the tinycore will always work even "as is" .....if the fault
does insist on re-appearing .... (remove the HDD )
It leaves a usable working laptop there.
End thread.
V
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Hello
incredulous that nobody even flinches on that "recall" story and fact about a quarter of a billion dollars worth of hardware...
This is a computing forum, where i would have expected some real quality information
regarding that.
why..?....well if a well known brand "recalled" items even way back THEN....and the extreme low
quality of products of this nature today.....it would have been impossible to not
throw your 2 cents of experience in.
It's just odd, because it's a very serious point in the post and i wondered just how often
does this kind of thing happen in todays world with maybe 100 hardware vendors?
sorry to repost....but is this just a fact that i should have more experience and knowledge?
thankyou
Vince.
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The lack of response could be because the recall notice is over 10 years old, and the links in the recall notice are (long?) dead.
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Hello,
So then, things have just moved on oceans and oceans right.
it is my inexperience, but then one wonders who pays for the recall?
its a complicated life and year on year giants like SONY are oceans in financial
trouble and it seems that misstakes are systemic over several decades...
I am not just trying to annoy or disagree (previous poster)
I know microelectronics is a massive industry but there are enormous jumps
when you go into Defense and the Arms Race.....huge gaps in financial amounts
and the total nine yards of product quality and insurance etc. Military contracts
are many many billions of dollars in microelectronics research and dev.
i have accepted that nobody has imgined the numbers here. I am dyslexic
somewhat so it's how i view things like the above as anomalies. (excuse my spelling).
The technology industry has life-cycles right.
thankyou
Vince.
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I think it is more likely that the lack of response is due to the fact that this is a tinycore linux forum, and the whole tirade is , well . . . off topic.
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Hello,
You think so?
I was thinking that every forum member would see the off topic stuff just the same as
any other thread.
Nobody is bothered perhaps.
maybe i should recall the thread..... ::)
Vince
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You can sort the topics in the forum display by number of replies or number of views if you're curious.
Sorting by number of replies, I see that about 20% of topics in "Off-Topic - Tiny Core Lounge" have no replies and over 30% have zero or one replies.
This topic, with 34 (now 35) replies has the 9th (now in a three-way tie for 7th) highest number of replies. :)
Sorting the same list by number of views: only 6 threads have less then 100 views and only about half (47%) have less than 1000 views with this thread coming in at 844.
Every forum member -can- see the off topic stuff but I suppose some will save time by using the "mark read" button on those forums that are not of immediate interest to them.
Personally, I like to at least glance at every new post, since interesting ones will occasionally pop up in a seemingly inappropriate forum or with a seemingly irrelevant subject line... in much the same way that this post doesn't have a lot to do with wi-fi. :)
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Lee,
THat is a hearty reply and these forum software stacks CMS are getting more advanced.
Really, like you say it was just as you describe.
SO you did a bubble sort or something Lee. Statistical. THat is what is often used
for programming job interviews. Such things like that.
I can infact do all of that stuff and also counter's and searching lists and graphical
gui programming.
again, drifting off topic....even if there was any topic in the first place.
if anybody is interested i found an interesting programming language that forum people may life called "supernova".
I gather from your reply Lee, that you have may at least actually been reading this thread
from it's outset.
anyhow, i did an auto end thread earlier. I am capable at deploying all this kind of stuff
we see here like simple machines forums and other C panel things like email.
In terms of Tinycore, it just works fine on this laptop and that makes me happy. Some stuff
took a little while like xorg. Coughs and splutters but it's usable.
sorry i was daydreaming then....
Well i mainly use web apps now with this laptop. And that is just fine as there are so
many. Tinycore will do fine with the "surf" browser.
Lee, i use K-meleon web browser on win32 and with it's extra speed plug ins at their home
page, it is absolutely fine on heavy heavy web browsing with 6 plus tabs and 256 ram.
(it's a very fast web browser) (ver 1.7 alpha 2)
thanks
Vince.
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THis hard drive on this "laptop issue" has finally failed....
and indeed the bios intelligent software "did" report that the drive was imiment for failure
just before it actually did fail. Now the drive can't be seen by any wiping tools...or by any machine
or in any manner.....(it just has a permanent solid green light....and won't show up via any USB adapter or anything at all on any machine...)
Stick a different drive into this laptop...... and it works fine.
so even with the recall story, i did comment very early on that it may be a failing hard drive
and Rich said it looked like a failing mbr. The drive was 12 years old so. (hitachi).....but i still feel also that the laptop MB may have some kind of issue with certain brands of hard drive....
Vince
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Please, blogging is not allowed.