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Home / Other I-Appliances / MSN Companion The 'right' image Looking for the most user friendly image

The 'right' image (modified 0 times) heitjer Profile | Email I need to do something to avoid throwing more money at Mr. Gates. At a promised price of $9.95/mo I was not able to convince my wife to change something but now they have dropped this rate and went to $24.95/month. This on top of the $30 broadband is too much and we canceled MSN. Now the IA1 is collecting dust. The problem that I have is that I have never used Linux and I am a little reluctant to set this up but I could work my way into it. I guess at one point in my life I need to get into Linux anyway and I am not scared to open the IA1. My biggest concern is that the image results in something that my wife will not use (needs to be absolutely user friendly). That is the reason why I went with the Companion in the first place. My question to this community is now: What would be the ‘right’ image for an absolute user friendly IA1? Midori seems to be an interesting approach; there are other options like BeIA (what about usb/Ethernet?), CE, Win98lite. What ever happened to Jailbait? I am looking for a pure and easy to use OS that includes a Browser (maybe Email) and is able to "be handled" by my wife with out scaring her off. If necessary I spend some money (i.e. microdrive) but before I wonder off in the wrong direction I might just ask you all - Any suggestions? *heitjer* 07-31-2002 20:02:03

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) radarman Profile If all you want to do is use the IA-1 as an internet appliance without paying Microsoft, then you have a number of options. WildWes' Midori Linux image is an excellent software load, and comes with the Opera browser. You do have to manually start the web browser, but it looks and runs a lot like Windows. There are other images floating around out there as well, but Midori has become my standby - and I use it on both my IA-1's. If it means anything, I loaned a modified IA-1 to a lady who knows absolutely nothing about computers beyond checking email and surfing the web - and she was right at home with it. I have tried the BeOS images, but never got them to work with a Linksys USB100TX or with a Netgear EA101. This is a shame, because BeOS is a very neat operating system - but alas... I also tried the Jailbait Linux images, but I personally thought the Midori images were a bit more "polished". The Jailbait images did work with both adapters, though, and are full featured. Definitely worth a go. I never got the QNX image to work correctly. It did work with the network adapter, but the GUI would lock up if I didn't disable the mouse (ironic, heh?) I _strongly_ suggest against Windows. This machine doesn't have much RAM, and there is no hard disk to swap to. If you swap to your microdrive (don't even ATTEMPT to swap to a solid-state CF card), it will overheat. Add on top of that a somewhat wierd ACPI subsystem, and a painful install process, and Windows is more trouble than it's worth IMHO. That said, I did manage to get it running on one of my IA-1's, and it made a poor MP3 player. The microdrive latencies caused WinAMP to hiccup every few seconds. First, though, figure out if your unit is hackable or not. Look for the iPaq on the lower right-hand corner of the bezel. If it's present- you are out of luck. If it isn't, then you can load whatever you want with just a CF card and reader. 08-01-2002 09:05:58

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) shadowsunrise Profile I would go for wildwes' midori_3 image. Once installed it goes directly to X (linux's GUI), so there's no messing around with 'cryptic' linux command lines. Midori runs the ICE flavor of X which as a close equivelant to the familiar windows start menu, from which you can launch any application you need. It also has drivers for USB ethernet adapters, the most popular of which seems to be the LinkSys USB100TX (do not confuse that with the nice, small, blue, LinkSys USB100M that you can find at any BestBuy). Here's a list of step-by-steps and resources that should get you up and running in no time with Midori if you choose to use it (many steps apply to any flavor of linux). To crack your IA1 and get to the BIOS screen where you will set it to boot off D:... ->http://www.php.net/~rasmus/steps.html To download the image for WildWes' Midori_3 download Midori_3.img here... ->http://www.ia1hacking.com/ia1_showfiles.php?category=linux And, for the dolly utility that you will use to clone the Midori_3.img onto the internal compactflash within your IA1, download dolly.zip here... ->http://www.ia1hacking.com/ia1_showfiles.php?category=windows Once you've got all that taken care of, here's what you do to get Midori_3.img (or whatever image you're going to use) onto your IA1. 1-Get a 32MB or larger compactflash card. 2-Make the CF bootable and make it similar to a DOS boot disk (more on that later) 3-Copy the image of your choice onto the CF card. 4-Insert CF into IA1 (after it's been 'hacked' so you can get to BIOS) 5-Power up your IA1 and it should register that you've inserted a CF card with a message that will contain the size of the internal [shows up as 15MB or 16MB] and whatever size CF you got. 6-As soon as that's up, hit the COMPAQ button to go to BIOS (as it says in ramsus' step-by-step) 7-Go to the boot options, it should show A:, C: and D:, set it to D: First, C: Second, A: Third. 8-Save & Exit 9-The IA1 should now boot off your CF and give you a simple DOS prompt. 10-Use dolly.exe to clone the linux image onto the internal CF. 11-Power down, remove CF and reboot. 12-tada, linux! Now, on the usage of dolly, be very careful, if you enter the wrong disk reference, it will overwrite the CF you're installing from! Just "dolly linux.img hd129:" where linux.img is the name of the image you would like to use (ex: midori_3.img). Now, I'm 80% sure that it's hd129; and not hd128;... I'll have to double check to be sure. The tricky bit is step 2, how you create your install CF depends on a few things. If you've got access to a laptop running win98 then you've got it easy. Buy a CF->PCMCIA card for $14 at BestBuy or even cheaper if you look for deals. Just plug it in the slot w/ your CF and it shows up as a real harddisk, just fdisk it (make sure to use option 5 to change to the correct 'harddisk', and display to make sure you got it right), and then you just "format d: /s" and copy dolly.exe and linux.img onto it. Any other configuration, and you'll need to jump through a few hoops, but plenty there's step-by-steps out there, and on this BBS. Hope that's some usefull information for you. If you'd like a bit more detail on any part, just ask, or search the rest of the BBS. Good-Luck. 08-01-2002 14:48:18

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) heitjer Profile | Email What can I say...... ...THANKS! This was a snap. I had some challenges on the CF card. Although I had all equipment at home, I could not work it with the ScanDisk USB CF reader. So I had to spend the $14 for the PCMCIA card reader. After that it was 20 minutes and I had the image and dolly on the CF. The hardware was hacked and I was in the BIOS in some additional 15 minutes thanks to rasmus detailed description. Here is a tip: do not use the GERMAN setup in the BIOS, the translation is misleading. Used dolly (it is hd129: by the way) and all of a sudden I saw a smiling Penguin. All in all it was a 1 hour job with no complications. After that I had to spend another hour playing TETRIS. Everything looks and runs fine and I will keep you posted on how my 'government' likes it. Here are some additional questions: When I press the ‘power off’ button the thing goes just to sleep – that is intended to work that way - right? Can I access Windows machines that have ‘shared directories’ with *.mp3? Or does this only works with linux machines? *heitjer* 08-02-2002 17:53:20

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) heitjer Profile | Email hmmmm, does the midori image loose all settings, bookmarks and email addresses when the plug is pulled or ther is a power outage? All email addresses that I entered yesterday are gone.... *heitjer* 08-03-2002 23:25:53

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) shadowsunrise Profile most of the filesystem is readonly to save wear and tear on the internal compact flash card. for general config settings, use 'thaw' and 'freeze' to allow read&write access to the directories where configurations are stored. you can 'thaw' modify your settings and then 'freeze' from the configuration screen (open the opera browser and put in http://localhost/) or from the command line. i know that thaw/freeze will take care of your settings such as ethernet configuration, etc... i don't know about favorites or address books though, but it just might. hope that helps. if you want more information on the nuts&bolts of midori, check out their official website at http://midori.transmeta.com/ (note: the information on that page covers the base midori linux, not the additional modifications made for the ia1). hope that helps. 08-05-2002 07:54:03

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) ranman Profile I have win98 installed on a 340mb microdrive. It works well. The microdrive did get very hot to the touch during installation, but afterwards it is okay. I haven't had any problems with the microdrive in the past year it has been running in the IA-1 (naturally it hasn't been on the whole time!). Other operating systems will probably be quicker and cheaper (no need to buy microdrive) but with win98, anything that works on a desktop system (via USB) will work on the IA-1. I have tried a webcam, a tv tuner, among other things. Of course, they were all usb, and they naturally operated more slowly than on a regular computer. Office 97 also works fine on it. I have mine setup with a 50meg swap file, and I never have a problem with it hanging due to getting to hot. Sure it gets warm, but never gives me a problem. Yes, the initial install process was difficult (I was one of the first to try it) but after learning along the way, it is quite easy (albeit time consuming). As a mp3 player, winAMP runs well on it. I am able to play mp3s through winamp, and it only uses 35% of cpu overhead, and I never notice any skips or problems. I haven't done it for a while, but it also can play mp3s over a network, although I think it used more than 50% of cpu overhead. Win98, in my opinion works very well for what I need it for. I have win98lite, but I have never tried it on the IA-1. I have also tried win98se, which is more difficult to install since it wants more install space on the microdrive. Either way, using win98 allows it to be just a slow windows machine, with ability to use just about anything that comes in usb. ranman 10-28-2002 19:29:35

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) heitjer Profile | Email ranman, For the time being we (my wife and me) are happy with this little thing as it is. Especially the 'thaw' and 'freeze' info was very helpful. Thanks to shadowsunrise!!! I must admit that I am a Windows user and I would prefer to use Win98SE on this machine. This would ease my setting problems and would allow me to run this sufficiently in my home network including printing to the network printer. I am just afraid that this little machine is too slow for that. Also, the overheating problems stated in some threads has scared me away so far. There were also some issues on the 3.3V versus the 5V to get microdrives working reliably. Did you changed the Voltage to 5V on yours? But I am always open to change. Problem is that I have only a registered SE version so I would like to hear a little bit more about the quoted problems on your side. *heitjer* 10-29-2002 08:40:27

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) ranman Profile heitjer, No matter what OS you use, the single most important thing is that you are happy with it. I have 2 IA-1s. I use win98 on the one (naturally I can move it back and forth) and I use one of the beia images on the other. With the beia image, I can simply use that ia-1 to dial up online and get some information quickly. I keep this one at one of the offices we sometimes use. With windows 98 on it, I haven't had any problems. I cannot remember the IA-1 OR the microdrive ever locking up due to getting too hot. The microdrive I have is an IBM 340mb, so maybe that is why I have no problem using the drive on either of my IA-1s. I have not done ANY modifications to my IA-s other than resetting the bios. Both of my IA-1s are refurbs. The 1st one I bought at staples for $30 including tax (after $100 MIR) worked well for 6 months, until I heard a little noise and the screen burned out. I think it was due to the fact that the wires had rubbed against some metal due to me taking it apart a bunch of times. So they sent me a refurb and it has worked well. The 2nd one is also a refurb. Right before the end of 2001, when msn said they would no longer support the emachine msn companion, they said they would send you an IA-1 if you had one of the emachines. So I looked on ebay for an emachine msn companion, and got one for $25. Then called up msn (I did have an msn account) and told them, and they sent me a refurbed ia-1. Still have the emachine too. As far as installation for the win98se, it wants just a few more megs for the minimal install than win98FE. Sounds like a problem, but really isn't, so, just make sure that you copy some of the .cab files over to the internal flash. Then when it gives an error, point it to the internal flash. I think that is how I got it working. I did have win98se on it for a while, but then was using the microdrive in an ipaq 3635 sleeve, so I had to reinstall windows, and just put win98fe on it. If you want win98se on the microdrive, let me know via email, and I can probably help you out. I would most likely be using the IA-1 more if I didn't already have 13 computers, appliances, and PDAs. ranman 10-29-2002 21:36:16

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) zxhwk Profile | Email SHADOWSUNRISE the link that you say one the hacker.net site for the linux img 3 dsoesnt work hgow do i get it from there when i try everything i cant seem to download it. 10-30-2002 18:36:47

RE:The 'right' image - stuck on BOOT ORDER (modified 0 times) AtlantaX Profile Hello all- having a little trouble with the boot order section of the instructions for the "right image". I can get to the BIOS but the boot order only has FLOPPY DRIVE A: as an option. If i'm reading the instructions right, I should be able to see options for A C and D. Can anyone help? Thanks! windeler@mail.com 11-04-2002 17:36:38

RE:The 'right' image (modified 0 times) axxhacker Profile | Email 1. Unplug the companion from the wall 2. Put the CF card in it. 3. Plug it back up and start pushing the compaq key or the 't' key to get in the bios. 4. You might have to stop pushing the key for a second until it say something like it's found the flash card. 5. When it does this start pushing it again for about 15 seconds, then let off and it should take you in the bios. 6. You should have it now. 7. You have to get in the bios the first time it's turned on with the cf card in. Good luck If this doesn't work let me know axx-hacker 11-04-2002 21:37:47

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