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Linux on a Dell Inspiron 4150

log

January, 2005 I picked up a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 disk (model ST9100823A) at CompUSA for $150 with rebates. Not bad for a 100GB disk. Pretty fast, too -- hdparm reports about 650MB/s from the cache and 36MB/s from the disk itself. Hopefully it'll last longer than the Toshiba did. Installed Fedora Core 3 also, seems OK so far.

December, 2004 The Toshiba 80GB disk has died, not even a year in service. Bah!

January, 2004 Bought a combo CD-RW/DVD drive to replace the CD-RW that the machine came with. Also upgraded the HD to a Toshiba 80GB and stuck the original 40GB disk in an external FireWire enclosure.

May 31, 2003 Bought a Ricochet wireless modem. Setup took about 10 minutes, and everything works great. It comes up as /dev/ttyS3 and PPP comes up very quickly. I get between 180K and 250K downlink, which is almost as good as my DSL connection. So I had the DSL shut off (no sense giving Qwest money if I can help it). See this document for more info.

April 24, 2003 Got better video modes by using "vga=0x31B", which is 1280x1024x16M in text mode.

Early April 2003 Mmmmmmm RedHat 9. Tried to use the SGI XFS boot ISO to get RH9+XFS going, but the laptop refuses to boot the CD. Very strange, since my desktop at work will boot it just fine. Also kinda annoying since the boot floppy images on that CD are empty... I guess I should wait for something more than rev "0" of the ISO :-)
Gave up trying to get XFS going to now, and just installed RedHat 9 with ext3. I'm extremely impressed with RedHat 9 so-far. All the fancy GUI config tools seem to work, and the anti-aliased fonts are excellent. I installed the new Bitstream Vera fonts that were released.
At this point, I'll convert everything over once I can get a stable RedHat 9 install running on my laptop with XFS. Still no love on the wireless front - the card is not recognized in RH9.
Also, to get it to boot, I had to add "vga=791" to the initial boot command, otherwise the display became unreadable quickly.

March 2003 Doh! The hard drive started making very loud, very worrying noises. Something like a metal grinder. Two days later the BIOS doesn't even recognize the disk. Not good.
Returned the laptop to Dell after trying to boot with a friend's disk (which the BIOS also didn't recognize). A week later, the laptop is returned with a new motherboard and a note saying that Dell is out of 40GB disks, and that I should call Dell to get a new one. No joke. Called Dell and orderend the new disk.
Another week passes, and now I finally have a working laptop again. They included a new rev of BIOS (A05), so hopefully things will be better.

Late October 2002 Been playing with the 2.5 kernels - 2.5.42 and 2.5.44. They seem mostly nice though I don't know if I can tell the difference with the new fully preemptable kernel. It should be faster? I should run benchmarks.

9 October 2002 Laptop arrives two days earlier than expected. Very nice!

2 October 2002 Ordered the new laptop off Dell's website. Noticed that you can get a

9 October 2002 Laptop arrives two days earlier than expected. Very nice!

2 October 2002 Ordered the new laptop off Dell's website. Noticed that you can get a substantially better deal by taking different paths through the website to pick up different "special offers" -- saved a couple of hundred bucks that way. Details: Dell Inspiron 4150, 2.0GHz P4-M, 1GB memory, 40GB disk, CDRW drive, 14.1" 1600x1200 UXGA LCD with an ATI Radeon 7500 32M video card. Rock on!

September 2002 Re-installed linux on my Sony vaio laptop three times this month, losing data each time because of disk I/O failures (even with a journaled filesystem). Argh - that is not good. Barely

log
January, 2005	I picked up a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 disk (model ST9100823A) at CompUSA for $150 with rebates. Not bad for a 100GB disk. Pretty fast, too -- hdparm reports about 650MB/s from the cache and 36MB/s from the disk itself. Hopefully it'll last longer than the Toshiba did. Installed Fedora Core 3 also, seems OK so far.
December, 2004	The Toshiba 80GB disk has died, not even a year in service. Bah!
January, 2004	Bought a combo CD-RW/DVD drive to replace the CD-RW that the machine came with. Also upgraded the HD to a Toshiba 80GB and stuck the original 40GB disk in an external FireWire enclosure.
May 31, 2003	Bought a Ricochet wireless modem. Setup took about 10 minutes, and everything works great. It comes up as `/dev/ttyS3` and PPP comes up very quickly. I get between 180K and 250K downlink, which is almost as good as my DSL connection. So I had the DSL shut off (no sense giving Qwest money if I can help it). See this document for more info.
April 24, 2003	Got better video modes by using "`vga=0x31B`", which is 1280x1024x16M in text mode.
Early April 2003	Mmmmmmm RedHat 9. Tried to use the SGI XFS boot ISO to get RH9+XFS going, but the laptop refuses to boot the CD. Very strange, since my desktop at work will boot it just fine. Also kinda annoying since the boot floppy images on that CD are empty... I guess I should wait for something more than rev "0" of the ISO :-) Gave up trying to get XFS going to now, and just installed RedHat 9 with ext3. I'm extremely impressed with RedHat 9 so-far. All the fancy GUI config tools seem to work, and the anti-aliased fonts are excellent. I installed the new Bitstream Vera fonts that were released. At this point, I'll convert everything over once I can get a stable RedHat 9 install running on my laptop with XFS. Still no love on the wireless front - the card is not recognized in RH9. Also, to get it to boot, I had to add "vga=791" to the initial boot command, otherwise the display became unreadable quickly.
March 2003	Doh! The hard drive started making very loud, very worrying noises. Something like a metal grinder. Two days later the BIOS doesn't even recognize the disk. Not good. Returned the laptop to Dell after trying to boot with a friend's disk (which the BIOS also didn't recognize). A week later, the laptop is returned with a new motherboard and a note saying that Dell is out of 40GB disks, and that I should call Dell to get a new one. No joke. Called Dell and orderend the new disk. Another week passes, and now I finally have a working laptop again. They included a new rev of BIOS (A05), so hopefully things will be better.
Late October 2002	Been playing with the 2.5 kernels - 2.5.42 and 2.5.44. They seem mostly nice though I don't know if I can tell the difference with the new fully preemptable kernel. It should be faster? I should run benchmarks.
9 October 2002	Laptop arrives two days earlier than expected. Very nice!
2 October 2002	Ordered the new laptop off Dell's website. Noticed that you can get a
9 October 2002	Laptop arrives two days earlier than expected. Very nice!
2 October 2002	Ordered the new laptop off Dell's website. Noticed that you can get a substantially better deal by taking different paths through the website to pick up different "special offers" -- saved a couple of hundred bucks that way. Details: Dell Inspiron 4150, 2.0GHz P4-M, 1GB memory, 40GB disk, CDRW drive, 14.1" 1600x1200 UXGA LCD with an ATI Radeon 7500 32M video card. Rock on!
September 2002	Re-installed linux on my Sony vaio laptop three times this month, losing data each time because of disk I/O failures (even with a journaled filesystem). Argh - that is not good. Barely