KCLUG December 2004

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44 participants
121 discussions

TV-OUT on laptop causes major damage, fire / shock
by Thomas Bruno 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

Tonight, at roughly 10:30pm 12/02/04 I proceeded to plug my tvout adapter into my laptop to watch a dvd on my tv. I had just been a video from the cam corder, so the tv ports were ok and so was the rca cable. When I plugged it in, all I saw was a white flash. 3 of my friends in the room say that the RCA cable melted, the tv smoked inside with lots of white flashing inside of it, and the RCA cable was blown out of the laptop TV-OUT connector. I with a numb arm, awoke laying on the floor. Looking at the rca cable, I see bare wire sticking out of where it melted about 2 inches melted at each end. I'm still in a state of panic/shock as to what just happened. I will be researching legal options now, as my laptop warranty ended because the dell wouldn't let me renew because of a mix up, and other things that have built up (like sending it in for fan swap to have it come back not even turning it on), now this.. a laptop I'm totally terrified of even turning on. Update to the little story, I got a junk VCR that I have, and tried to plug the RCA tv out into it. it also proceeded to fry the vcr, and new rca cable. This is a problem with the laptop. The thing has worked with the same tv in the past, only thing different is that the laptop and tv were plugged into the same powerstrip this time. Anyone have any recommendations/experiences?

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Re: X terminal distributions?
by Brian Kelsay 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

It may have something to do with the inaccuracy of the older read heads on those CD drives. As for not being able to boot to CD, there was a point where the architecture changed within the PC. I recall in my first Pentium, the CD drive IDE cable plugged directly into the sound card. After most of the parts had been replaced in that PC I had plugged the replacement CD into the mobo and the drive worked better, however it still needed a boot floppy. Brian Kelsay >>> Leo Mauler <webgiant(a)yahoo.com> 12/03/04 12:45AM >>> --- Brian Kelsay <Brian.Kelsay(a)kcc.usda.gov> wrote: > Correct. And some old CD-ROM drives won't boot to > CD. YMMV. You can still do a boot from floppy and > hand off to CD. True enough. In the laptops I've tried which didn't boot from CD, miniCDs continued not to work even when booting from floppy first.

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RE: TV-OUT on laptop causes major damage, fire / shock
by Brian Densmore 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

Dude! You're getting Electrifi... err ... A Dell! > -----Original Message----- > From: Duane Attaway > > > > I wonder why DELL is recalling 4.5 million power adaptors that > > "may overheat causing fire or electrical shock". That is an > awful lot of > > units to replace with only seven incidents reported to them. > > That's the ticket right there! Something overheated and caused the > isolation from the mains to short to the DC side. That's > your fire and > electrical shock. > > ...

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Re: TV-OUT on laptop causes major damage, fire / shock
by Brian Kelsay 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

So does the TV work at all now? Did you go to the hospital? You should just to document the accident if you intend to sue somebody. Brian Kelsay >>> Thomas Bruno <crweb(a)vwords.com> 12/03/04 07:51AM >>> I thought I might now also add: I can still plug my old Nintendo into the TV's aux jacks, and everything be ok, no explosions or anything, in fact, I get a very distorted image, and loud screeching sound. All 3 aux line/channels display the same images. meaning aux channel 3, displays the same thing aux channel 1 displays even though it's plugged into aux 2. So it's obviously not the tv's fault.

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Re: X terminal distributions?
by Brian Kelsay 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

Looks like with using Small Linux you need 4MB for an X Windows system. It's going to be pretty basic. (More inline.) Brian Kelsay >>> Leo Mauler <> 12/02/04 09:53AM >>> >I just wanted to mention that a lot of older CD-ROM >drives don't like miniCDs and business card sized CDs >(or at least don't seem to boot from them). So even >though DamnSmallLinux does fit on a miniCD, go ahead >and burn it on a full-sized CD for those older laptops >that still have CDs. Correct. And some old CD-ROM drives won't boot to CD. YMMV. You can still do a boot from floppy and hand off to CD. The full-size CDs have a greater chance of working in the old drives and burn to CDR not RW at 4x or under. Again, YMMV, but this is from my experience. >From: Jonathan Hutchins <> >Date: 12/2/04 10:14AM >The problem I've encountered with this idea is that Xwindows itself is pretty >resource intensive, and many of the older systems have video cards that don't >have Linux drivers. At best, you may get 640x480x16 colors. You can >off-load most of the work to the server (talk to the Lumensoft guys), but you >still have to get a basic Xwindows setup going. 4M of RAM is going to be a >distinct challenge. On the Linux driver issue, most will work with a basic vesa driver, even the old ones. There are a very small number that don't. http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/kdrive.html The KDrive Tiny X Server Kdrive is used on DamnSmall Linux. http://www.linuxdevices.com/links/LK6129039469.html Short Tiny X article on embedded hardware. "Typical X servers based on Tiny-X can fit in less than 1MB on x86 CPUs." A 386 Twinhead laptop with 4MB RAM, 81MB hard drive: http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Small_Linux_Notes_By_Levi_Wal… http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?SmallX FAQ and Howto >From: Gerald Combs >Date: 12/2/04 10:26AM >Are there any VNC clients that can use the console directly? If so, you >could run your X11 server remotely. If you have an LTSP setup, you are using remote X. From that you can run some form of VNC, like Xvnc. Without a full LTSP server setup you can do this manually. Set your machine with X running to enable XDMCP. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/ Their example starts X on connection via shell or ssh http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/XDM-Xterm/ http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6713 http://probing.csx.cam..ac.uk/about/xdmcp.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDMCP http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-remote-session.html http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html a decent example http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Remote_X_Display Connect to the server from the console of the old PC. If you have your session automated, then X will just auto start your session when you login. Other wise you will need to run "X --query <ip address or hostname>" to get a specific server or "X --broadcast" to connect to any listening Xserver. Then run whatever VNC program is on the PC hosting the Xserver.

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X terminal distributions?
by Duane Attaway 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

I have several old laptops that could live a good life of xterminals. Unfortunately, some don't have hard drives, most have memory less than 64MB, and one is a 486 with 4MB. All can use a pcmcia ethernet card. What do most people do with these? Are there distributions catering to these or do I have to build them myself? I'd hate throw them away. They use so little power, have well designed hardware, and look nice.

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RE: X terminal distributions?
by Brian Densmore 03 Dec '04

03 Dec '04

Besides, fullsize CDs are cheaper than miniCDs. I like the miniCDs only for the coolness factor. Or is that geek factor? > -----Original Message----- > From: Leo Mauler > > > I just wanted to mention that a lot of older CDROM > drives don't like miniCDs and business card sized CDs > (or at least don't seem to boot from them). So even > though DamnSmallLinux does fit on a miniCD, go ahead > and burn it on a full-sized CD for those older laptops > that still have CDs. >

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RE: Fighting a spam fire with a DDoS
by Brian Densmore 02 Dec '04

02 Dec '04

Went searching for the link. Here it is: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39175585,00.htm Unfortunately, I failed to read the article, and misread the headline. Lycos was saying that an apparent crack of the makelovenotspam site was a hoax. Sorry about the confusion. Brian > -----Original Message----- > From: Jonathan Hutchins > > On Wednesday 01 December 2004 04:14 pm, Brian Densmore wrote: > > > FYI, Lycos people now say this is a hoax. > > They say they have not done this. > > Link? >

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RE: Fighting a spam fire with a DDoS
by Brian Densmore 02 Dec '04

02 Dec '04

FYI, Lycos people now say this is a hoax. They say they have not done this. > -----Original Message----- > From: James Sissel > > True, except the Lycos people are very careful and are using > a database of > well know spammers. Visit their website to get more information. > > http://www.makelovenotspam.com > > >Couldn't this be used as a cheap way to DDoS someone? E.g. if I were > >upset with the incompetent inventory control at my local > hardware store, > >could I send out a pile of spam linking to > www.mylocalhardwarestore.com > >and watch as their web site slows to a crawl? >

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Re: X terminal distributions?
by Brian Kelsay 02 Dec '04

02 Dec '04

Do they have floppy drives? You may be able to use a floppy Linux. Console only, but you could connect to another machine that has screen, as we have been discussing here. If they have CD drives and enough ram, you could run a LiveCD. For older hardware, try DamnSmall Linux, as previously mentioned here. It even has a lot of cool, small programs. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ DamnSmall http://www.toms.net/rb/ Tom's RootBoot http://www.pycs.net/lateral/stories/4.html Using Debian http://distrowatch.com/puppy Puppy Linux http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ Feather Linux The 486 with 4MB is harder to deal with. Look for the page about Small Linux. You can get a pre-compiled minimal kernel and a small vesa driver. I don't recall if they had an ISO or anything, maybe floppy images to get you started. You will have to do a lot of manual stuff on this one. With modern kernels, as was discussed last night at the LUG, you need at least 8MB of ram, BUT you can compile for 4MB PCs. Here is the link: http://www.superant.com/smalllinux/ http://www.advogato.org/proj/Small%20Linux/ http://peeweelinux.com/ http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Small+Linux&btnG=Google+Search I'm sure you can find more on your own. Check Distrowatch and dig thru the list of distros in the ibiblio.org pub dir http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ Brian Kelsay >>> Duane Attaway <> 12/02/04 05:47AM >>> I have several old laptops that could live a good life of xterminals. Unfortunately, some don't have hard drives, most have memory less than 64MB, and one is a 486 with 4MB. All can use a pcmcia ethernet card. What do most people do with these? Are there distributions catering to these or do I have to build them myself? I'd hate throw them away. They use so little power, have well designed hardware, and look nice.

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KCLUG December 2004