Precise Puppy 5.7.1

Please post any bugs you have found
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starhawk
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#511 Post by starhawk »

@april -- no smartass response? I figured you'd troll me harder than that...

Oh well. As they say around my part o' the world -- don't let the door hitcha where the Good Lord splitcha...

:twisted:

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Mike Walsh
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#512 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hey, starhawk.
musher0 wrote:But I'll counter-sign what "Colonel Panic" has written about your presence AND your
posts here. You are one of the most helpful AND friendly members on this forum.
Snap! Hang around, starhawk.....we're not all sarky and smartass (and we luv ya!!)


Mike. :wink:

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Mike Walsh
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#513 Post by Mike Walsh »

april wrote:Suckups KMA
'Sakes, man (or woman?).....what is your problem? This is supposed to be a friendly forum. Your attitude toward certain other members is not helping.....


Mike. :roll:

starhawk
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#514 Post by starhawk »

...I think april's flown the coop. Easiest varminting I think I've ever done... almost feels a little too easy. Hmm.

Time will tell...

EDIT: yup, no replies. Gone. Can't say I miss that particular poster -- maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't -- but I don't. I must be getting old :P

EDIT2: premature conclusion. Oh well. Everyone deserves a second chance... let's see what happens.

Pelo

no answers for van pup during a long time

#515 Post by Pelo »

starhawk, don't worry, some passengers had no answers for van pup during a long time, and suddenly lot of people arrived for help
"Hate to say it -- but don't expect a response here. Precise 571 is old news and the developer has (sadly) moved on."
I keep puppy precise, because ffmpeg and Mplayer included. I am sure People willl come back to Precise Puppy 5.7.1 soon.
If Developers develop newer Puppies, my computer is still the same.Its RAM is still 512MB. My pendrive for it has old puppies, Precise 5.7.1 is the newest.
puppy_precise_5.7.3.sfs: 127 M does not fulfil my Ram and does not freeze any process.

starhawk
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#516 Post by starhawk »

Pelo, honestly, I've given up.

The problem is one of those hardware-software things that happens at too low a level for anyone on this forum to be able to deal with it. There is something in the programming code for that driver that just doesn't do its thing on this specific implementation, this particular make and model of system.

Maybe it's a signal getting somewhere too fast, or too slow. Maybe it's that the driver has to activate a lead to a chip and it doesn't know to do that, before it moves onto the next step. I don't know. But I *do* know that it's on that level, where hardware and software are no longer distinct.

To be honest, I have the tools -- I can dissect the laptop, and put to it logic probe and oscilloscope. I could, if I knew what I was looking for, figure it out.

What I *don't* have is the knowledge required to see what's missing. I don't know the electrical sequence required to successfully initialize *any* wireless card in that slot -- and it's going to be a little different for each and every one. Without that information, I can do all the probing I want and none of it matters.

Besides, once I get the card cage off the laptop -- the part that holds the Cardbus cards -- I lack the knowledge even of how to get it back on. I have never done that successfully. Once it's out... it's out forever -- and I have to have access to the back of it in order to use the tools I have, so it's kind of a pointless effort anyways.

Pelo

Argolance has just issued version 2.1 of ToOpPy .

#517 Post by Pelo »

About Precise 5.7.1, Argolance has just issued version 2.1 of ToOpPy .
He could have changed to Tahrpup, or Xenial Pup.. He preferred to keep Precise.
ToOpPy Linux 2.1 announced jun 12, 2016. (Now translated to Hungarian)
If ever it remained some bugs, ToOppy users should find answers In precise Puppy topic. But there are no more bugs in these popular Puppies.
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starhawk
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#518 Post by starhawk »

Ah! ToOpPy... I remember ToOpPy :D it's very pretty. As I recall, my complaints were two -- one, English translations were not perfect and I could not correct them easily (I am American) -- two, it still used ROX-Filer as file manager. ROX gives me fits.

Whatever. Let's see how much it's improved...

I'm downloading it now. I will report back once I get around to actually testing it on the old Dell. Motivation here is low, and I have other toys with which to play, so that report may be a while in coming... you have been warned ;)

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Mike Walsh
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#519 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hey, starhawk.
starhawk wrote:Besides, once I get the card cage off the laptop -- the part that holds the Cardbus cards -- I lack the knowledge even of how to get it back on. I have never done that successfully. Once it's out... it's out forever -- and I have to have access to the back of it in order to use the tools I have, so it's kind of a pointless effort anyways.
Don't take this the wrong way (and in your case, especially, I hate to seem like I'm teaching my grandma to suck eggs..!).....but, surely; isn't replacement a case of carefully noting what you do during the removal process, then reversing the steps? Or is this particular lappie a bigger nightmare than most to work on...?


Mike. :wink:

starhawk
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#520 Post by starhawk »

The card cage attaches to the underside of the motherboard. Wouldn't be a problem if (a) there were a panel for it on the bottom of the laptop, or (b) less protrusion on the side. When you put the assembly back in the case there's no way to get the card-cage-and-motherboard-assembly in there that doesn't leverage out the card cage again. I could of course cut the heck out of the bezel so that it bloody well fits like it's supposed to -- but screw that.

The connector is a friction-fit model. This is the exact part (eBay link), although you can't see the connector, and this other one (also eBay) looks to be a dead ringer for it from a similar series (Dell Latitude CP-series, immediately prior to the CPi-series that mine belongs to).

...besides, in order to have any use of disassembly, I'd have to be able to probe the thing and know what I'm looking at. That last part is the critical one. I'd either have to have documentation of what signals play out which way when it's proper, or I'd have to have a working example from which I could create that documentation.

I have neither, so removing the card cage is pointless. The controller for it is on the graphics board anyways -- this is a multi-board laptop! (You don't see that too often.) The graphics and CardBus controller are on one board, with RAM, audio, chipset, and socket for the CPU module (it's a daughtercard as well -- remember, Pentium II CPUs have off-die cache right next door on a dedicated card) on a second board underneath.

Needless to say, this is a very weird system inside. The graphics are by some long-gone third-party company (such things existed back then) called "NeoMagic". The audio is a troublesome beastie -- it's an old ISA (!) Crystal Audio chip -- ah, but it's the weird one that the driver doesn't work for from the late Puppy 4xx series up to Precise 571 Retro, as far as I can tell. (I can't remember the model number offhand :oops: ) The CardBus chip (it's not technically PCMCIA) is an offering from Texas Instruments of all companies -- I tend to think of TI as more likely to be found in eg a Honeywell programmable thermostat, or as making CPUs for some phones (TI's OMAP series of ARM SoCs is extremely well-known to all but the most budding of electronics hobbyists). The thing even has an easily serviceable BIOS chip -- a phenomenal rarity with laptops of any kind or era -- it's a socketed "PLCC" type, as you'd expect of a desktop board of the era. You can get to it from under the memory door, and it pries out with a small flathead screwdriver (I've done it) if you're delicate and don't have a proper PLCC extractor.

april

#521 Post by april »

I,m wondering if there is going to be an update for Precise 5.7.1 .
Its getting a bit long in the tooth kernel wise.
Very little of the new hardware works.

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Smithy
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#522 Post by Smithy »

April, I think you can grab a kernel from another distro and rename the precise.

I used Phil 66 Xenial kernel sfs and renamed a wheezy sfs to xenial and it booted up with new kernel sfs and new hardware gubbins. Seemed to be ok. Didn't test thoroughly though.

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perdido
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#523 Post by perdido »

I gots bugs :-O

Puppy Precise 5.7.1 setting up a frugal install to an SSD hard drive, freshly created partition(sda3) with ext3 file system, puppy installed in a directory named /001/

Boot parameter pmedia=ataflash

Booting from sda1 NTFS using grub4dos

The save file will not record deleted files (after I delete them with ROX or XFE) from the puppy file system root - but it will record files added to the puppy file system root. The save file will also record installed and removed pet files in PPM. It just will not record files deleted from the puppy system root /
The files will not go away.

Tried this 3 times with different sized save files (512MB, 768MB, 2GB) with same results.

Problem happens both when using and not using pupsaveconfig. pupsaveconfig is an add-on for precise 5.7.1.

Also verified md5 of puppy install disk.

Barry K mentions something about possible problems with the save file in Precise 5.7.1 if the file exceeds 1.8GB, mine was both under and over that with this issue.

There are also problems retro-fitting a save folder to Precise 5.7.1, thinking this could be related.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 2&start=21

I will report back on this if I find a solution. I have only been running Precise as a full install up until now, without issues.
Last edited by perdido on Wed 06 Jul 2016, 22:10, edited 1 time in total.

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perdido
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#524 Post by perdido »

Follow-up to my previous post.

My system does not like the pmedia=ataflash (pupmode 13) on the SSD hard drive.
It saves properly using pmedia=atahd (pupmode 12)

Not exactly what I want, actually don't see any much difference between pupmode 12 and a full HDD install except we keep system changes seperate in their own file system. Kind of like a save folder except different. Libby the Kid.

So now pupsaveconfig can't be used because pmedia-atahd writes to the save file in real time. pmedia=ataflash loaded everything into memory but was acting strange, see previous post.

Still think there is a bug in there if pmedia=ataflash is supposed to work on a hard drive, everything I have read points to it being supported.

esbelugas
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PC Cardbus networking

#525 Post by esbelugas »

Starhawk, hope I'm not too late with this suggestion, but it may help someone else in any case. I've also had problems getting a PC Cardbus network card working, but I found a fix.

I have Precise 5.7.1 on an ageing laptop (Compaq Evo N1020v from 2003) with a Texas Instruments PC Cardbus interface and D-Link DWL-630 Cardbus wireless card. Similar symptoms to yours. I read about an issue with some Realtek chipsets (used by D-Link among others) on some Cardbus interfaces, where the card goes into an unstable state at power-on, and needs to be reset before it will work reliably. So I wrote the following simple script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
ifconfig wlan0 down
sleep 3
pccardctl eject
sleep 3
pccardctl insert
sleep 5
ifconfig wlan0 up
The "eject" command logically disconnects everything on the Cardbus, then the "insert" command re-connects them. The card drivers and network wizards will then kick in as expected. I run this automatically at boot time and it's been perfect for 6 months+.

Maybe worth a go. HTH

BTW, this issue seems to have been resolved in the current Slacko release, but I keep Precise on this old laptop because it's more responsive. :D

starhawk
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#526 Post by starhawk »

Did not work initially... however, I've done so much wireless testing on that thing that I've kind of become my own enemy. There's a half dozen wireless utilities on there, at least...

I'm going to do a reinstall and see what happens.

EDIT: After no fewer than four of my CD drives refused to work (!) and the hard drive in the CPi decided to die (at least according to BIOS) -- I'm calling it quits for the evening... if I don't I'm going to have to learn to alcoholic and that's not something I want.

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#527 Post by starhawk »

I think I may have a workaround for the CardBus problem... esbelugas, I'll still try your script ;)

Turns out I have a USB 1.1 hub that takes external power (it has a switch that takes it from self-powered to wall-powered). The CPi has only one USB port -- which is why I didn't want to use a USB WiFi card -- but with a hub, things are a little different...

Doesn't much matter, though, with the hard drive busted. (I hope it's the drive and not the controller... I should probably test that, though.)

starhawk
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#528 Post by starhawk »

Weeeeeeeeell... I installed Precise 571 non-Retro this time.

More things work, but the sound demon has returned. The driver doesn't exist at all in Precise 571 Regular.

Anyone want to compile it for me? :lol: I need the applicable one for a Crystal 4237B sound chip. IIRC the driver is called cs4236... please no SSE anything in the compile target, I'm rocking a Pentium II here.

I'd do it myself, but I really don't fancy the idea of compiling even that on a 300MHz P2 with a quarter gig of RAM. I'd be there all afternoon.

EDIT: Never mind... even *USB* WiFi cards refuse to work here. Screw it, I'm installing ClassicPup. It's deathly slow but it will probably actually work...

EDIT2: no, I'm just setting it aside. I had to hard power-off it after the CD drive in it refused to work (WTH?!) and once again it won't boot right.

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Mike Walsh
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#529 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hey, starhawk.

Sounds like your hardware is throwing not just one 'wobbly', but a whole series of them... :lol:


Mike. :wink:

starhawk
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#530 Post by starhawk »

It's a rebellious 17 year old, what do you expect? :lol:

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