(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi group,

Rember the old DOS bios limitations? OnTrack was a BOOT sector driver to allow larger hard drives

Have used 2.14 and now updated to 3.01 retro -- Both worked great on my multitude of old hardware, except for finding or allowing the OnTrack equipped drives. Am i overlooking some command? Or is there a method to access these drives via Puppy?

As an aside, big thanks to every one that has made this an easy to use distro, you all deserve a round of applause. I’m a supporter, but consider myself a newbie and am trying to convert my family, but have to go back and forth between operating systems, because of custom programs. (Mathcad – Print Shop – NET Frame tuner /cameras)
One of the biggest probs we have is figuring how to move through the disk structures. PMount was a nice step forward. However, all the puppy programs want to save in places where we can’t access from Win98se system. BTW have just installed XP into a fat 16 environment, so the drive can be shared ;).

as far as mathcad... look up Scilab (a semi easy to install binary) or download MATH PUP... It also includes the R language (takeing a class in it this spring looks powerfull ... statistics oriented) and Scilab (mathcad clone)

I have also gotten octave and some other math proggies to compile I will upload packages in a few weeks

also linux supports some tunners cards... so you might want to search around on the forum a little

efiguy,

I've absolutely no idea of ontrack, first time I've ever heard of it. But I don't understand the problems of not being able to access stuff saved with puppy. Firstly, you can save puppy's stuff wherever you want. So while by default it will try & save it within the pup_save.2fs file system, you can easily create a directory, /mnt/home/xxx, and save stuff there.

/mnt/home/xxx will, presumably, be on your c:\ drive, and can be vfat, or ntfs.

Or, for stuff saved within the pup_save.2fs file, I'm sure win_pups have reported before that this file system can be accessed with explore2fs:

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ ... fs-old.htm

Wow that was fast!!

I have heard of "R" will look for Scilab too , knew nothing of Explore2fs (downed for try ;)

Thank you both, still want to know about OnTrack access

efiguy,

I know this isn't related to your initial OnTrack query, but see this list of windows thingies reported to work with wine:

http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php

Aslo of help, in your quest to convert family,

http://www.linuxalt.com/

http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Lin ... s_software

Thanks again, will research

Also wanted to post these links as they relate to problem, but I’m not up to following the complex info. Wish a real Coder would have a look, for I believe Linux has solved EZdrive – OnTrack problem in past days

DManager coding
*) http://futura.disca.upv.es/lxr/http/sou ... ns/msdos.c

SUSE 9.1 discussion and console editing
*) http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index ... topic=2147

*) http://www.sourcemage.org/node/850
the hdx=remap63 mentioned above!!!
elaborating the changes to the 2.6 kernel.....
"Autodetection of DOS/Windows 'disk managers' such as OnTrack and EzDrive for large harddisk support with older

What operating system are you running?

I believe the methods described here
http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwin/contents.htm
should work as they dont involve changing the mbr and will run after ontrack has started.

Hello Group,

Would like to report success at accomplishing a Dual Boot Dell GX110 Chipset ID 71248086 (Win98se / puppy3.01 Retro)

Following directions given here (Thanks Philh)
( http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwin/contents.htm ) I made a CD for converting other units.
Doing a full Puppy setup, A milestone was achieved when Puppy could print to a networked win98 / USB HP printer WOW YAH!!! However, this had several pitfalls, and the only way I could figure out how to recover from errors was to delete the save file and start over. Now when fully completed and mouse buttons set for left hand, upon reboot, Puppy FAILS to find the mouse.

Other than another Save file delete is there a method to edit mouse configuration???
Everything works wonderfully before shutdown save.

Also does Puppy have a scheme like W9x for alt-tab maneuvering when mouse fails????

About Ontrack, The recovery disc has several SYS and BIN files. Is there a method to edit (vmlinuz or initrd.gz) to load an Ontrack initialization.

Thank you all for suggestions, working my way through each.

I put into my 1999 Thinkpad 600E 400MHz a 30GB 12mm drive with Ontrack (IBM, 1999 or so, Ontrack is used to let DOS access more than 2GB or maybe it is 8GB). The laptop has been upgraded with 288MB RAM and would be ideal for pulp. Lovely keyboard and screen for text-only email, portable (small).

Using pulp linux (4.1.2, low RAM) from CD, I can boot accessing the files on hard disk. I used grub4dos from Lucid Puppy to configure/install grub4dos. It found pulp and wary and lupu on the disk but the hard disk itself will not boot. It checks all four partitions and "cannot find grldr on all partitions".

I think Ontrack does something to the mbr of hda and probably grub4dos installed to this changed mbr. How can I tell grub4dos (or grub - I have many versions of puppy on CD) to install to hda1 or hda2 instead?

I would like to use up this thick drive in this computer where it fits, rather than adapting a thin drive to fit the space/caddy.

The computer is suggesting that I look in fd0 for boot info. The laptop is currently set up with optical drive in the expansion bay but I may have a floppy drive. This is not the ideal solution.

I boot another older thinkpad from a DOS boot CD because it will not boot from any hard disk and it has a dead floppy controller. Works for puppy 4 but puppy 5 will not boot (for me) from DOS with loadlin.

I could relearn LILO.

Grub legacy (first option in Lupu) apparently will only install to either mbr or root of a linux (not fat32) primary (not logical) partition. I made a third primary partition ext2, 5MB at the end of the drive since that is what was free, and had to reboot so lupu would find it. I then installed grub to it.

Linux is not on sda3 so it would not boot.

Then none of my linux boot CDs would boot except pulp.

I booted pulp linux from CD and told it not to use any save files. Pulp is on sda1 and sda8. The other CDs do not ask me which save file if any to use and if told pfix=ram they have a kernel panic looking for some nonexistent partition such as (0,12) or (8,17).

Pulp (4.1.2) gparted now informs me that I have a 28GB drive, unallocated. During boot pulp saw pulp save file on two partitions and gave me a choice of either or none.

Perhaps pulp gparted version cannot handle ontrack though lupu could?

Time to pry loose the 12mm drive and adapt a 9mm 12GB to the caddy.
I can recycle ONTRACK.

The mouse cursor has been behaving for a while. I could disable it in setup with a hex editor by changing 2 to 1. That worked until the CMOS battery lost one of its soldered wires. We replaced the original expensive plastic coated with plug CR2025 with a plain coin cell CR3032 soldered to the wires. The wires are now taped on. The laptop refuses to boot without working CMOS battery.

Live CDs of three versions of Lupu will not boot with a new HD in the laptop. 'uncompression error' or 'cannot find puppy files'. It starts trying to boot.

When I remove the hard drive, the laptop cannot even find the linux CD and gives me a picture urging me to insert a floppy drive.

Failing > failed optical drive controller? Failed drive? I will look for a floppy drive or other optical drive. A Gateway this age stopped recognizing anything in its expansion slot.

The problem may be more than Ontrack. People give us computers without remembering why they stopped using them.

Old thread Sindi,
but off the top of my head.
1. Shut down, disconnect battery and peripherals.
2. Remove bios battery, have a cup of tea.
3. Boot up and get into BIOS, see what it says about peripherals etc.
4. If still problems, try a floppy boot disc of some sort.

I unplugged the CMOS battery while brushing teeth and replugged it, got errors 161 and 163, reset time and date (the mouse was drifting slowly enough) and Puppy Linux still cannot find its sfs file on CD.

Also removed the main battery but it barely holds a charge for 1/5 sec.

I can boot DOS from floppy or CD, and Trinity Rescue Kit from CD.

I will try loading puppy frugal and maybe also full on the new drive, using another computer.

Very strange that files cannot be uncompressed from sfs format.

Sorry, but I nave to ask.
Are you burning the Puppy CD's at a low burn speed?
8x or less.

I have seen, burning the iso image at too high a speed, cause issues.

Live CDs of three versions of Lupu will not boot with a new HD in the laptop

What exact versions of Lupu??

What processor is in this laptop?
Some processors are no longer supported.

Could try Puppy 4.3.1 that should work on a lot of very old hardware.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pu ... up-431.iso

Wary would be good to try.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/wary-5.5.iso

Precise 5.7.1
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precis ... -5.7.1.iso

The laptop is a 1999 Thinkpad 600E Pentium II 600MHz 288MB PC100 memory.
Until it suddenly stopped doing so, it was booting Lupu 525 and Pulp (4.1.2)
linux from boot CDs. I then also tried:

Turbopup (4.1.2)
Puppy 4.3.1 (I think with kernel 2.6.25 and 2.6.30)
Lucid Puppy 5.10, 5.11, 5.2.8.6 mini
Slacko 5.7
Tahr requires more RAM so I skipped it.
I did not try puppies 1, 2 or 3.

Some of them would simply reboot, some would not find .sfs file or
puppy files on disk, or would not uncompress.

A DOS boot CD boots. A win98 hard disk from another PII boots to
the point where itasks whether to start windows normally,
then reboots if I say yes. Or to start in safe mode.

I plugged in an external floppy drive to the proprietary port (from
a Thinkpad 1770E 266MHz). It booted to DOS. It did NOT boot all the
way to a single-floppy USB-capable Basiclinux floppy. I forget the
exact error message. That linux also comes as a compressed file plus
initrd.gz and a kernel. The problem appears to be uncompressing.

ALL of these worked in other computers including the BL floppy disk
(booted from USB floppy drive).

Trinity Rescue Kit CD (Isolinux I think) booted perfectly.

I have not yet tried a hard disk to which I installed Puppy
in another computer. It takes a while to change disks since
I had to adapt the caddy for a 9mm from 12mm.

Or run memtest from floppy disk in case one of the 128MB
PC100's went bad when I removed it to repair the CMOS battery.

Maybe after taxes....

I have offered this laptop to a friend who likes 'boxy' old
laptops to play old DOS games. The last one I gave him will not
boot DOS from hard disk, CD-ROM or floppy disk but plays CDs.

Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4 claims to include memtest but does not seem to.

Memtest86 booted from external floppy drive passed.

The Windows on the 6GB drive is not Win98 but XP
(from a failed 1999 HP laptop where no drives boot).

MicroXP 2008 would not install. Fatal error. Some component would not install.

Win98SE would not install. Blue screen. SYSTEM_LICENSE_VIOLATION.
(Is it fussy about which version you have?).

They both booted and MicroXP even reformatted the hard disk to FAT.

I have not tried Win95.

This might be a good computer for old DOS games.

I had Lupu2016 installed on a hard drive taken from a laptop
that died. Lupu2016 just booted perfectly on the 600E.

So the problem seems to involve uncompressing files from
CD and floppy. Very strange. Or else Lupu2016 is very different
from puppies 4.1.2, 4.1.3, 5.1.0, 5.2.5, 5.2.8.6, 5.7.

I don't have it on CD just USB flash drive, which this laptop
cannot boot (though it might with the correct boot floppy).

This hard drive has a bad boot sector (which is why I was given
the other laptop, that failed for other reasons) but boots
linux though not DOS. I doubt that is related.

Puppy tells me to use CS4236 for 600E or 770E (whence the floppy
drive), ISA, then cannot find any legacy cards.

ALSA sound does not work on this 600E nor (says puppy discussion)
on 770X, T43p, T60, all of which I have (plus T23).

The "newer kernels" do not support the chip properly.

You need to force activation with a command that comes with a
puppy dotpet. It blacklists cs4236. And not run alsaconfig.
"Audio Fix for Old Thinkpads".

Pulp might work better for sound (installed via USB flash drive?)
but Lupu works with youtube-viewer, which uses little RAM.

I have watched Youtube on a 233MHz Thinkpad with 96MB EDO RAM,
using youtube-dl or movgrab then mplayer. 240p maybe 360p.

Tax time.

Yes I was going to suggest taking out the ram, cleaning the gold contacts with a pencil rubber, blowing out the slots and cleaning the power fan, then trying a stick at a time (if two) or putting a known good stick in.
I did bring an old lappie up to blistering performance for a friend who kept two cute fluffy bunnies and the air intake was blocked solid!

But maybe pick up a nice little IBM that's not been abused pretty cheap.
Good luck with it Sindi.

I am online with the thinkpad
600e (which i discovered has
not just a bad left shift but
also a bad f2 and f7 so i use
chvt 7 instead of
ctrl-alt-f7). the gigafast
wifi card appears to receive
but not transmit using
ndiswrapper files. it used to
work.
the forum instructions for the
600e are for puppy 4, but it
did help to put pnpbios=off in
menu.list after pfix= and
vga=791 (which givesme fb
console after i also modprobe
fbcon in rc.local). now
alsaconf goes straight to isa
'legacy sound', skipping pci.

the instructions say not to
run alsaconf but i already did
and that may have blacklisted
cs4236.
now puppy cannot find any
legacy modules. there is no
/etc/modprobe.conf. what file
do i edit to unblacklist
cs4236?
these laptops apparently have
two sound chips, one of which
is used for dos games.

sound might work in pulp but
yt-viewer will not.
the screen is lovely though a
bit dim. i pulled down the
shade. ideal for plain text in
a framebuffer console vga=791.

the little plastic cover over
the serial port had a rubber
hinge which disintegrated so
we taped the cover on. the
cover over the parallel port
was lost before the laptop
arrived here. the rest still
works apart from not booting
linux from cd or fd. there is
even some main battery life.