Asus Eee PC Seashell - can it live again?

[BarriBurt]

This type of error is usually associated with the up/down keys, another thing it could be is a scancode error [search linux scancode errors]

Thanks, i'll try that later. Noticed also the errant inputs vanish if any key is pressed. Suspect is the keyboard itself. Assessing the "bother" factor before spending more money on this little thing.

Just got done replacing the platter drive with an SSD though, so I'm $44aud into this affair now. The older of the two boys is chomping at the bit to do something with it. Bad luck him, updates still take their time. He'll get a go soon.

 

[Brickwizard]

updates still take their time.

Although it's the best of the bunch, it will be a bit slow compared to newer kit, due in the main to the 2gb of ram. You may find it a little quicker if you hard-wire it to the Router,

 

[ML_113]

The CLI Apt Installer of antiX is very powerful, try to learn that instead of going for other distros. Worse come to worst you can install Synaptic then remove it when you are done.
Beside Puppy I doubt that your eeePC can run smooth on other distros.

 

[BarriBurt]

Although it's the best of the bunch, it will be a bit slow compared to newer kit, due in the main to the 2gb of ram. You may find it a little quicker if you hard-wire it to the Router,

Yes, that's quite true! It has Ethernet connectivity, but it's keeping itself to <1mbps for some reason. Not sure why. Sure makes downloads take a long time. Funny, did not do that on first install with the platter drive, but it does now following reinstall with the SSD. shrug

Also, doesn't recognise the WiFi card. That's a bit sad. I could get it some kind of WiFi card Linux understands, either internal or USB, but I'll see how we go with the kids before buying more parts.

 

[Brickwizard]

Also, doesn't recognise the WiFi card.

your INXI shows Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter, when connected by ethanet you will be able to download the atheros drivers from the software manager

 

[BarriBurt]

I don't see that in the AntiX "Software Installer"... spent about 10min googling away for AntiX apt install atheros ar9285, no clear winners yet. Maybe it doesn't have this driver in any of the repositories it's using at the moment.
Current output from inxi -Fxz doesn't indicate a WiFi card at all, from what I can see. I'll check BIOS.

When replacing the SSD, I knew it also wanted CMOS battery. Old one was one of those heatgun wrapped affairs with a plug hanging off. I figured change it and solder the points back on, but the old soldering iron has been ignored for so many years it was full of ant dirt. lol

So, I recovered another CR2032-on-a-Wire I've had in the toolbox for a few years (still a good 3.3v on the multimeter, surprisingly) and plugged that in. Works but wire was shorter, so instead of it's intended cavity the battery is crammed in under the WiFi card now, and might be affecting the seating of the adapter. Hence, possibly I'll have to sort something else for that battery or else run without one.



littleburt@Seashell:~
$ inxi -Fxz
System:
Kernel: 6.1.42-antix.1-amd64-smp arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 13.2.0 Desktop: IceWM v: 3.4.1 Distro: antiX-23_x64-full Arditi del
Popolo 27 August 2023 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: 1215P v: x.x
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: 1215P v: x.xx serial: <superuser required>
BIOS: American Megatrends v: 0601 date: 04/18/2011
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 50.3 Wh (97.9%) condition: 51.4/56.2 Wh (91.5%)
volts: 12.4 min: 10.8 model: ASUS 1215P status: not charging
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Atom N570 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Bonnell
rev: A cache: L1: 112 KiB L2: 1024 KiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 999 min/max: 1000/1667 cores: 1: 999 2: 999 3: 999
4: 999 bogomips: 13318
Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics
vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel arch: PowerVR SGX535 bus-ID: 00:02.0
Device-2: IMC Networks USB 2.0 UVC VGA WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus-ID: 1-6:4
Display: server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: intel dri: i915
gpu: i915 resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
API: OpenGL v: 2.1 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: i915 Pineview M)
direct-render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio vendor: ASUSTeK
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.1.42-antix.1-amd64-smp running: yes
Sound Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.65 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet
vendor: ASUSTeK Eee PC 1015PX driver: atl1c v: kernel port: ec00
bus-ID: 01:00.0
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 232.89 GiB used: 8.3 GiB (3.6%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: PNY model: 250GB SATA SSD size: 232.89 GiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 228.17 GiB used: 8.3 GiB (3.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 1024 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swap/swap
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 144 Uptime: 22h 21m Memory: 1.92 GiB used: 844.4 MiB (43.0%)
Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 12.2.0 Packages: 1816 Shell: Bash
v: 5.2.15 inxi: 3.3.25


*Edit: BIOS was a ghost town! Very rudimentary. WLAN is enabled, that's all it'll tell me. Wow. Well, not like there was much of a budget here but that was one barren landscape of a BIOS, can't tell much from that.

 

[Brickwizard]

I don't see that in the AntiX "Software Installer".

Did you install the full antix distribution, or the base distribution [base doesn't include the software manager]

 

[BarriBurt]

antiX-23_x64-full.iso

 

[BarriBurt]

Also, it's getting some use today! Eldest is at home sick. He's been hitting up Tux Math & Tux Typing. Funny to see this old thing getting some use. Not bad, those titles are simple enough for the Seashell. He'll explore what else it has while I'm trying to work.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Synaptic Package Manager is installed by default.

I'm in antiX23 now, and in its synaptic is this

You can see that package firmware-atheros is already installed on mine, does yours look similar @BarriBurt ?

Also I found the following video to be of assistance to me a couple of years ago, maybe it will help you?

HTH

Wiz