Free hardware: Vintage (OLD!) hard disks, 2 x 640 MB

2009-02-21 Thread Helmut Walle

Hello All,

Just in case anyone wants these: two Western Digital Caviar 2635, 640 
MB each (yes, that's M, not G!), 3.5 inch HDs, free to good home. As 
mke2fs -c -c has assured me, they are in perfectly good working order.

First come, first serve; if they are not taken by end Feb they will go 
into recycling.

Kind regards,

Helmut.

-- 
++
| Helmut Walle   |
| wa...@ww.co.nz |
| 03 - 388 39 54 |
++


Re: serious Mozilla design bug

2009-02-21 Thread Wesley Parish
On Saturday 21 February 2009 09:15, Nick Rout wrote:
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Wesley Parish

 wes.par...@paradise.net.nz wrote:
snip
  I call that artificial stupidity.

 or perhaps operator error?

 seriously if you are right clicking and trying to choose open in new
 tab then sometimes I find on a slower computer that somehow all the
 clicking chooses something random from the popup menu before I really
 meant to.

In that case, it should be spelled out that certain operations are undefined 
for computers below a certain capacity.

Heck, OpenOffice.org spells out that more current versions aren't suitable for 
Win95 PCs, and I've found that out the hard way on my father's Win95 PC 
before it went belly-up and died.

I'm finding that I'm using Dillo quite seriously now, after having had Firefox 
do things to my browsing that I hadn't asked for.  And since it doesn't 
include all the bells-and-whistles that modern websites take for granted, I'm 
thinking of porting S60 or something of the sort, rather than putting up with 
this sort of nonsense any more.


 Does anyone know how to turn it off, and bury
  it so deep it can't come back and haunt me?  (I am really angry about
  this - this is a classic design error that I would've expected from
  Microsoft, not Mozilla - assuming that if something is done once, it will
  always be done that way, and enforcing it minutely.)
 
  The offending Mozilla Firefox is 3.0.6.
 
  Wesley Parish
 
  Sharpened hands are happy hands.
  Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands
  - A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
 
  I me.  Shape middled me.  I would come out into hot!
  I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the
  other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press

-- 
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are 
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla 
warfare means up to their monkey tricks. 
Extracts from Schoolboy Howlers - the collective wisdom 
of the foolish.
-
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.


Re: Updating compaq bios from linux

2009-02-21 Thread kerry
I've flashed the bios from linux on an old compaq presario desktop  
computer before, so I know it's possible, it was just so long ago I  
can't remember what I used to do it or how I went about it.


Just googled flash bios from linux this brings up a heap of howto's  
which might help


Kerry

Quoting Phill Coxon phi...@xtra.co.nz:


I'm trying to figure out how to update the bios on an old Compaq
Presario that I'm using for FreeNAS (www.freenas.org).

Trouble is... the bios update utility from Compaq is Windows only.
Arrrgh.

I have managed to extra the bios image from by running the windows
installer in wine just far enough that it extracted the bios image file
into the temporary directory.

So now I have the bios image but I'm at a loss as to how exactly to burn
it and thought I'd ask those with greater knowledge on this list.

Is there a standard dos based bios flash utility I can use, or are bios
flash tools specific to each motherboard or bios manufacturer?

Any suggestions about how to proceed from here would be greatly
appreciated.

The computer is a Compaq Presario S6030AN
Phoenix - AwardBios (V3.05 currently)

Thanks!















Re: Kubuntu - good bad and ugly

2009-02-21 Thread Don Robertson
yuri wrote:
 2009/2/21 Phill Coxon wrote:
 On Sat, 2009-02-21 at 10:59 +1300, Roger Searle wrote:

 I'm sure google will tell you how to get to 4.2 and would be worth the
 effort.
 http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.2
 
 Those instructions include adding a repository with the word
 experimental as part of the URL. I believe this sort of thing is
 what hosed my PCLinuxOS install (which prompted me to switch in the
 first place).

I am a bit reluctant to use 'experimental' software as well -but in this
case I made an exception.

 It also warns that 4.2 is beta and may break things.
 I don't want to break things again. I'd rather go to bed early tonight
 and enjoy my wife than stay up late fixing things again.

It broke some 'plasmids', and I finally accepted I would have to do
without Quanta+ - but I use kate mostly anyway. I do not remember if it
broke anything else. Had a lot of problems getting sound to work with
flash - but I don't think that is a KDE problem. I'd tell you what I did
but I tried so many 'fixes' I am not sure now what worked.

 Hey, I'll probably cave in to peer pressure and give 4.2 a try. I'm
 coming to the next meeting with a big rubber mallet if it turns to
 custard though.
 
 Yuri
 

begin:vcard
fn:Don Robertson
n:Robertson;Don
adr:;;;Christchurch;;;New Zealand
email;internet:d...@robertson.net.nz
tel;cell:64 021 294 1452
version:2.1
end:vcard



Re: Updating compaq bios from linux

2009-02-21 Thread Don Robertson
Phill Coxon wrote:
 I'm trying to figure out how to update the bios on an old Compaq
 Presario that I'm using for FreeNAS (www.freenas.org).
 

I would be interested to hear your experiences with freenas.
begin:vcard
fn:Don Robertson
n:Robertson;Don
adr:;;;Christchurch;;;New Zealand
email;internet:d...@robertson.net.nz
tel;cell:64 021 294 1452
version:2.1
end:vcard



Re: Updating compaq bios from linux

2009-02-21 Thread Phill Coxon
On Sun, 2009-02-22 at 08:16 +1100, ke...@katipo.net.nz wrote:
 I've flashed the bios from linux on an old compaq presario desktop  
 computer before, so I know it's possible, it was just so long ago I  
 can't remember what I used to do it or how I went about it.
 
 Just googled flash bios from linux this brings up a heap of howto's  
 which might help

I wans't sure if there was supposed to be a specific dos flash utility
to use. 

In the end I picked a random util called awdflash.exe, created a
bootable CD disk with the rom image and ran it.  

The bios flash worked perfectly. 

Unfortunately, while the new bios added Wake On Lan it only added an
option for S4 mode which I understand is hibernation / sleep.  

So still no WOL from power off. Even though the motherboard supports it,
it appears that Compaq's crippled bios doesn't offer the option. 

The plan was to have a remote backup server that I could wake remotely,
rsync some backups and then shut down again.  

Ah well, it was worth a shot.  Will have to look for a new motherboard. 

FreeNAS is amazing though - I highly recommend checking it out if you
want a backup / network attached storage system. 

My $50 FreeNas server beats a friends $2000 ReadyNas hands down in terms
of features.  





Re: Updating compaq bios from linux

2009-02-21 Thread Phill Coxon
On Sun, 2009-02-22 at 11:27 +1300, Don Robertson wrote:
 Phill Coxon wrote:
  I'm trying to figure out how to update the bios on an old Compaq
  Presario that I'm using for FreeNAS (www.freenas.org).
  
 
 I would be interested to hear your experiences with freenas.

Awesome so far.  

It is only 34Mb so requires a very low end PC to work. I have it booting
directly from a 128Mb usb drive plugged into the back of a 2.7Gz Celeron
with 512Mb RAM. 

Once it's booted (around 2 mins) you can control everything through the
easy to use web interface.

Very CPU easy - I copied a 450Mb file to the FreeNAS via SMB and CPU
load peaked at 9%.

It has a huge number of configuration options and features. 

The interface is very intuitive.  Adding storage disks and formatting
them is a breeze.  You can also have raid configurations and encrypted
disks.

After your storage is set up you decided what services you want to
offer:

CIFS/SMB
FTP
TFTP
SSH
NFS
AFP
RSYNC
Unison
iSCSI Target
UPnp
iTunes/DAAP
Dynamic DNS
SNMP
UPS
Webserver
BitTorrent

Each service can be configured and running in seconds. 

Easy to configure users and groups to control access. 

You can enable S.M.A.R.T. for drives so that drives will spin down after
a specified number of minutes if not being used, run in quiet vs
performance mode, send email alerts if drive temperatures get too far
out of range and schedule automated drive tests. 

All this and a bunch more running in 32Mb. 

I'm very impressed. 










OT: Up for grabs...............

2009-02-21 Thread Craig Molloy

One:-
Gateway 450:-
Intel Pentium III Processor 448mhz,
128 MB of RAM 256MB of memory MAX (PC100). 13Gb HDD, DVD Rom

Lan card, Sound, Video
Note this was an ex internet cafe pc so they removed the power button 
but the switch is still there (Electrically Safe)


http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00340.JPG (1mb photo)
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00341.JPG (1mb photo)


Two:-
Gateway 450:-
Intel Pentium III Processor 448mhz,
128 MB of RAM 256MB of memory MAX (PC100). 13Gb HDD, CD Rom
Modem, LanCard, Sound, Video.

Note this was an ex internet cafe pc so they removed the power button 
but the switch is still there (Electrically Safe)


http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00342.JPG (1mb photo)
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00343.JPG (1mb photo)

Three:-
HP Brio 71XX 333mhz 256mbram
2 Lan Cards CD ROM does not work.
Currently has ipcop on, runs super quite

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00336.JPG (1mb photo)
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mysticboy/grabs/DSC00339.JPG (1mb photo)


Please direct all questions to me personally @ craig.molloy (AT) 
paradise()net()nz

Any donations accepted not required, just need to get rid of them.


Re: Kubuntu - good bad and ugly

2009-02-21 Thread Robert Fisher
On Saturday 21 February 2009 10:58:04 Nick Rout wrote:
 Robert F says he installed kde and upgraded to kde 4.2. Better ask him
 how he did it?

See...
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.2

-- 
Regards, Robert

--
Robert Fisher
(aka - Rob, Bob, Robbie, Robbo, Fish)
www.fisher.net.nz
Phone:  03 383 5807
Mobile: 027 228 4698