Sunday, November 5, 2017

Debian Linux on an old Netbook


Briefly, an old Toshiba NB205 netbook made its way to me.

I was about to donate it to the local thrift store as it was missing a keytop and the Windows version installed had trouble with the WiFi hardware - but I decided to give Linux a go.






















I won't repeat that procedure here - check my older postings "Adventures with a 'Thin Client' – a HP t5740" and "Dual Booting Debian and Windows XP" for some hints on dual-booting Debian.

I was pleasantly surprised when the new OS was able to handle WiFi nicely.  Now the only blemish on this old machine was the missing key.

Sure enough, eBay had several dealers who had keys.  After some careful reading and research, I ordered a CTRL keytop from a dealer in Canada.

The keytop arrived in a few days along with some abbreviated instructions.  As I did not want to break anything, I looked for further information and - sure enough - there were a lot of YouTube videos on how to remove and replace keytops.

Success!
Now it's back in the stable of 'spares' and occasionally useful tools.  An old, but working, netbook (dual boot) with working WiFi for about $3.50.

cln - Nick
WB5BKL

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