Recycling an old machine for gcompris - part 1

I’m currently trying to convert my sister’s old computer to Linux (guess what ? Mandriva 2007). That way my 8 years old niece will be able to have her computer to play with gcompris. Hardware specs of the beast:

• Celeron 366
• 160MB SDRAM (PC66 I presume)
• 4GB hard drive

It was running Windows 98, but running out of space. 2 years ago, when I reinstalled Win98 on it, the HD had some failures and bad blocks, and I couldn’t use all the disk space, dur to Windows patition creation tool. Only 1GB could be partitioned, and I didn’t have at that moment a Linux Live CD to do it. Now that my sister has a more recent computer, this one can be recycled.

To have it working, I’m doing the following.

Step 1: Recover existing personal data using the excellent Slax Popcorn Live CD, and copy it on my USB key. Step 2: Send her the 60MB file backup file using the free (of charge) service Savefile.com to avoid blowing her mailbox Step 3: Run badblocks -sw from the System Rescue CD. Note that these options will erase all the data on disk, as this is a destructive test.

Let’s see tomorrow how this is doing. Badblocks is now running, even if painfully slow.