Thursday, October 2, 2008

TC1100 Project

Today I have undertaken a huge task. I am going to setup an old TC1100 to run of 3 different operating systems. Yes it will be alot of fun is what I thought at first too. So here's the story.
A co-worker of mine asked me today to put Ubuntu, Windows 98 SE, and windows XP onto a TC1100 by HP/Compaq. Now first off these are little tablet PCs. I can only imagine that after working on one for more than an hour it would get really dull. So what I did was crabbed an external Keyboard and mouse. But then to my suprise realized (not that it was much of a suprise) that this unit has no CD drive... So I had to rumage around for an external CD drive which was quite the task. We're talking 10 boxes until I finally found it. Then I had to set out a game plan. I figured the easiest way to execute this was to Install Ubuntu first then have virtual box running 2 instances one of Windows 98SE and one of Windows XP.

So step one [Install Ubuntu]
Setup was pretty easy. It already had a version of windows XP installed so i just clicked Guided use entire disk and continued to click foward until it finally started installing. Now it took awhile most likely because it's running off an external CD drive... Which if any of you have ever used probably already know can be a massive bitch to work with. This whole step took about an hour to complete.

Step two [Install Virtual Box]
Go to System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager
Click Search then Type:Virtual Box
Right click on the Virtual Box Listing and click Mark For Installation
Click Apply
Then go to Applications>System Tools>Virtual Box
Click Add set the size of you HDD I did two a 10GB and a 4GB
Then click New
First I installed Windows XP
Then after that was finished I installed Windows 98SE on the 4GB drive

Step three [Test]
Here's where it got complicated I had to actually forfit the entire project due to lack of system resources. Turns out Ubuntu Will Work Fine but any of the other operating systems just FAIL miserably. Even when not going through Virtual Box they lagged and generated system error. All in all I guess a TC1100 is just a crappy machine built for jack end users who do nothing more than eat tacos and surf the web (I always picture people who surf the web eating tacos)

But the important thing is... IT CAN BE DONE!!!!

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