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Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2022 20:28:23 GMT 10
~ @ ~ Two months ago (Sep 2022) , a friend of mine gave me a couple of old computers that he had long collected from his work place when they were discarded for being too obsolete. The computers had been just sitting in his storage shed collecting dust for many years, and eventually they were getting in his way. Rather than tossing these machines out, he brought them to me , at my request. One of them is this IBM 8172-LMS ThinkCenter shown below. It's a very compact desktop for its time, with a solid build, surprisingly heavy in fact for its size. I could grab hold of the machine with one hand, but not able to lift it without using the other as well. This IBM-8172 did not work when power was applied, giving very loud beeps with no screen display at all. To make matter worse, it was firmly secured by a barrel lock on its cover, and the key had been long lost. I have never seen a computer with this kind of lock before, and was very curious about what kind of secret that was being kept inside. Searching around the internet for lock-picking tips, I came across the following video: I did not believe that what was shown in this video would really work. However, since the instructions were not at all complex, and the effort involved seems trivial, so I decided to give it a try. Below are the lock-picking tools I used: Within a minute, with a bit of gentle forcing and nudging, I could actually unlock, and discover what was contained within this old machine. (The SanDisk SSD seen in the above photo is actually a newly-added item. It was not part of the original hardware.) |
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Post by Admin on Nov 1, 2022 10:14:51 GMT 10
When a computer produces warning beeps and shows no screen display, that's usually an indication of RAM memory failure. This IBM-8172 had two 512 MB DDR RAM modules installed. By removing them one by one, the bad module was identified, and finally the computer came to life with just one 512 MB of memory.
Curiously, a Maxtor 80 GB IDE hard disk was installed in this machine while the motherboard actually provided only two SATA interface connectors. Evidently some sort of SATA-IDE adapter has been used here to connect the disk. (It booted up into an unauthenticated version of Windows 7 , and ran very slowly due to the lack of RAM memory.)
- Bypassed the BIOS password requirement by moving the Clear-CMOS RAM jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 . Powered ON/OFF, then restored the jumper position back to 1-2 .
- Booted into Win 7 PRO, cleaned up and removed all existing user accounts . There were quite a lot of Adobe software suites installed on this Win 7 OS, but since the OS itself was not activated, they were not worth keeping.
- Installed another Hynix 512 MB DDR memory module, bought from eBay for $10. This machine actually can accommodate 2G of RAM in total, therefore decided to order 2x1G RAM (from China for $17, a lot cheaper but at a cost of a long 6-week wait for delivery)
- Wiped hard disk, installed Vista Business SP2 from a genuine Dell DVD that I had collected a long time ago. Activated this Vista OS by using the KMS-pico hacking tool.
- The Vista OS worked fine, except one problem with audio. Symptom: Multimedia Audio Controller driver could not be installed. Audio device was identified as Intel 82801FB KH6 - AC'97 [B1] . The Dell DVD OS software apparently was not fully compatible with IBM hardware.
- Installed Puppy LxScPup-20 (frugal) OS to co-exist with Vista. Created a new 24G disk partition (sda2) on the 80G Maxtor in preparation for a full Linux install.
- Booted into LxScPup, downloaded TimeShift using Puppy-Package Installer software. Ran TimeShift with a view to restore a copy of MX-Fluxbox previously prepared on another machine. This failed (TimeShift ran for over an hour, maxing out 100% CPU time)
- Applied a fresh install of MX21-Fluxbox to the sda2 partition . This worked fine.
- Installed QB64 on MX21-Fluxbox. Had to do a fresh QB64-build (which must be preceded by sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade of MX-21). The QB64 build took a long time , and used up all available CPU power. Finally QB64x32-bit compiled and ran EKING-3v9.BAS ok .
- Modified grub.cfg of MX21-Fluxbox to include LxScPup-20.12 . Worked ok.
- Downloaded Realtek Audio Driver AC'97- version 6 from xPC-Shuttle.com
- Copied this to IBM-8172, and re-installed on Vista OS. (Must do it via Control Panel: Device Manager > Multi-Audio Controller > Properties > Driver > Update Driver > Specify Location > Update)
- Audio now worked fine in Vista OS
- 24 Sept: Added a 120GB SanDisk SSD to SATA-2 (sdb) . Restored Vista OS and MX21-Fluxbox to the SSD using the Macrium USB (version 7.2). The 80 G Maxtor hard disk remained and would be used as a secondary back-up .
- Swapped out the SanDisk SSD with another SSD taken from the HP-d530 machine, which had XP Pro and mx-Fluxbox and DpupBuster already installed . Installed a fresh version of Vista Business SP2 to overwrite the XP-Pro partition . Everything worked out fine .
- The two 1G RAM modules arrived from China. Unfortunately only one of them worked. So this machine still operates with just 1G of RAM memory. Lodged a complaint with the eBay seller, who promised to send a replacement. (May have to wait till the next Chinese New Year to get it !). Opportunity to practice patience.
- Installed Bodhi Linux (32-bit version) on sda (the Maxtor hard disk) to see what it's like. It runs quite well, has good presentation, but not as impressive as MX-Fluxbox .
- Installed LXLE Linux (based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) to overwrite Bodhi Linux . Nice desktop, crisp display.
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2022 17:40:37 GMT 10
!! Screenshot of Vista OS on IBM-8172: Vista OS takes up 47% of available memory , ie. around 470 MB The Pentium-4 CPU was shown as a single core, dual thread version. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2022 17:43:29 GMT 10
!! Screenshot of the Linux distro LXLE-(based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS). It only used 220 MB of memory: |
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2022 17:46:25 GMT 10
!! Screenshot of a Puppy Linux distro running on IBM-8172. This is LxPUP 20.12 (Ubuntu-based). It only uses 158 MB of memory: |
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2022 20:19:34 GMT 10
!! Screenshot of mx-Fluxbox 21 running on IBM-8172 . This particular Linux instance has been restored from an snapshot image taken on the HP-d530 computer. htop showed that the OS used 300 MB of memory. |
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Post by Admin on Dec 3, 2022 17:29:14 GMT 10
!!! - Installed Peppermint Devuan (32-bit) on sdb3 (replacing DpupBuster 8) . Installation stalled at 73% for unknown reason (had to cancel it, which locked sdb3). Rebooted into mx_Fluxbox and reformatted sdb3. - Installed Zorin Lite 15.3 (32-bit) on sdb3. It worked fine. OS used about 590 MB of memory, according to htop . Screenshot of Zorin 15.3 running on IBM8172: |
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