I’ve been asked by my grandma (who has never used a computer) to get her a used computer so that she can e-mail her friends in England. So, here’s the story thus far:

I’ve scrounged together some of the bits and pieces that have been lying around my house for quite some time now. This is partly an effort to clean up things before I head off to Queen’s in the fall, but mainly to provide a system that can be used for e-mail, web browsing, and perhaps allow her to play some Yahoo! Games with her remote friends, if she is so inclined… (continued)

Bearing in mind that she hasn’t used a computer before, I made the decision to install SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal (with KDE, of course). Some of the reasoning behind this decision is that::

a) File permissions prevent her from messing anything up
b) It’s easy to schedule updates to occur automatically in the background (so she doesn’t have to learn that sort of thing)
c) Good remote access will allow me to fix any problems that she may run into
d) Konqueror, in its role as a file browser, and web browser provides a consistent interface, which means less to learn all at once

The computer I picked from the selection of parts is a Pentium 166. It has just under 128 MB of RAM, and had a 1.6 GB hard drive. The computer already had a floppy drive in it, and I found a CD-ROM drive that works lying around. I also happened to have a 14 inch monitor which wasn’t deserving of its current role as a dust collector.

So, I downloaded the ISO for SuSE 9.1 and burnt it to a CD, that wasn’t a problem. Well, it turns out that a 1.6 GB hard drive isn’t enough for SuSE’s minimum installation. So, thus begins the shopping list. Saturday (July 24, 2004) I went to Best Byte (a local computer store in Whitby) and bought: a Logitech Internet Keyboard (the kind with the Home, Search, and E-mail buttons), a Logitech Optical mouse, an 80 GB hard drive, and a mouse pad.

It turns out, the BIOS (even with the latest updates) still doesn’t recognise large drives. So, me not realising that earlier on caused a bit of trouble. Once I setup a relatively small partition at the start of the drive as being /boot, and switched to LILO (which I’m more familiar with trouble shooting, and the way things were going I was expecting more difficulties) everything went fine. About two hours later, the system was installed, and booting up asking all the regular questions and trying to detect network settings.

The monitor (which is, I suppose, about 6 or 7 years old now) didn’t detect automatically, so, I set it to a generic VESA monitor at 800×600, 60 Hz, and everything worked out fine.

The network card I put in the P166 happened to be an ISA NE2000 compatible one, so, autodetection wasn’t successful (I wasn’t expecting it to be, I’ve never actually had one of these particular cards detect successfully by anything). So, I found the driver, tested it manually myself, and then added it through YaST. YaST successfully detected and setup the ISA Sound Blaster 16 card.

So, from a bit of Googling, I discovered Using the Extra Keys on the Keyboard, which was a surprisingly easy way to make those extra buttons work nicely.

So, with the new keyboard shortcuts, I went around and tested some things, they’re slower than I’m used to (but that’s to be expected being spoiled with a 2.6 GHz laptop and then going to a Pentium 166). Everything seems to work fine though, so, I took some labels and wrote out words like “USB”, “Floppy”, “Power”, “Serial”, “Monitor” and stuck them over the computer in the appropriate places. I figure the labels will make it easier for her to pick up on the “lingo” and follow what other people are talking about (she said there’s some people in her building with computers).

So, with that all setup, I’ve made an appointment to drive over to Peterborough (yes, the same Peterborough that recently had the flooding, and people canoeing and kayaking on the main streets) to drop off the computer, teach Grandma a few things and take her to the Bell store to get her signed up for a “DSL Basic” Internet Connection. It’s a nice way to make sure she can answer the door when she’s on the computer (her building has a system where she dials a number on the phone to unlock the door downstairs where visitors come in, after a visitor calls from the phone in the door way) and to make sure she doesn’t miss a call. After she places the order, it’ll be about a week before the modem arrives, at which point I’ll drive over again, setup her Internet connection, and spend the day teaching her how to use her computer (I expect she’ll either figure out some things within that week on her own, or not touch the machine).