Comments on: The mysteries of life

By: How to finally say goodbye « Motho ke motho ka botho

How to finally say goodbye « Motho ke motho ka botho — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 12:34:32 +0000

[...] be real though: Sometimes sentimental value is a crock, as I can tell you firsthand. Don’t tell me how much you can’t bear to part with your old 486 laptop, and then tell [...]

By: Nothing to scoff at: Arch Linux, 300Mhz Celeron « Motho ke motho ka botho

Nothing to scoff at: Arch Linux, 300Mhz Celeron « Motho ke motho ka botho — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:58:25 +0000

[...] drive with the WD Scorpio, which is just lying around these days. Might as well put it to use, and provided it will start, it’ll be good for serving up Ubuntu 10.04, which is due in another 10 days or so. [...]

By: Buying a name « Motho ke motho ka botho

Buying a name « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:02:14 +0000

[...] 2010/01/08 Arch Linux , Crux Linux , Hardware , Linux , Ubuntu Leave a Comment I dropped a hint the other day, when I mentioned that “none of my Pentium machines” would boot from a 120Gb hard [...]

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:29:51 +0000

I know occasionally there is a cylinder limit in the BIOS; it was one of the tricks used a decade ago to convince people to buy a new computer. You couldn’t just change out the hard drive because it couldn’t read the size on a larger drive.

In most cases though, so long as the first partition is small enough to duck in under that size limit, it will be okay. After Linux takes over from Grub (for example), it usually doesn’t care about the size of the drive.

I think in my case a 120Gb hard drive is reporting numbers that are beyond what the machine can read. A smaller drive, for example 40Gb, is still too big for the BIOS, but it can still accept the number … it just wouldn’t boot it if it weren’t for that smaller partition.

But it might be the number is so big that it considers it an error of some kind, and comes to a halt. That’s my only explanation and I have no technical grounds for it, but it helps me sleep at night …

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:24:36 +0000

That would be doubly ironic. …

By: Pipe

Pipe — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:04:50 +0000

I was wondering why older computers don’t like bigger hard drives. It takes several minutes for my Celeron 850Mhz to post with a 80Gb hard drive.

By: x33a

x33a — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:32:46 +0000

He’s probably waiting for it to turn old enough, and then sell it as an antique for a high price