Tiny Core Linux
Off-Topic => Off-Topic - Tiny Core Lounge => Topic started by: thane on November 28, 2009, 11:23:09 PM
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Brainstorming. Thinking about building a computer "from scratch" for running tiny core. Based on something roberts said, maybe just with USB stick(s) for booting and storage (no hard disk, no CD or DVD drives).
Alternatively, just getting a hold of a box (hopefully free) that can boot off USB and going from there.
Dumb idea? Worth trying out? Anybody done anything similar?
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Not a dumb idea at all. I've been thinking the same thing. I'd like to have something really small with passive cooling. More desk space and complete silence.
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I prefer to use hard drives.
USB drives have a limited life, maybe several years.
It is not the cost of the USB drive that is of concern. It is the fact that when it fails, you lose all of your personal files.
I know others have different opinions.
I have actually been running Tiny Core, and previously other Linux distros, on computers which did not cost me anything for several years. Computers which other people discarded because they are a little slow to run Windows XP. Thousands are being thrown away every year. These computers have hard drives. Some have been working, others have needed to be repaired.
For example, one of the better free computers is 800 mHz with a 40 gb hard drive. This one had a power supply not working. I replaced this with a power supply from another free computer.
It came with 256 mb of ram. I added another 512 from another computer in which the motherboard failed.
Thousands of computers like this are being thrown out every year. It may be difficult for most people to get hold of them.
Some people are selling used computers like this at excessively high prices to people who don't understand.
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I inserted a motherboard in a wooden box built by me. I put on it only cpu and ram (4 gb).
I use a flash memory but if you want you can also use a usb hd or SATA/e-sata.
For ide hd i reccomend you a converter like this for example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-TO-IDE-SATA-S-SATA-Converter-CABLE-Adaptor-w-POWER_W0QQitemZ180402670408QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2a00d64b48
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Currently I have an old Compaq Deskpro EN with 512M of memory. I boot off read-only CD (USB boot not supported) and save to a USB stick. Still has Windows 2000 on the hard drive which I haven't bothered to reformat. Basically just using the box as a web surfer and media player.
Even now I don't use a swap file, but a gig or 2 of memory would be nice. I have a couple of CDs, one with the basic current version of TCL and the other customized slightly (e.g. with waitusb=5 coded in isolinux.cfg). Also a few USB sticks with different sets of extensions. I'm sure there's a way to duplicate all this with hard disk partitioning or something but it just seems handier to plug in whatever I want and go. At the rate TCL is changing I'm usually burning new CDs every month, which I have to do on my wife's Windows PC or at work. Hence my interest in an all-USB setup.
None if this requires a built-from-scratch box of course, but it might be fun to try sometime...
Not sure USB's write limitations are really an issue. Even if there were 10 writes/day to a 10,000 write USB stick that's still 3 years of usage. Plenty of time to backup!
vinnie, I admire your creativity.
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USB write limitations are of concern if you are a storing browser cache items on it. With browsing there are many many writes going on all the time. I don't have any figures but obviously it is orders of magnitude higher than 10 writes/day.
But TCL can cater for this by not having a persistent home directory - you back up only a few times per day perhaps, and that would hopefully exclude the browser cache.
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@thane: thanks, honestlythe box is more like a box for hamsters ;D
@jus: yes, and then with sufficient space in ram the you can unmount the flash drive :)
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The big limitation with USB drives on my older computers is...
The USB ports are all on the -back- of the boxes.
In my basement computer area ("the NOC", as I call it) I can get to the back or front of my museum pieces - a stack of three Compaq Deskpro EN - but not both the front and back. I have physically unplugged the floppy and CDROM drives in them since those are never used, so now the only thing I needed the front of the machine for was to reach the power switch. A few feet of bell wire, a momentary-on micro switch, some glue and I now have an auxiliary power switch on the back of each unit.
@ thane - if you haven't already done so, its time to put a new battery in that Compaq. Radio Shack stocks them.
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The big limitation with USB drives on my older computers is...
The USB ports are all on the -back- of the boxes.
What is about a simple USB extension cable?
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What is about a simple USB extension cable?
A solution less stable/artigianal?
Another cute solution could be similar to this: http://www.pcusacorp.com/product/CR-IN212XIO-1.html but it is less economic.
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Thanks, Lee, I'll take care of that. Haven't done a thing to it since I rescued it from a dumpster years ago and finally hooked it up in March...
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Wellll... ;) I didn't happen to have a handful of USB extension cables laying around - and I need to get to the back of these boxes occasionally anyhow.
I like the idea of that thingy that fits in the floppy bay - but for my more modern workstation, not these antiques.
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;)
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Currently I have an old Compaq Deskpro EN with 512M of memory. I boot off read-only CD (USB boot not supported) and save to a USB stick. Still has Windows 2000 on the hard drive which I haven't bothered to reformat. Basically just using the box as a web surfer and media player.
Another consideration is that these older machines like Deskpro EN have USB 1.1, therefore extremely slow. So even if it was bootable from USB, it would be practically useless. Booting from TC from CD is the best way therefore...
Another purpose of these older machines would be to use them as NAS servers. Just stick a FreeNAS CD and the machine runs headless, no monitor, keyboard or mouse. Just need to put in some old disk drives and you have RAID, etc...
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http://cgi.ebay.com/Stratitec-5-Port-USB-2-0-PCI-Card-ICUSB25_W0QQitemZ110464864004QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item19b8380f04
Ok, economy is good but we don't are too thrifty ;D
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You can use an SD card also with an IDE adapter.
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Ok, economy is good but we don't are too thrifty
OK, that' less than the cost of the new CMOS backup battery! Now if only we could fool the system into booting from it.
And yes, the NAS bit is in the works for me. I have the drives installed already. Currently booting from hard disks.
Is there any reason that grub, installed on the hard disk, couldn't pull the boot files from a USB stick? Something like ... root (hd2,0) ... (there are two physical HDs, so the USB stick would be (hd2).
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The best NAS I know is the well known FreeNAS, free BSD based runs off CD, USB or HD. I used an old computer box (Started with PII based), put CD in and configured RAID1 with two drives in the box. Works like a charm. Network access, no monitor, keyboard or mouse. Just push the power button - On and Off at will. Sounds tell you when ready On and when turning off.. Fantastic system stability and security. Supports RAID5 but I have just 2 drives inside, so RAID1...
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I have an old Intel Mini-ITX motherboard with 1 GB of ram running TC 2.6. It ran 2.5 until 2.6 came out. It is a very low wattage board without any fans. I run it entirely from ram, it doesn't have a hard drive or USB flash. Once TC loads from an external CD/DVD drive, it is going. It is my quick and go computer in the bedroom. I never turn it off. whenever I want to use it, I just wake it up with the mouse or keyboard. The LCD monitor comes out of sleep mode and I'm ready to go in a few seconds. It is the perfect web and Open Office appliance, extremely fast and never skips a beat.
I will post more details next week. I have finals and project due for grad school this week.
Jeff
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Is there any reason that grub, installed on the hard disk, couldn't pull the boot files from a USB stick? Something like ... root (hd2,0) ... (there are two physical HDs, so the USB stick would be (hd2).
Yes, unfortunately; it would still need USB support to do so. Grub 2 supports that I believe.
You can use an SD card also with an IDE adapter.
Another good card type is CF. It is an IDE drive inside, so the adapters to plug those are simpler than the SD ones, less likely to break I think.
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Is there any reason that grub, installed on the hard disk, couldn't pull the boot files from a USB stick? Something like ... root (hd2,0) ... (there are two physical HDs, so the USB stick would be (hd2).
Yes I do this at work (when they're not looking). I renamed the grub loader file from grldr to ntldr and now my WinXP boots into the grub menu without me having had to touch the MBR. In the grub menu, I use
Root (hd1,0)
kernel boot/bzImage.............
initrd boot/tinycore
to point to the usb stick and it smoothly boots into tc.
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Hm, grub4dos might support it too, it seems to be what jur uses.
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It happened to me once dual booting xp with grub4dos , M$'s "automatic update" restored its ntldr back. Please disable M$'s automatic update if using grldr.
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Is there any reason that grub, installed on the hard disk, couldn't pull the boot files from a USB stick? Something like ... root (hd2,0) ... (there are two physical HDs, so the USB stick would be (hd2).
Yes I do this at work (when they're not looking). I renamed the grub loader file from grldr to ntldr and now my WinXP boots into the grub menu without me having had to touch the MBR. In the grub menu, I use
Root (hd1,0)
kernel boot/bzImage.............
initrd boot/tinycore
to point to the usb stick and it smoothly boots into tc.
Yeah... no luck for me using the grub from the tc repo. My old Compaq apparently doesn't recognize the USB stick as a "disk" until after the OS comes up.
Speaking of USB sticks 'n'at, i picked up a handful of USB extension cables (type A male ==> Type A female) for $2.50 each... Radio shack wanted $30.00 for the equivalent! (and no one else around seems to carry such a thing)! That doesn't solve all of my space/logistical issues, but its a huge convenience boost.
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I'm using grub4dos and my machines are not old.
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I run Tiny Core on 3 partitions. One for this version, one for the next version, and one for experimenting. Sometimes while experimenting, something has not worked. I can boot from another partition and fix the problem. I have always had a working version on one of the partitions.
3 partitions are not necessary for most people, but 2 would be handy for many people. Tiny Core does not take up a lot of space, so you don't need huge partitions.
I have mentioned before, I use computers that other people discard. Why spend money when you can get them free?
About 4 or 5 years ago, I picked up a 667 mhz computer with 512 mb of ram, and used that for the internet.
I tried other computers for a while, including an 800 mhz computer (which I replaced the power supply from another free computer), and a 1.5 ghz computer with 256 mb of ram. The ram is a very unusual type, so I couldn't increase it.
I recently picked up a 1.6 ghz computer with normal ram slots. This had the ram, hard drive and dvd drive removed. I put in 1 gb of ram. This performed well browsing the internet.
I then picked up a 1 gb ram sim, discarded in a computer which was not working. I sometimes get parts from computers which are not working, such as ram, hard drives, dvd writers, etc. I have recently picked up 80 gb and 60 gb hard drives from computers which were not working.
For a while I ran 1.5 gb of ram in the 1.6 ghz computer.
Since then I picked up a 2.4 ghz computer, which was discarded complete and working, with 512 mb of ram, a 40 gb hard drive, 2 dvd drives - a dvd reader and dvd writer. This was running slow, as it needed Windows reinstalling (it is sad that some people don't know reinstalling Windows will fix it, so they throw the computer away). I put in the 1.5 gb of ram, the 80 gb hard drive for Tiny Core and maybe other distros, and the 60 gb hard drive for backup.
I have sometimes given computers to people who are not so well off. Computers are becoming so inexpensive now, that even some of these people may not want older computers.
As computers become less expensive, higher performance computers are being discarded.
Anyone living in affluent countries, thousands of used computers are being discarded in your community each year. It is just a matter of how you can get hold of them.
Be aware, some people are selling old slow computers for almost the same prices as new computers. Don't pay those prices for them.
If you don't know how to replace a hard drive or ram, using free computers is a good place to learn. If it didn't cost you anything, it won't matter if you break it.
In poor countries the opportunities are not the same.
I should mention, I have bought computers. I have a notebook I bought for portability. I bought a computer which I set up for television. The best television system these days it a computer with a tv tuner. You can get a video card that will output to tv. You can record to hard drive. Most things you delete after watching them. Anything good, you can save to dvd (or blue ray).
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It is not necessary to have separate partitions.
I use separate boot directories, such as
/boot/tc24
/boot/tc26
/boot/tc27
you can also specify different tce directories in grub
tce=hda1/tce27
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After careful review of my hardware skills, bank account, etc. I think I'm better off following Guy's example and trying to find a cheap/free computer somebody else doesn't want.
On the web it looks like my current Compaq Deskpro EN was known for clunky video even when it was new. Subsequent HP/Compaq models seem to have similar drawbacks. Anyone had any experience with TCL on Dells? I'm leaning toward one of the Optiplex type. Maybe don't need a huge memory (512M has worked OK with the small number of apps I use, can always add more) but Pentium 4, USB 2.0, and better video ought to speed things up a bit, right?
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After careful review of my hardware skills, bank account, etc. I think I'm better off following Guy's example and trying to find a cheap/free computer somebody else doesn't want.
On the web it looks like my current Compaq Deskpro EN was known for clunky video even when it was new. Subsequent HP/Compaq models seem to have similar drawbacks. Anyone had any experience with TCL on Dells? I'm leaning toward one of the Optiplex type. Maybe don't need a huge memory (512M has worked OK with the small number of apps I use, can always add more) but Pentium 4, USB 2.0, and better video ought to speed things up a bit, right?
Have you considered purchasing something like this?
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/
Not sure what your budget is, or how much effort it would take to support the hardware (I think it's generic enough that the only scenario that might cause problems is wifi), but as far as I'm concerned, they're reasonably well priced, and you can tape it to the back of your monitor to free up floor/desk space! :P
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Lots of good stuff for less cost from NorhTec (http://www.norhtec.com/products/index.html), too, although I've not tried any of them.
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Thane,
I have tried TC (don't remember what version) on a couple of Dell Dimensions (Dimensia?), the 4600 model, and the video didn't look right - colors way off.
Doesn't work right on a Poweredge 2200 server, either.
Works fine on a Dimension 4700.
Works fine on Poweredge SC440.
Microcore (with X & JWM) runs on Precision T1500 but needs waitusb > 5.
I may have an old Optiplex floating around my basement that I could plug in and test (or I may have stripped and pitched the last of them).
Lee
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Thanks for the replies.
My immediate budget situation isn't dire, but (besides the financial uncertainties a lot of people are facing) I'm probably going to have to replace the Windows XP PC my wife uses (Dell Dimension!) with a straight retail Windows 7 box (I don't have much hope of converting her to anything else). So my TCL hobby is definitely lower priority.
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Lee: most likely due to intel igp, or similar. If interested, there are various fixes/workarounds in these forums.
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Both the fitpc2's have the Poulsbo graphics, so not recommended. Norhtec's Sis cpus sometimes have issues, and they (as the Atom) would not be an upgrade compared to a P3 in speed.
Via's stuff is nice, if not a little expensive. Nano would be an upgrade, the others not.
A recent AMD box on the cheap might be the best new choice, costing about the same as an atom nettop but with loads more speed and extensibility.
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Lee: most likely due to intel igp, or similar. If interested, there are various fixes/workarounds in these forums.
Thanks Hats. Turns out the 2200 was so old even I didn't want it (now -that's- old!) and I haven't inherited the 4600's (yet).
I still haven't rummaged around for an Optiplex. I inherited some of those from work a year or two (or three) ago but didn't keep most of them intact as they were the same basic vintage as my Compaqs (which I already knew were reliable) so most of the Optiplexes got cannibalized and the carcasses recycled. I seem to recall one or two Optiplexes coming along much later than the rest though... I think this is why my wife refers to my toys as "that junk".
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Unfortunate about Dells Lee, since I too may be able to inherit one at some point. They also seem to be one of the most common "refurbished" types available. No big rush though; like yours my Compaq has been reliable running TCL (far less hassle so far than the Dell running Windows!), just a bit slow.
Thanks curaga for the AMD tip. I hadn't really thought much about that type but will look into it.
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If you get bad colors from video, try dropping down to
800x600 to get a full palette, on an older machine.
It takes some experimentation to find the vga=xxx
parameter that works best on a given machine.
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A little OT, but I just found out my Tiny Core setup has survived some powerbutton playing by my 1-year-old grandnephew. I don't recommend trying this but it's nice to have such a robust distro. Thanks Tiny Core!
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Well, looks like the hard disk went -- tried to boot TC today and it would hang before it loaded extensions. After a bit of fiddling found out the hard drive was timing out. Since I don't have TC installed on the hard drive (it always sounded flaky), disabled the IDE (or something) and now TC boots. Occasionally a shot in the dark hits the target, I guess.
edit: Well, I thought it was OK, but it sounds like the hard disk is still being accessed (no light though). Guess I'll have to disconnect it completely...
OK, disconnected the hard drive and re-enabled the IDE (or whatever); seems to work.
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<bump>
Well, I bit the bullet and got hit by a bullet. Bought an AMD box with 2g memory and no hard disk. It's a barebones but I paid for the assembly.
Anyway, it boots TCL off the CD and the appbrowser works. However, it not only failed to recognize my usb stick but apparently fried it. After I shutdown I removed the stick and it was very warm to the touch. My old Compaq box couldn't read it (although it did successfully read another usb stick with a tce directory on it).
Guess I'll have to crack the case and see whats wrong in there (it's an InWin V564 Micro ATX). There are clips on it but popping them loose doesn't seem to do anything. Will start taking out screws unless somebody's got a better idea. At least they sent along an assembly manual. Sigh.
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Fried usb ports are the most common hardware fault for warranty repairs.
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I wonder if it's worth bagging the warranty and getting it fixed locally if possible. $50 - 60 shipping each way between here (Hawaii) and Nevada, besides the hassle. So what's involved? I was sort of hoping it might be a miswire or jumper setting problem. But if parts are fried....
edit: don't know if it's relevant, but the usb stick was initialized by a usb 1.0 box and the new box is usb 2.0. Stick was fairly new though (~ 1 year).
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Usually if a port burns, it only takes itself, or in worse cases the same hub. Other ports/hubs should still work (ports at the back if this was at front, for example).
Luckily there isn't a jumper for overvolting usb; the cable could have been plugged in a wrong spot/way though (if these were the front ports).
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The front usb ports don't seem to work at all -- the rear ones fry my sticks. I got the manual and I know a couple people who've assembled boxes from scratch so I'll see what I can do. This is starting to look like one of those painful lesson things though...
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Looks like no way to fix (rear usb ports are connected directly to motherboard).
Time to send it back.
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If you get bad colors from video, try dropping down to
800x600 to get a full palette, on an older machine.
It takes some experimentation to find the vga=xxx
parameter that works best on a given machine.
See: http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Display+Modes
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Well, what the hell. Now the damn thing works. When I booted it again after my friends opened the case, got the BIOS banner (which it didn't show before) and was able to access the USB ports without frying. Now booting off USB, way faster than the old box. Video is faster too. Wonder if there could have been a short or something?