[Ubuntu PA] NTR Laptop Project: Now the fun begins!!

[Jim Fisher]

--- John A Back <opensourcepen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jim,
> 
> Thanks for paying for the pizza and drinks I think
> we all owe you some 
> money or are we just taking turns paying for food.

No problem.  We can work that out as time goes on. 
:-)

> Ben was most helpful in dealing with these old
> laptops that haven't been 
> turned on for years, I image. The battery on the
> motherboard is dead or 
> weak and Ben pointed out that leaving the computer
> stuck in the BIOS 
> error allows the motherboard battery to recharge.

Ben is one of my heroes !!!

> The IBM Thinkpad 770 is 233mHz Pentium MMX with 32MB
> of RAM and a 2 GB 
> HD with Windows 95. Considering the small hard drive
> it seems that we 
> should remove Win95 and have only one OS, DSL.

Yep.  These laptops should be Linux only.

> I notice on the DSL disk that one needs to set a
> root and user password. 
> It would logical to me that all of us should set the
> same passwords and 
> I am suggesting that root be ubuntu and user be
> linux. Your thoughts?

Very good point.  That's what I mean, we didn't
anticipate
getting that far yesterday; but that's a good thing.

What I use is dsl dsl root root.  For locational work
we use the 
name of the place, so for this project I recommend:

user: ntr  pass: ntr  and as always root root.   KISS
plan, after 
many previous failures.

> I found an interesting posting about putting Linux
> on old Thinkpad 
> laptop -
>
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT6185716632.html
> 
> One final thought, what thought has been give to
> making these laptop 
> wireless with old 802.11B pcmcia cards assuming that
> is possible and 
> cards can be located?

That is something that we can discuss at NTR as part
of their
marketing strategy.  While working at home I have
found 
that many cards are supported by DSL.  So give it a
shot
with whatever you may have laying around.

Great work !!!

Jim Fisher (jedijf)

irc - freenode #ubuntu-us-pa
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
-- Jedi Master Yoda