Reports of My Tiger Have Been Greatly Exaggerated ;)

starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
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Hello again, [H] Worklogs! It's been too long, way too long... ;)

I started a worklog a few months back, and before I could get going I lost interest :( and now the log is gone. However... I'm doing a complete re-imagining of the object of that worklog, and I have grand plans and a tentative schedule worked out.

I'm talking, of course, of my long-running (but currently on hiatus) shitbox mod, Paper Tiger.

Yes, Virginia, there will be a Paper Tiger 2!!

First, however, the requisite trip down Memory Lane...


The original Paper Tiger, thrown together from scrap around the house, was a Socket 7 system :eek: that ran a copy of SuSE 7 Pro that a college prof gave to me because it was wasting space in his office. It didn't last very long...


A few days later, it looked like this. Not much improved, IIRC.


A few motherboards --and other config changes later-- I had a system with a Socket 462/A system (Athlon XP -- remember those? :D ) with a gig and a half of RAM. The hard drive wasn't very spacious, tho -- a 20gb Seagate out of a beige Dell. These photos were taken by my father at his house. His wife --my stepmother-- stepped in the room for a while and remarked that, given the appearance and the fact that it actually ran, it scared her a little. Heh heh...


...and the final configuration, as of Sept 2012, shortly before I started tearing it apart.

The NEW Paper Tiger has only just begun... here are the specs of the new system...

Commell LE-370Z Motherboard
Integrated Celeron M ULV 600MHz (!) CPU (soldered down; I'd upgrade if I could!)
Intel 852GM / ICH4 chipset
1GB PC3200 DDR RAM (1x1024, running at PC2100 speeds because that's all the board will do)
ATi RADEON 7000 PCI graphics card (no, not PCIe -- 32b PCI) on proprietary riser card
40GB Toshiba MK40GAS notebook IDE hard drive (pull from a laptop that got a bigger drive)
Onboard power connectors (12v barrel jack input, P4 power input, Berg [floppy drive] power output)
Single combined PS/2 port (plus splitter dongle)
2x USB2 ports
RJ45 LAN port
Mobo onboard VGA (useless -- there's something weird about it, that makes it not want to work with a regular monitor)
DB9M COM Port
Headphone Jack
PCI Card VGA Port

...and the OS will be some flavor of Puppy Linux with a 3.x.x kernel, because that's the only versions of Puppy that are compatible. I might try out the new Upup Precise 3.9.9...

So today, I figured out the new look (and it is different) and started work. I cut up some wood, drilled holes where they needed to be, and applied some clearcoat (Krylon's finest :D ). Another coat will be sprayed on tonight before bed. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll get some plastic cut up and drilled (tomorrow will be a busy day for other reasons). If there's time, I"ll also put a tail on a switch and figure out how I want to attach it. Saturday is probably when final assembly will likely happen, along with OS installation.

Here's a pic of where things stand now... first coat of of Krylon curing on the wood, on my dirty-ass porch that hasn't been cleaned up and swept in far, far too long :p


More to come, late tomorrow evening :D
 
Heh...

I have some help with errands today (I'm poor, I don't drive, and public transit here REALLY sucks...) so I'll be out between 1pm and 4pm. When I get back it'll be time to work on this.

@Quicksilver_ -- sorry, no actual paper. Not even cardboard. Just wood and plastic from a rigid translucent binder.
 
Well, I got to work on Paper Tiger 2 at around 5:30pm today, and took a brief break (about an hour) to make and eat dinner, and an hour ago I thought I was done. Went and got the mobo... and discovered that 3-7/8" was not equivalent to 3-5/8" :eek: oh well, back to work :( Here's the build photos so far, with more to come later...





...and this is my workspace, with all the tools I've used...


...left to right... three boxed household/misc. hardware assortments, two boxed computer hardware assortments, a utility knife with an almost-ergonomic handle, two Phillips screwdrivers, a vintage-mid-1990s ratchet/socket set, my trusty Rockwell drill from God only knows how long ago, red electrical tape, a pair of pliers, and my trusty Stanley FatMax (nothing I have cuts through wood faster...). Not shown (I just realized) is my Kobalt brand keyhole saw.
 
Yeah, it looks a little nicer than I'd like... that's gotta be a new one, Paper Tiger looking too nice :D usually it has no trouble looking like pure shit -- as you can tell.

Well, it looks like I didn't measure right a second time and was 1/16" off on the back holes for the mobo tray again. Annie get your drill :p lol.

I'll have to figure out a way to scruff it up, too -- I did too much almost-professional type shit. I marked all the holes before drilling. I did a lot of measuring. Hell, I used clearcoat on the wood to make it last! (If I had a power sander, I'd strip that shit and Krylon it. Wait... is Krylon a verb?) I'm even planning on putting a label on it that has nice-looking computer graphics rather than Sharpie poo. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE???

...then again, the last plan I had for Paper Tiger 2 (which has been thoroughly scrapped) had a lot of nice brass and steampunky bits everywhere and would've looked even better... I was even planning on giving it a little horsepower via a 939 board. WTF?
 
Almost done. All that remains is the OS install. I'll try a Puppy Linux variant, Upup Precise 3.9.9.1 (an update release of 3.9.9) but if I don't like it I'll fall back to Upup Precise 3.8.7.

The important thing to know here is that, unlike many other OSes, which Puppy you run has more to do with system specs and the programs you need (4.*.* Puppies won't run newer than Chrome 12 due to glibc, but run very well on older computers, etc.); it's a balancing act between what you want and what you want it on, rather than anything to do with security. As a Puppy user you run as root (Puppy is not natively multi-user) BUT BUT BUT since Puppy is designed to do that it's not anywhere near as dangerous as it is with other distros. Root is not universally bad. Besides, "smart" people using computers can do dumb stuff. I've clicked on a postcard email virus at least once, and I rather think I know a little more than the "what's an ethernet?" group. (Also, "smart" vs "dumb" is a bit of a non-issue. Any OS, if designed and built right, should be as easy to use as Windows --and really it should be easier-- for the uninitiated or under-initiated. You shouldn't have different OSes for what are largely perceived differences in intelligence [which are, in fact, differences more in interest than anything else].)

/boringassmonologue

So here's the next five pix. Three views of the finished system (with soda for scale), a (sorta) good view of the ports, and the later-applied logo for the system. For reference, the logo is a 2x4-inch shipping label covered with packing tape. It mostly sticks to the wood :p



The ports (again) are, left to right...
12v (in) barrel jack, combined PS/2 for keyboard and mouse, RJ-45 LAN, unused onboard VGA, COM1 (RS-232 serial), 1/8" stereo headphones/speakers jack, and on the PCI card above, the usable VGA port.

Debating whether or not to do a pic of the system once I get an OS on it... I have a very hard time photographing screens...
 
I like it although i question whether that ATI 7000 is stronger than the stock video on the existing board. :p

Have you ever thought about making it sort of like a partially open enclosure out of wood? Instead of having six sides, have 4 and leave the top and back wide open.

I was thinking of doing the same with the Axiomtech unit you sent me. My buddy is building a cnc machine. My plan so far is to create a plexi enclosure of sorts. I've been tinkering around with an idea in my head to have a 4 sided enclosure that would hold the board in place by having simple slots cnc'd out of the actual plexi sides. The board and other periphs would just slide into those slots.
 
The reason for the card actually has nothing to do with its PURE AWESOME GRAPHICS POWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

...of which it has almost none, I'm sure :p

The reason is that the board's internal display system has a nonstandard output. I've not gotten a completely intelligible output from it yet... the closest I've come to that is with a 1991 Samsung CVL4522 fixed-resolution base-VGA monitor (640x480, 8/16bit color) that's simply too primitive to reject garbage or out-of-spec inputs. It produces a full screen of data in about 1/4 of the viewable area, and that image repeats for the rest of the viewable area -- and cycles upward over the screen rather rapidly. I suspect a very strange refresh rate, but I honestly haven't an idea. Someone told me once about something called "Sync on Green" that was a VGA variation... but I don't know squat about it, and I don't have an oscilloscope or three to figure out what in blazes is going on with the thing, so after a week or so of futzing trying to figure it out I said f$#! it and got the Radeon.

I actually was inspired for the form of the case --if you can call that dumpy pile of wood and plastic a case-- by something called the "Edelweiss PC" -- I have only one picture of it but goooooooooogle has plenty more ;) it's pretty :D so I sort of did my own rendition of that with what I had. If I had better tools and some actual modding skill to my name, I could produce something really nice looking. I know I've got the eye for it. Oh well, maybe someday... maybe...

That's an awesome case idea BTW -- I've always thought toolless cases needed two tools no matter what: one tool to smash the infernal thing to bits, and the other tool being the sadistic designer -- but that's because every one I've used has been positively infuriating. Your idea sounds refreshingly different -- simple, easy-to-use, and brutally effective. A winning combination :D if you want a list of what I don't like about toolless cases (and/or cases in general), shoot me a PM and I'll give you everything I've got... should help with the beta a little.
 
FINALLY got around to installing an OS on Paper Tiger 2. Here's a pic... taken with a camera of a CRT monitor.



Camera is my pile-of-dog-shit-that's-slightly-falling-apart Kodak DX7630 (I swear I got the Fuzzy Pix Edition by mistake...). Screen is an eMachines branded eView 17f2 flatscreen CRT. 17" class (no idea of actual diagonal size)... heavy enough to moonlight as a container ship's primary anchor... but it displays lots of glowy information-y stuff without complaint, so I've yet to trash it...

OS is Puppy Linux, specifically a Puplet (unofficial derivative) named Upup Raring 3.9.9.1. It's compatible with Ubuntu Raring Ringtail *.deb packages, hence the name. Download and support thread here, if anyone cares. I've applied a custom wallpaper and icon theme, along with a non-default but included GTK theme and JWM theme. I'll upload the wallpaper if someone wants; the icon theme is called 'Rouge' and is available at puppy.b0x.me (web home of Puppian dejan555); I forget the name of the GTK theme; and the JWM theme is called Onyx.

Puppy is configurable tho, to say the least -- if you don't dig the work of one Joe Wingbermuehle (what a name! In looking up the proper spelling, I noticed that there's a screenie of Wary Puppy 5.x on the Wikipedia page for JWM. LOL.), you can go with Openbox or IceWM without much trouble. There are also builds of the major DEs, although right now the GNOME-based ones (GNOME 2.32, GNOME 3.something, and a couple versions of MATE 1.x) have a few behavior problems with some hardware (I can't seem to make them work on an Atom board I have, something about the GMA500 in it doesn't like gmbus...). There are builds for LXDE, XFCE, KDE, and Enlightenment (E16 and E17) at the very least. Someone's even made a GTK-based knockoff of the Windows Metro interface, if anyone cares, but that runs in JWM. We even have one desktop environment (really a set of extensions to JWM that make you think you're running something far fancier) that is Puppy-only, developed by a French fellow who calls himself Argolance. His creation is called 2PDE, and if you like art deco, you'll love 2PDE.

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Well, that about wraps things up. Let me know what you folks think...
 
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