[Coco] Fedora Core 6 on a M305CRV Gateway laptop

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 23 July 2007, Roger Taylor wrote:
>Gene,
>
>You'll be tickled at what I'm doing now.  My Linux box (1.2ghz
>Celeron, ATI All-in-Wonder 3-D video card (AGP), 8gig, 5gig, DVD-RW,
>CD-RW, etc.) has been crapping out for some reason, locking up after
>some hours and not starting up afterwards.  I disassembled the whole
>motherboard and cleaned everything pretty good with no luck tonight
>in it starting back up.  So, instead of messing with that thing any
>longer, I decided to give life back to my half-dead Gateway laptop
>that has Windows XP on it.  Er, HAD Windows XP....  :)
>
Humm, that mobo is about the right age to have a bad case of the (in)famous 
electrolytic caps all over it that are probably not going to measure more 
than 10% of label capacity, and that with large amounts of resistance in 
series with it.  It might be salvageable if you replace all the big caps in 
the cpu's voltage regulator circuitry.  But with drives that small, and an 
unk amount of memory, it might not be worth the effort to perform cpr on it.

 
>The laptop is a m305crv Gateway with 60gig HD, 2 USB ports, ethernet
>port.  Here's the kicker for you... I just inserted the Fedora Core 6
>DVD into that sucker, booted up, and proceded to install Linux.  When
>it asked to do a clean install, I chose yes, so Windows XP is now
>completely formatted away and Fedora is successfully installing right
>before my eyes at this time.  I've got a 1024x768 display using an
>external LCD monitor.  Why?  Well, that's where the half-dead part
>comes in.  I aquired this laptop from a friend last year because they
>wanted to see if I could fix the shattered screen.  After I told them
>the going prices, I was told I could just keep it.  So I was using it
>with Windows XP using my external monitor with no problems.

Will that lcd run at any higher resolution?  It will be much sharper if 
running at its native highest resolution.

>Anyway, my USB mouse is working from Fedora as well, which w
>as a cool 
>sight to see, and hopefully a sign of good things to come with
>support.  If I can just get it to use the ethernet port or my USB
>wireless G adaptor, I will continue with my Vista<->Fedora remote
>desktop setup over my wireless router.

I hope you kept the winderz drivers for the wireless card out in a safe place, 
they might be needed later depending on the card.  Ethernet should not be a 
problem if you are used to setting up networking on a local network, fixed 
addresses basis.

>The laptop is a 2ghz Pentium 
>II, or close.  The progress bar is 90% done at this time, but when
>it's done I'm going to update the Vino package which is what I did to
>get my tightvnc viewer updating the Linux desktop screens right under Vista.
>
>All of this is cool to me because I've always wanted Linux running on
>a spare laptop.  So, the day (hopefully) has come.  I'll keep you informed.

Good.  And if I can help, yelp.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
	"It's a summons."
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	"It means summon's in trouble."
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