eeepc: Sat Dec 15 03:58:00 2007

Sat Dec 15 03:58:00 2007

Asus put out a press release indicating that they understood the Magnuson-Moss act after all, and that simply upgrading the memory was not a warrantee-voiding operation (but that of course "screwing it up" was :-)

Newegg carried a 2G SODIMM for $40 (part number 20-208-323, "Transcend 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Notebook Memory - Retail"); a little quality time with a screwdriver, and I've got 1G available under linux (the Xandros kernel isn't built with CONFIG_HIGHMEM, which seems terribly retro, but I'll rebuild it some time, and getting the first 1G is a win anyway.)

As with any memory upgrade, run memtest86+ beforehand (to convince yourself it "plays well" with your chipset) and after (to actually test the new RAM.) Pointing your sources.list at Debian Stable is enough to get the binary, but actually running it requires some grub mucking. The basic technique is

• use F9 to get to grub, then boot with XANDROSBOOTDEBUG=y
• mount /dev/sda1 /mnt-system
• mount /dev/sda2 /mnt-user
• cp /mnt-user/boot/memtest86+.bin /mnt-system/boot
• cat /mnt-user/usr/share/doc/memtest86+/examples/grub-menu.lst >> /mnt-system/boot/grub/menu.lst
  • note that the >> is very important, you want to append it, not destroy the existing one
  • you might be happier copying it to /mnt-system/boot/grub/tmpmenu and using :r in vi to read it in
• umount /mnt-user
• umount /mnt-system
• power off, then reboot, use F9, and select the memtest86+ grub entry.

While you're in there, I'd also

• clone the "normal boot" entry, then modify the first one to say INIT=/sbin/init
  • yes, all caps, it's an argument to the initrd boot script, not the kernel
• clone the "normal boot" entry again and modify the clone to say XANDROSBOOTDEBUG=y
• turn off hiddenmenu... but be sure to set timeout to something that isn't 0 first! 10 (seconds) seems plenty.
  • if you get this wrong (like I did the first time, oops :-) you can install ncurses-hexeditor and use it to find menu.lst directly on /dev/sda1, but you have to turn the offset into a dd command by hand, hexeditor doesn't seem to actually support changing disk images, even as root.

Looks like a full memtest86+ pass will take a couple of hours, but I was happy with it running clean for half an hour (though I'll probably do a complete run later.) Now I should be able to run akregator and firefox at the same time, and kphotoalbum should be a bit happier too.

Next project: Amazon had (via the TigerDirect store) the "Cirago BTA-3210 MICRO Bluetooth USB Adapter" - sticks out about 2mm from the USB port when plugged in - if that works, I'll have to wonder off somewhere and post pictures "from the field" via my cellphone :-)

Footnotes:

• Asus "warrantee update" press release http://usa.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=9223
• Newegg RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820208323
• memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/ (but just install it from Debian)
• Cirago Bluetooth dongle http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W4TZSC
• source for XANDROSBOOTDEBUG so I didn't have to boot off of SD http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:installrescuemode