Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2022 12:57:09 GMT 10
~ @ ~
During a morning walk some 5 years ago, I spotted a discarded computer by the roadside. Although it was badly covered in dirt and stains, I could still see a quality Dell machine, deserving a spot in my garage. So it came home with me. After a good clean-up, this Dell Inspiron showed no sign of life other than the illuminated power-switch and a running fan. Nevertheless, the computer hardware was of professional quality, invoking enough satisfaction just by appearance alone , therefore it stayed wrapped up in my garage.
The coronavirus lockdown during 2020 and 2021 has made me much more home-bound than usual. Among other consequences, it opened up an opportunity for me to unwrap the Dell Inspiron. Some more cleaning, more checking and unplugging/replugging of modules happened , and finally as if to reward my effort, the machine displayed a Dell BIOS screen . With the addition of a new lithium battery for the CMOS-Ram and a hard disk, I got myself a fully functioning Dell Inspiron 530 .
During a morning walk some 5 years ago, I spotted a discarded computer by the roadside. Although it was badly covered in dirt and stains, I could still see a quality Dell machine, deserving a spot in my garage. So it came home with me. After a good clean-up, this Dell Inspiron showed no sign of life other than the illuminated power-switch and a running fan. Nevertheless, the computer hardware was of professional quality, invoking enough satisfaction just by appearance alone , therefore it stayed wrapped up in my garage.
The coronavirus lockdown during 2020 and 2021 has made me much more home-bound than usual. Among other consequences, it opened up an opportunity for me to unwrap the Dell Inspiron. Some more cleaning, more checking and unplugging/replugging of modules happened , and finally as if to reward my effort, the machine displayed a Dell BIOS screen . With the addition of a new lithium battery for the CMOS-Ram and a hard disk, I got myself a fully functioning Dell Inspiron 530 .
By the standard of today, this computer has quite old hardware (Dual-core E5200 CPU, and 2G Ram), so I started searching the internet for a light-weight Linux distribution . There are many options to choose from (too many, as a matter of fact), and after trying out a few , I settled on mX-FLuxbox , as well as another interesting Ubuntu-based distribution with a very unlikely name of "Bionic-Dog" . Despite its name, the latter does not run like a dog at all, but actually flies effortlessly on the Dell Inspiron, being very compact (installed entirely on a USB stick, can be booted and copied to RAM, where it runs at top speed) .
