"New" HP laptop

[JayM]

In my computer upgrade topic here in Community/Chat/General I talked about how my desktop PC's motherboard bit the dust a few weeks ago. Since then I'd been using the only other working computer in the house, an Averatec N1170 32-bit netbook with an Intel Atom single-core 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. While it works OK and is better than nothing it can be SO SLOW as its little processor gets overwhelmed very easily. Streaming a YouTube video will almost max it out. It's fine with low-overhead sites like this forum though.

Around 4 years ago my sister-in-law gave us her old HP Pavilion DV6-2130TX laptop with a Core i5 CPU, 4GB of DDR3-1066 RAM, a 500GB hard drive, a 15.6 inch screen and a defective CPU fan so the laptop couldn't be used. It's been just sitting around all those years. Finally last Friday I happened to find the website of a computer repair shop that promises they can fix any brand or model of desktop, laptop, notebook or netbook PC plus macbooks and smartphones ("Any brand, any problem!" is their motto), and that their rates were very low due to not having to pay expensive rent at a mall location and because they aren't associated with any big computer chain stores or retail brands with the overhead those cause. They have a very tiny shop located not far from where I live. I called them and was quoted ₱1500 parts and labor to replace the fan. I took the laptop there Tuesday morning, yesterday they texted me and said they'd try to repair the fan first and that if they were successful it would only be ₱1200. This morning they texted again and said my computer was ready! YAY! This is so much faster than the netbook!! And it's 64-bit which means I can install Viber from a flatpak and use it on the PC instead of having to type messages on my cell phone. (They actually fixed the fan by replacing a bad capacitor. I didn't even know laptop fans had capacitors.)

It has an Nvidia GeForce GT-230M GPU, so after installing MX-18.3 September snapshot on it I tried running the Nvidia driver installer that so many people seem to have problems with. It Just Worked! One thing I didn't do was tell it to check the test repo for newer drivers, I just went with the one in stable. No problems at all.

There are two problems with the machine: one, there's a round dead spot on the far-right of the screen but I'll see if I can manage to live with that as I can't afford a screen replacement right now, and two, the characters on the keys are rather small and may be hard to see at night as the lighting in this house isn't the best. If that's the case, and I'll find out in an hour or so when the sun sets, I'll explore solutions such as getting a small gooseneck desk lamp if I can find one.

The Black Spot (why, yes, I've recently re-watched Treasure Island, the classic 1950 Disney version with Robert Newton as Long John Silver, arrrr!):

(Edit on 20/09/2019: I found out last night that yesterday was Talk Like a Pirate Day! What a coincidence.)

QSI:

Code: Select all

System:    Host: mx Kernel: 4.19.0-5-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: MX-18.3_x64 Continuum May 26  2019 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC 
           v: 049D210000241210000020000 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 3659 v: 32.25 serial: <filter> BIOS: Hewlett-Packard 
           v: F.1B date: 04/23/2010 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 43.5 Wh condition: 43.5/47.5 Wh (92%) 
           model: Hewlett-Packard Primary status: Full 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5 M 430 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Nehalem 
           rev: 2 L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 18090 
           Speed: 1403 MHz min/max: 1199/2267 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1403 2: 1322 3: 1274 
           4: 1309 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GT216M [GeForce GT 230M] vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: nvidia 
           v: 340.107 bus ID: 01:00.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: nvidia resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 230M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.107 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
           driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GT216 HDMI Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
           Device-3: Philips s SAA7160 vendor: Avermedia driver: N/A bus ID: 04:00.0 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-5-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Broadcom Limited BCM43225 802.11b/g/n vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: wl 
           v: kernel port: 7000 bus ID: 02:00.0 
           IF: wlan0 state: dormant mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
           vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 5000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 19.45 GiB (4.2%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST9500325AS size: 465.76 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 405.74 GiB used: 19.37 GiB (4.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0 
           ID-2: /boot size: 487.9 MiB used: 81.9 MiB (16.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-1 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 61.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 71 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb http://iso.mxrepo.com/antix/stretch stretch main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb https://mirror.pregi.net/mx-linux-packages/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 227 Uptime: 1h 19m Memory: 3.78 GiB used: 1.23 GiB (32.4%) Init: SysVinit 
           runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 6.3.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.12 inxi: 3.0.33 

It's so nice to have a decent computer again! And when I installed MX-18 I left 50GB of free space on my drive so I can install MX-19b2 and later the release candidate, and for frugal installs of other OS's (antiX 19 betas etc.) so I can do some testing again.

Now if my cold would only go away...

(Edit at 7PM) The keyboard's actually less of a problem at night than I feared it might be. A desk lamp would still help though. Too bad it didn't come with a backlit keyboard or at least larger characters on the keys.

[richb]

Thanks for sharing. Glad you are more efficient again. What somewhat amazes me is that you continued to provide help consistently and often to the Forum, "crippled" with that slow old machine. Kudos!

[JayM]

Thanks, Rich. And thanks to the dev team who made it possible to run 32-bit MX even on that hardware platform.

I want to also thank my producer, my agent, my director...


(I actually think this laptop may be faster than my AMD desktop was before I upgraded it to a 4-core Phenom II processor. It's certainly faster now that that machine's motherboard died!)

[j2mcgreg]

As a work-around for the black spot, could you use the monitor from your defunct desktop externally?

[JayM]

I can and will if it bothers me too much. So far it really hasn't though, so I'll just wait and see.

[Cristobal]

Good for you mate!

[Eadwine Rose]

Great to hear that you can at least work on things again :)

[rokytnji.1]

Aint worth doing. I got lucky and fixed a panasonic cf-48 screen with a new/used inverter with lcd cable attached assembly. Lots of reasons for screwed up lcd screens though.

I used to roll with that panasonic in the motorcycle shop as a music jukebox and pdf manual storage unit using a crt monitor via the vga cable. Ran and displayed AntiX like a champ.

Congrats on the newish gear.

[winemaker]

Thanks for sharing. Glad you are more efficient again. What somewhat amazes me is that you continued to provide help consistently and often to the Forum, "crippled" with that slow old machine. Kudos!

I agree - you have helped me out in the short time that i have been here.

[KBD]

I don't know what the problem is with HP and their screens, but both my HP laptops have white spots on the screens :( That is a unique black spot on your screen though, maybe at one time something got between the clam shell when it closed and killed some pixels?
Nice step up from a netbook, especially more powerful. Capacitors cause lots of issues, especially in power supplies. One of the main issues with TV's that quit working.