Where to good quality used computers

[Member seaken64]

Helpful

Up

0

::

@AA BB, Yes, E-bay has a good system and it is mature. If you know what to do it is efficient, as you have shown.

Seaken64

[Member PDP-8]

Helpful

Up

0

::

One of the great things about antiX (and MX too) when it comes to older gear is the fantastic ability to run with persistence on USB.

That way, if you have a beloved laptop or other piece of gear, you may want to extend it’s life by running with NO hard-drive at all! Either pull it, or if you are allowed to in the bios, tell the system you don’t have one installed.

Now the system will run cooler and extend the life of the components, some of which like power supplies (especially if internal), become “unobtainium” or too costly or complicated to replace. Not having the hard drive spin up and down can also reduce battery wear on a laptop, especially if you are using a very late 3rd-party lithium battery replacement, which can sometimes be much less quality than the original eom batteries of years past.

Remember those days of playing around with “hdparm” in an effort to minimize the hard drive activity? Disable it in bios, or even pull it out entirely if the machine will still run, and run solely from persistent usb sticks, something with antiX and MX do wonderfully.

Sometimes if you do pull the drive, the next time the machine will complain loudly, forcing you into the bios to inform the laptop that there simply isn’t any, and it will stop complaining. Of course you now need bootable usb sticks.

** WARNING **
Only do this if you are comfortable with the hardware. Do NOT brick your machine if you don’t know what you are doing. At the least, one could take advantage of antiX and MX usb stick persistence, and then use HDPARM somewhere in your startup scripts to try and shut the hard drive down as much as possible.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by PDP-8.

[Member anti-ewaste]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I just discovered Plop boot manager, I guess aside from the size of many distros being DVD length and some older machines only have a CD-ROM it is also good for the fact that the optical drive may also need a little life extension rather than reading from the optical disc continuously for distro hopping..

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

PDP-8 wrote: “One of the great things about antiX (and MX too) when it comes to older gear is the fantastic ability to run with persistence on USB.”

I completely agree, though there are MANY great things. I could care less about the fanciest stuff, because I almost always change the appearance to suit my own needs. With EITHER antiX or MX Linux, one of the other things that I really appreciate is that they are made to work. In all the years of MEPIS, antiX, and MX Linux, I think there was only ONE Alpha build (more than a decade ago in MEPIS), that had an issue with the hardware I use; it was one of the first (and only) feature regressions, it was in the first Alpha build, I reported it IMMEDIATELY and I’ve never seen that kind of bug, regardless of Alpha, Beta, or released software. Defects in general are minor and are usually application defects, NOT distribution defects. We’re talking about more than fifteen years of history here too. There are very few distributions that have a record that good. Keep in mind I’m not saying there were zero defects, there just are extremely RARE show stopper defects, highly impressive, especially with small development teams; maybe that, and the commitment to quality, is what makes the difference!

@anti-ewaste: I may be a veteran software user and a long time Linux enthusiast, but it does not mean that I have tried out every possible software combination. I have not ever used the Plop boot manager. I used the original GRUB boot loader, now known as GRUB Legacy for many years and I could chain load distributions and do all kinds of “balancing acts” with GRUB Legacy. I’ve become reasonably adept with the current GRUB 2 boot manager/loader, but I would not quite claim to be an “expert”, just a competent user, capable of making routine modifications and updating it, or reinstalling it when something accidentally is changed or a new distribution “grabs control” of the boot loader.

So I’m interested in your comments on Plop. Is it full of features, really simple, or highly advanced? Is there something you particularly like about it? Also if you have any comparisons with other boot loaders, like the old ones: LILO, syslinux, etc, compared to GRUB, I’d be interested. I may look into it myself, but your impressions are appreciated; thanks!

--
Brian Masinick

[Member anti-ewaste]

Helpful

Up

0

::

@masinick – As far as I know Plop serves one simple function of booting from a USB drive when your BIOS is too old to support it. So you just put it on a CD (again in my case only a CD-ROM drive, also cannot use images of a distro that requires a DVD due to size) and it loads that tiny piece of code to then let you choose to boot through USB, that’s it. I’m working on an old Dell Dimension 2350 (P4) and it does not support USB boot, and who knows how well the CD-ROM drive works after all this time (we know optical drives have their aging issues) but I’m sure it has a much better chance of handling loading 2 megs of data rather than the whole live session let alone install – then Plop will let you start loading from the USB image of any distro on a flash drive, and if it’s a good fit then install. I’ve yet to try it but the concept is a very simple workaround.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

@anti-ewaste: Thank you for your explanation.

I just searched to find out more:

What is Plop?
Plop is the company name. https://www.plop.at/en/whatisplop.html
Boot Managers
I wrote different boot managers. Three boot managers are available as download. The Plop Boot Manager 5, PlopKexec and the new boot manager PBM6. The new boot manager is under development.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

Introduction
The Plop Boot Manager is a small program to boot different operating systems. The boot manager has a built-in ide cdrom and usb driver to access that hardware without the help/need of a bios. You can boot the operating systems from hard disk, floppy, CD/DVD or from USB. You can start the boot manager from floppy, CD, network and there are many more ways to start the boot manager. You can install the boot manager on your hard disk. There is no extra partition required for the boot manager.

Programming language: Assembler
Software developer: Elmar Hanlhofer

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/intro.html

--
Brian Masinick

[Member Noman01]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks everyone for our input and ideas, well be looking to use most of them if not all. However I have a followup question, after looking around at online stores like newegg, bestbuy,, amazon, for (refurbished/renewed) just to see what was available. I found some small form factor units that look interesting, just wondering if anyone had any experience with put antiX on anything like these?

Mini PC,T11 Windows 10 Pro(64-bit) Intel x5-Z8350 Fanless Mini Computer with HDMI/VGA Port,4K HD,4GB/64GB eMMC,2.4/5G WiFi,Gigabit Ethernet,Support 2.5-Inch SATA SSD/HDD,Auto Power On

Beelink U57 Mini PC with Intel Core i5-5257u Processor(up to 3.10 GHz)&Windows 10 Pro,8G DDR3L/256G SSD High Performance Business Mini Computer,2.4G/5G Dual WiFi,BT4.2,Dual HDMI Ports

Desktop Mini PC Fanless Computer Windows 10 Pro Intel Atom Quad Core x5-Z8350 4GB DDR/64GB eMMC HDMI and VGA Port 2.4/5.8G WiFi BT4.1 USB 3.0 Mounting Bracket Auto Power On

Prices run from 119.00 to 139.00 USD.

Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I’ve heard of these two before, but I do not have actual experience with any of them. EDIT: follow Xecure’s suggestions; he knows much more about this than I do!

While I’m not 100% positive, the prices seem reasonable. The prices of some laptops have actually gone up recently due to low supply, so if you can actually find one of these, I’d say “great”!

Mini PC,T11 Windows 10 Pro(64-bit) Intel x5-Z8350 Fanless Mini Computer with HDMI/VGA Port,4K HD,4GB/64GB eMMC,2.4/5G WiFi,Gigabit Ethernet,Support 2.5-Inch SATA SSD/HDD,Auto Power On

Desktop Mini PC Fanless Computer Windows 10 Pro Intel Atom Quad Core x5-Z8350 4GB DDR/64GB eMMC HDMI and VGA Port 2.4/5.8G WiFi BT4.1 USB 3.0 Mounting Bracket Auto Power On

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Noman01 wrote:

Desktop Mini PC Fanless Computer Windows 10 Pro Intel Atom Quad Core x5-Z8350 4GB DDR/64GB eMMC HDMI and VGA Port 2.4/5.8G WiFi BT4.1 USB 3.0 Mounting Bracket Auto Power On

Intel x5-Z8350 has worked well for me (antiX-wise), so it could be an option.
BUT, don’t get anything with an exclusive eMMC drive (no other possible extra drives). eMMC disks cannot be changed/replaced, so they are a no-no. Better HDD or SSD sata drives (or have a sata connector).
Anyway, you should first make sure what the wifi model is and if it is compatible with (supported by) linux. For wifi and for the other components.

Easy way. search the model + linux using your favourite search engine.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member Noman01]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks you for the quick response, I was just looking, thought I could dump window’s 10 and put antiX on it didn’t know about the eMMC drives good to know information again thanks.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Noman01.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Where I go.

Google Maps Link

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member fatmac]

Helpful

Up

0

::

My present ‘desktop’ is a box that measures about 4.5″ x 4.5″ x 1.5″ & is fully capable for normal useage, even some heavy processor work occasionally. Celeron processor, 4GB ram, 240GB M2 SSD drive.

I also have a Chromebook with an eMMC storage of just 16GB with a Celeron processor that has our version of Linux on it, only the sound card doesn’t have a driver, & I use this mainly for my online forums, very convenient.
If interested in these, check out MrChromebox – https://mrchromebox.tech/

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Author]

Posts