[GTALUG] MP BIOS Toshiba - semi revival

[Russell Reiter]

I have to say the Toshiba hardware is a cut above any of my other
reclamations to date. I'd of happily under clocked this unit to keep it
functional. I like the form factor a lot and as I said Sugar runs fine.

On another note, in respect of one of the laptops you surprised me with
when I picked up the Toshiba. Project reflow video is on the back burner
after certain classified materials were discovered. Construction of the
fume hood has stopped and I am engaged in a strict social contract to not
Frankenstein any electronics in food preparation areas.

Curses foiled again. Its kind of like the time my dad caught me doping the
tissue paper wings of a Folker BiPlane in my room with the windows closed.
However in this case no lecture needed. I am after all, not completely
intransigent to reason.

I hav en't even looked at the HP yet except to confirm; yep that's one dead
battery.

Many hours of fun left in the tickle trunk now, so my thanks and regards.

Russell

On Sunday, March 15, 2015, <phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca> wrote:

> Very interesting, Russell. Thanks for the update.
>
> I'm glad we're keeping you off the streets and out of trouble ;).
>
> Regards
> Peter
>
> > Since this weekend seems to be my hackers holiday at home, no fires, no
> > fude's and no FUBAR, I thought I update the progress on the Toshiba
> laptop
> > Peter offered up to the list.
> >
> > When last hacked I had XFCE running on Light DM with a small ram upgrade.
> > Still not enough to force the video aperture to 64mg but videos played
> > well
> > and the system did not appear to overheat.
> >
> > Then I got cocky. I had fixed the dsdt tables but still couldn' connect
> to
> > the apic timer. Everything seemed stable so I installed Chrome. The rest
> > happened so quickly I didn't even have time to say this does not look
> good
> > and presto, one cooked drive.
> >
> > I had acquired the other Toshiba I was helping my friend with when he got
> > tied of failing to get the battery to charge after installing Windows 7.
> > So
> > I had another drive to tinker with but there are two important
> differences
> > in the laptops. The one Peter gave me has single core and runs without
> the
> > battery being installed, the other one is quad core and will not start
> > without a battery being present.
> >
> > So what to do, experiment with the other drive or something else, I went
> > with something else. I removed the drive, removed the battery, removed
> the
> > wifi and booted. The unit fails to register the realtek Ethernet and
> loops
> > the message but the unit stays alive.
> >
> > So now I have a fairly quiet three port USB charger. Oh yea, I also have
> > the unit sitting on a USB cooling base with he access plates removed from
> > the base but this is for the next part. Sugar on a Stick. This is the
> base
> > OS for the one child one computer project. For some reason this OS
> > requires
> > the battery to be installed in it. I imagine that is because of the form
> > factor for the prototype laptops which appear to have a perminent built
> in
> > battery.
> > So the upshot is Sugar runs fine, no Ethernet as of yet but the unit
> > itself
> > is quite stable. Hours of use and I've left it on overnight. No freezups,
> > crashes or chokes the next day and no excessive heating. No temp gauge
> but
> > by hand it feels a lot cooler.
> >
> > So I will probably upgrade the ram at some point which will increase the
> > video aperature to 64mg and try a full fedora with LDXE or something
> > similar.
> >
> > So thanks to Peter, it's lodes of fun and keeps me out of trouble. Well
> > for
> > the most part anyway.
> > :-)  Russell
> > ---
> > Talk Mailing List
> > talk at gtalug.org <javascript:;>
> > http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
> >
>
>
> --
> Peter Hiscocks
> Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
> http://www.syscompdesign.com
> USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
> 647-839-0325
>
> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk at gtalug.org <javascript:;>
> http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
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