[ale] Success: moving a hard disk between PCs

[Fulton Green]

Here's a minor success story:

For the longest time, I've been running on a Pentium MMX-based notebook
with 128 MB RAM and 3 GB. The amount of RAM is decent enough, even today.
But the 3 GB of storage, while plenty when I first started using the
notebook back in August 1998, is now seriously cramped, especially when you
throw in the fact that half the disk has WinMe, and the other half has Red
Hat Linux 7.2 (partially upgraded with stuff from the Rawhide directory).

After going through my RPM package listing for the umpteenth time to see
which apps I could remove to make room for the latest kernel, I finally just
said "#*!@ it!" and replaced the 3 GB drive with a 6 GB I had been putting
off installing for the longest time.  That's actually another story. :)

Anyway, since I had not backed up my personal data from the 3 GB drive, I
naturally thought I would test the drive in my considerably older Pentium
"classic"-based notebook, which only has 24 MB memory, a less superior
graphics chip, a smaller-sized and fewer-colors-capable display, no USB
support, and doesn't even meet the minimal speed requirements for WinMe. So
I replaced that notebook's 0.8 GB disk with the 3.0 GB, noting that the
mounting bracket's screw holes didn't even match up with the ones on the
bigger-capacity disk. Not to mention that I was putting in an EIDE disk
into something that I wasn't sure could deal with EIDE disks.

I turned on the power, and surprise, I got the Red Hat GRUB screen! I chose
Linux, and the Kudzu utility detected the change of graphics chip, ran
Xconfigurator, and voila! GDM logon screen!

Linux really HAS come a long way. :)

Now if I can only get the GNOME Panel to not crash on it ... :-/

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