# Introduction~



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Hi! I am a 14 year old male. I started building/programming pcs at the age of ten. In those four years I have built 24 pcs! I have installed windows 95-windows vista on various machines!! I enjoy reading here in the computer forum and learning more and more every day..so I decided to register and start posting! I usually save up my money and buy used computers that have problems from ebay and rebuild/reprogram them~!


----------



## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Not too shabby for 14 years old - I just got started on my 2nd computer around that time period.


----------



## Guest (Mar 11, 2007)

14yearpcmaker, maybe you can even teach us something new!


----------



## fitwind (Aug 27, 2005)

Welcome, I alwys learn alot from everyone on here...


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

ladycat said:


> maybe you can even teach us something new!


Hopefully!  I was hoping by the end of this week, I could get my 'generic' laptop upgraded to Puppy Linux. All of my laptop's components are compatable with puppy. (i.e. my ethernet port,sound card,etc...)I have downloaded the newest 'full version' of puppy, and burned it to a cd using _deep burner_ , but, when I try to boot from that cd i jost get a black screen with a grey flashing line. Although, I did download *Chubby Puppy* and it boots fine from the Live cd.  Yet, I am having problems installing it to my hard drive. It wants me to make a _bootable floppy_ but I don't have a floppy drive...on ANY of my machines that I have built. :help: However, when I try, and install GRUB it informs me that my hard disk is not Linux. I have been to the puppy wiki, yet I still can't install puppy. I was hoping there was a Puppy guru around here...(is there? :shrug: )
Anyways, thanks for the welcome! :baby04: 

P.s.

My laptop's specs:
VIA C7-M processor
448 mb ram
60 gig hdd


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

there are two ways to install Puppy to hardrive, the "poor man" type 1 version where files stay compressed and the type2 "normal" uncompressed version. I usually use the type2 method. To do this, first boot from Puppy cd using cheatcode "puppy pfix=ram" This keeps Puppy from creating a file to save settings etc and thus locking up an existing partition. Anyway use gparted included on the cd and create a native linux or reiser partition and a smaller swap partition. Format them with gparted. Now run the installer under the install to ide hardrive option. It will see the linux or reiser partition and offer to install. Then it gives you the option of installing GRUB or you can create a boot floppy or if you dont have a floppy drive, then a boot "usb key". I am happy enough with GRUB. You can also independently use LILO or Loadlin or syslinux or whatever loader you find out there but it isnt included on the cd.

Now if you choose the poor man install to hardrive, you can use the installer or you can just copy three files off the cd to the hardrive, then use GRUB or whatever to boot. If you install to a FAT or NTFS partition then you will need a special version of GRUB that can boot from FAT/NTFS file systems. And there are other ways to boot also. This is the quicky overview. Really like I told others, go to the Puppy forum or Puppy Wiki and there is mucho info in detail on how to do these things. The people at the Puppy forum are friendly and may occasionally growl a little, but dont bite. Since I use the type 2 install on a native linux partition, that is what I know best. Its as simple as I described above. I can go look up exact details on doing a type 1 poorman install on a windows partition, but it would be easier for you to do so directly. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Oh, the grey line. Did you use X-org or Xvesa? I am suspecting you didnt choose a resolution supported by either your monitor or video card. It gives option to test. And you can always CTRL, ALT, BACKSPACE to get to commandline and rerun xorgwizard. It even reminds you exactly how to do such after returning you there.

Of course its also possible that the iso you downloaded was corrupted or it got corrupted when burned to cdr. Try downloading it again as its trivial if you have broadband, royal pain in rear if you have dialup. Oops, you can do MD5sum check. The puppy iso you download will have long number as a separate small download . Run the sum check on the file downloaded and make sure the numbers match. If they do then all is fine, if they dont then file you downloaded is corrupted.


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Thanky you so much HermitJohn! I have DSL on this end! No problem to try and re-download! I am running on the chubby puppy live cd right now,but, I am going to get back on WIndows and redownload the full version of puppy. Wish me luck!


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

okay, I'm back on windows and redownloading puppy


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Oh one other thing now that I reread your post. What version of Chubby Puppy did you download. If it only offered to make boot floppy and not boot flash key then its probably not current. I havent followed Chubby since I have only dialup and dont know when it was last updated. Some offshoots of Puppy made by other Puppy users and not official releases may not be kept current.


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

:happy: finished downloading!  I shal return with the results!

I downloaded the most current version of chubby puppy..which ever that is...


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

okay, burned the cd...i'll be back


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Okay, its working, i'm online with the live cd right now!  Now I'm gonna try and install it...


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

okay, using the gcparted thing (or what ever its called) and cant make a new partition..what to do?


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

14yearpcmaker said:


> okay, using the gcparted thing (or what ever its called) and cant make a new partition..what to do?


You have to click on the space or partition you want to work with, it will then be highlighted. Then after you have told GParted what you want it to do, you have to push the button to actually have it make the changes, this as a safety to prevent unintentional loss of data. GParted has evolved into what Partition Magic should have become plus its free. If you still have problems, I will take couple screen shots GParted and post them. GParted like Partition Magic can shrink or expand existing partitions without destroying data. It can create and format partitions in several different file systems. Very handy and powerful tool. Puppy also includes the linux versions of fdisk and cfdisk. Both are pretty crude compared to GParted but still work if you want to repartition a hardrive from scratch and dont care about saving anything currently on the hardrive.


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

okay I got cparted to work, but now, grub informs me it ins not linux...I formated to linux


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

OH! I got it to work! I dont know how, but I did!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Ok, if you are running the Puppy install, it will install puppy to the linux formatted partition. The small partition I mentioned earlier has to be formatted not as linux but as linux swap. Puppy then wont offer to install there. Anyway after installing the Puppy files, the installer will offer you choice of installing GRUB or making floppy/usb flash boot disk. Choose GRUB. Tell it to install files to the partition where Puppy files are located. It should do this automatically and you have to change location if you want them elsewhere. Then it will ask where you want rest of it and tell it the mbr part of the hardrive. It will do so and should say it was successful. Now remove Puppy cd and reboot. Should have GRUB menu pop up with. Chose the Linux option and let me know if it boots. On my machine, had to go back and edit the Grub menu file in Puppy. Make sure you need to do this before I go into description of how to do it.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

14yearpcmaker said:


> OH! I got it to work! I dont know how, but I did!!!!!!!!!!!


I was writing reply so didnt see this. Congradulations. I was hoping it would work first time so I didnt have to describe how to modify GRUB boot menu. My computer always requires I do bit of tweaking to get GRUB to boot Puppy correctly. By way you can modify the GRUB configuration menu so Puppy will boot automatically and with an adjustible time delay if you wish.


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Thanks HJ! I am having a LITTLE difficulties tho...I need the cheat 'acpi=off' on before booting, otherwise, my laptop hangs on bootup. If 'acpi=off' is turned on, it boots fine. How do I get that cheat to AUTOMATICALLY start when I boot Linux?


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Well, with a little tinkering and Google searching, I made it quit hanging at startup, and now it works 100% without any problems!!   I finished downloading Opera (who could live without it!?  )  and openoffic.org.  I also installed the Linux version of Yahoo! messenger!!  Now I will be good to go when I travel with my parents and go on school field trips!!


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Glad to hear it. If you check out the Puppy Forum that I gave link to earlier, there are a lot of dotpup pkgs and PET pkgs that are precompiled for Puppy. You do have to watch out, some old pkgs may not work on newer versions of Puppy and vice versa. Its a low budget volunteer effort and things like the precompiled pkgs dont always get labelled as to what works with what. Then again some older stuff works fine but may require tweaking or adding back older libraries, etc.


----------



## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Thank you for the idea and link! I appreciate your time and effort!


----------

