[Novalug] EeMachine mini tower EL1200-05w anyone ever put linux on one?

[James Tuttle]

On 7/30/2012 2:04 PM, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> On 7/28/2012 10:57 PM, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
> > then i google about installing linux on that model of eMachine. several
> > reports on the weird graphics, some discussion that maby the nvidia
> > drivers were housed in flash memory and even a discussion from someone
> > with windoze on the thing announcing that they also had the weird screen
> > of white bricks effect.
> Windows more likely than Linux. Linux tends to ignore the BIOS as soon 
> as it can.

Assuming that the problem is the graphics card / subsystem, which seems
pretty likely, one additional option is to add a different graphics card
if the system has a slot for it.

A lot of older systems have onboard graphics but also have an AGP or
PCIe slot for an add-on board, generally for more expensive
configurations.  (Base models just shipped with the onboard, but if you
paid more originally, you got something in the slot.)  I've seen a lot
of Dell desktops that were like this.

If you have a slot, you can probably pick up a cheap card for a few
bucks, or get one out of a junk box somewhere, that will work better.

I've salvaged a couple of systems that had weird graphics that didn't
work well with Linux, particularly for hardware accel, and adding cheap
cards.  Generally whatever MicroCenter is selling for under $20 is what
I get.

You may need to get into the BIOS to switch on the add on slot, which
might be hard if the onboard GPU is on the fritz to the point of just
showing snow / bricks / whitescreen, though.

-James