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    • Archive for February, 2010

    Dell D600 password removal


    2010 - 02.27

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    Posted in Geek | No Comments »

    My Pa was recently given a Dell D600 laptop which was locked with a bios power-on password, it was his to keep for free because there was no way of removing it with software and Dell had said that the owner would have to pay to have it removed but also show proof of purchase.

    That wasn’t going to happen.  I consulted the internet for ages, coming up blank.  My Pa pulled the BIOS battery and normal battery, dumped it in the freezer for 4 days and see if it would forget about the password as had been suggested as this does work on car stereo’s, well, it used to.  Needless to say it was a fruitless effort.

    Today I came by and he said he was about to dump it so I decided to have another look around and see what I could see.  Turns out that the way Dell store BIOS configs is in a flash chip.  The flash chip on this particular model is the 24C02 and is located just beneath the PCMCIA bay.  All you need is a paperclip or hair pin, a small screw driver and some balls to actually rip apart the lappy.

    You can find a fanastic guide on how to do this here:  http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a709.asp

    Proof of the pudding, my Pa now has a working Dell D600 laptop that is currently installing Mint Linux.  If you get stuck just request some info here and I’ll help as much as I can.

    If it helps though, find the 24C02 chip located below the PCMCIA bay under the black tape (peel it back), short pins 3 and 6 with a paperclip or hair pin, hold it in place while you push the mains power in and then push the power button on the lappy.

    The Chip

    Wait 10 seconds or so, pull the power.  Then take out the jumper, push it back in and turn on.  Hopefully you’ll be greeted with this screen instead:

    Bios Screen

    Tada.  Put it back together and away you go.

    Pulse audio remove, use alsa!


    2010 - 02.24

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    Posted in Geek | 2 Comments »

    I don’t know about you but I’m a little narked at Ubuntu forcing the PulseAudio issue. It sucks; big sweaty nut sacks worth of sucks!

    I’ve seen a whole bunch of threads saying “don’t remove it, it’ll destroy your soul and rape your nasal passages” but that’s a load of tosh. I’ve removed it on Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 and Mint Linux Gloria (8) without any issues. Actually, by removing it and going back to ALSA I now have a working sound in Skype, Urban Terror and WormUx where as I never did before.

    Here’s what you do:

    Fire up Synaptic
    Quick Search for Pulse
    Remove PulseAudio, it’ll remove a ton of dependencies
    Quick Search for Alsa
    Install gnome-alsamixer and alsa-oss

    Click apply. Reboot your PC and it should still start up with sound. Skype will need to be reconfigured to use ALSA but the games will automatically have audio again.

    Intel Linux driver hanging xorg


    2010 - 02.21

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    Posted in Geek | No Comments »

    The other day I upgraded a mates laptop. By upgrade, I mean I removed Vista and installed Linux. Everything worked pretty well apart from the sound card, but this was fixed in a new kernel. Being that I’d used the only CD I had knocking about, I’d installed Mint Linux 7. No probs, I thought, I’ll just go through the upgrade process to version 8.

    I did everything to the book, it all went well. Rebooted and then just hung. Thing is, it was actually working, I couldn’t see the screen or swap in to the terminals. After much rooting around I discovered it was the screen driver.

    Editing xorg.conf, I thought I’d just pop in VESA and all would be well… how wrong was I. Turns out the Intel driver for the Intel cards can be pretty pants and to fix it is just to add this line to xorg.conf video driver section:

    Option “NoAccel” “true”

    Obviously you’ll be wondering how to get to be able to do this if you’re a newbie. When Linux boots, select recovery mode, from the menu select drop to root shell. Type “nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf”, then edit away.

    Reboot and enjoy ;)

    Mint Linux 8 bits and bobs


    2010 - 02.20

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    Posted in Geek | No Comments »

    For anyone that knows me, you know I’m one of the biggest Linux fans out there.  My background started in the DOS days, PC and MS versions and I’ve been a natural born CLI lover since.  One of the things I used to love about Linux so much was living down and dirty at the Shell but I’m a bit down cast about the fact that Mint Linux is so tight on the GUI that you no longer need to drop to the Shell to do anything.

    So you lot won’t see this as a bad thing, especially Windows lovers.  One of the things I have found though is that my favourite apps and utils aren’t available as default installs.  So, here’s my little list of things to install to set things right:

    First up is Skype is missing.  Simple fix, fire up Synaptic Package Manager, Settings, Repositories, Other tab, click the Add button and drop in this line:

    deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

    Click close, Reload and then you’ll find Skype in the list.  Check it and install.

    Next on my list is a distinct lack of MSN with webcam enabled software.  For this you will want aMSN, it’s already in the list, check that too.  CD burning, well, there’s only one non-commercial app I’ll trust for that and it’s K3B, check that.  If you want, uncheck empathy and Brasero as they are installed by default but you don’t require them as you’ve just installed replacements.

    I code for websites, no tools for that either, so check Bluefish.  It’s not WYSIWYG as I believe that it’s more What You See Is Not What You Get Or Anywhere Near It.  If you do love some WYSIWYG action though, check Komposer.  Any one with a little DreamWeaver usage under their belt will feel right at home.  To go with my web work, I’m also a heavy GIMP user (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).  It’s a very powerful package and comparable to Photoshop but being GPL there are lots of additions to it.  Grab the extra packages by checking gimp-data-extras, gimp-save-for-web and gimp-plugin-registry.

    Hit Apply and wait while your software downloads and installs.  You’ll be a happy bunny when it’s done.