I can't see anything that isn't produced by the os itself in this machine due to a broken screen, so I need to create a pupsave file but can't remember what the system asks (in order) nor what the alternatives it gives me to choose from. With that info beforehand I can, more or less, safely reboot, create the said pupsave file & then install the jre package: I need it. Can't stand surfing the web or staying connected without my favorite web radio station.

Thanks for any screen shots or lists made available for me & others to inspect.

EDIT: BTW, I searched for a while in the we for a command in a Puppy Linux shell that could give me the specific os I'm running but failed to find it, at least uncoded.

May do work for you.

I find old crt monitors at salvation army and goodwill stores for like $3.00. I don't know if you have access to those though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP9h3gclYeg

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Thanks for replying, rokytnji! That cat ... command worked well.

I should have stated the problem with the screen better. I'm using a VAIO notebook which comes with a 9x16 ratio screen (High Definition capabilities) that's showing just vertical clear & dark stripes, now on all its surface. This problem aroused about a year+ ago with a 1/3 (right-hand side) going black; a few months afterward its 1/3 left-hand side showed the same symptoms, a few months ago it finally spread to the last 1/3.

In preparation to what I thought was an impending complete screen failure I found an external screen to solve the issue at hand & made sure my grub menu.lst file contained all the data needed to start already installed puppies by numbering the distros there in order for been able to boot any one of them. All that is missing a couple of things:
1) since the screen completely failed before saving a pupsave file for PL525 it's not persistent;
2) since I damaged my PL528 system (only partially working now) but failed, until now, to repair it, d/l an upgraded version of it (528.005) & included it at first option within the menu.lst file, making it, in fact, the default os. The problemm I've now is that I need it to be persistent & for that I need to make a pupsave file in its proper place, for this I need a working screen but the one I'm using now is controlled by the os, at bootup as well as at shutting down is, probably at BIOS level that the screens are controlled. Since the onboard one isn't working for me I'm in effect blind.

I remember having done some settings before with these constrains but it was just because I had fresh in my mind the sequence of events at such circumstances. Now, almost a year after any of those tweaks have occurred I have not been able to redo. Those are the reasons for needing a precise set of those splash screens with their options, because need a guide & that's what I believe is my best option. Even though I can't see the screens the next best thing is to follow another one's, & hope for the best.

The link I provided in my last post shows a video for saving in Puppy 5.01.

I guess a video won't do?

I have repaired laptop screens with the problem you describe. It is the ribbon cable not seated good from inverter to the back of LCD screen probably.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/...-old-gear.html

JB weld and duct tape tape the ribbon cable firmly to the back of the screen is how I fixed the above link.

Another VI0 screen or CRT? I have used a 21 inch widescreen Desktop lcd on my EEEPC 701 and am able to function quite well. So I kinda confused
by

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Thanks for responding. rokytnji!

I've been supposing all the time that for any user of any notebook/laptop you can connect an auxiliary monitor but that the first screens that it can/should show won't be visible on the external monitor. Am I right on this?

I tell you because, the screens that the system show at Shut Down are not controlled by the os anymore &, AFAIK, it's at the BIOS level that the screens are controlled or maybe is just a linux console. In any case, it won't use/see the availability of the external monitor. You can make the test yourself & check if this's in fact true by adding an external monitor to a laptop & compare what you see in both at the same time.

No. Not in my experience. I am on external LCD from power on to power down.
I can access bios, grub menu, operating system, shutdown in init3 (console mode to you) till I power down and then get a no signal on external monitor.

I am on Puppeee 4.4 right now on my eeepc 900. But I already have a personal save file made on this frugal install on a 4 gig SD flash drive that I am running Puppeee on.

External monitors are controlled by a laptops hardware.

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Thanks, rokytnji for the info, but even though I read it 3 times I've a doubt: are you saying that the very first screen a laptop/notebook gives to the user is visible for you in the external monitor? How do you connect them? What BIOS option(s) (if any) you use? If you tweaked your BIOS for this, who's the BIOS mfg.?

Please, tell me because I've tried external monitors with at least 2 different VAIOs & never got to see those screens at the external monitors.

Yes. I have only tried this on my EEEPCs made by Asus. A 701SD and a 900. Which are older models of EEEPCs and they use

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5/#post4674781

and no I have not tweaked the bios. Sony VAIO's I have no experience with except for reading about proprietary stuff as far as the hardware goes. I have a IBM t23 Laptop and a IBM A22m which are pretty long in the tooth but run Antix real well. They have 15" LCDs so I have not messed with external monitor on those. I also have a Police Laptop called a Amrel RT 786 EX with lighted keyboard that runs 1024x768 also and Lighthouse Puppy 5.03 on one hardrive and AntiX on another and lastly Windows XP on another. It uses Hot swap caddies. I use the Windows drive to tune bikes. I have not tried external monitor on it either. All my Laptops run wireless.

Lastly. I got a Panasonic Cf-48 ToughBook Laptop Pentium 4 1.2 gigMB ram laptop that might come the closest to your Sony VAIO as far as year made and specs. I multiboot a few Puppies and AntiX and Windows 2000 Pro on it. Give me a day because It is late here and I have to move stuff around to test this on the Panasonic. I will let you know the result tomorrow.

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I've now a new problem, related to the way the pupsave file thing came about: d/l a jre (PET file) but don't know where to put it, the system warns me not to put it in /mnt/home.

Do I've to redo the pupsave again? In that case, what you suggests? Suppose have to postpone the java FF plugin issue...

If a .pet. Just pick open with petget. It will install without having to save the jre. If it don't work. Delete it with Puppys package manager. It will be in the bottom Window of Puppy Package manger gui. Left clicking on it will uninstall it. If you insist on downloading pets and saving them. Make a pet folder in my documents folder in Puppy and put it in there. After you have all the .sfs and .pet files you wish and have installed them. Copy that pet folder to another partition or usb key for safe keeping later so you don't need to download or find them again.

If you do install and keep it. It should save automatically anyway in your personal pup save .sfs

The only thing I would do next is copy that save to another partition or usb stick after jre install in case I need it later if I screw the pooch. That way you can can delete corrupted save in /mnt/home and use the one you copied and saved to replace it.

Check your PM in profile. I sent ya a message with screenshots of my external LCD and Panasonic toughbook with Lighthouse Puppy in Action.

From Power On screen. To Bios. To grub. To load choice of save. To init3. To Desktop. Nothing special on bios. It is so old it won't usb boot and I have to use the floppy drive with a PLOP floppy disk to boot from USB 1.1 on that Panasonic. So it is probably older than your VAIO since it has a inbuilt floppy drive. Picture link shows bios maker.

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Thanks for the info & PM's photos, rokytnji! The photos are GOOD; how did you prevented the horizontal stripes (clear band, probably) to appear on them?

In relation to your last post have to say that I know of Puppy Package Manager but searched for & didn't find "petget". Once in a while I do save some packages like a new FF or SM browsers for having them ready & available for other like puppies, specially if I'm having problems with a browser (like right now with FF 11, which comes without jre-plugin). BTW, have tried many times to install/insert that plugin for/with/to FF but have failed in every instance. The Mozilla site offers not much help with it. Trying to install the plugin via the manual route that FF offers always renders the same "file corrupt" message. Putting the files where, hopefully, FF will find them (within the 'Extensions', 'Plugins' (had to create the folder myself) or besides the other .so files somewhere under FF and/or .mozilla folders aren't working for me. So, I'm still browsing the net & reading my emails or reading/writing in my forums without a web radio station to hear some music as I go: all seem to need the flash-plugin.

I've put those files in an apparently safe place since my system insists in using & mounting both partitions at start up: sda1 & sda2. My PL528.005 folder is at sda2 but I continually find a pupsave file at sda1 after each boot.

PS. Not all is bad news from my side. Last night I turned off everything, including the tv & radio & kept focused at infinity... A light sparked in my mind: while looking at the top of an improvised desk/top/counter I saw like a little volcano formed by a bunch of papers there & recognized it was due to an old HP+Compaq laptop that a nephew managed to damage its hdd (not all of it, apparently just a VITAL sector of it by dealing with it too roughly). Two things came to my mind: (1) even though I managed in the past to boot it with PL431 AWA Ubuntu 8.10, I got tired of having to go to setup or BIOS setup trying to render it automatically able of booting by default from the cd &, after many trials of getting the BIOS pwd right (no one remembered having set one nor what it might be) I tried it more than 3 times in a row & it got locked..., but recently I read at a website something about unlocking a pc in such a situation (don't remember what the site was, hum, but might get there again if not much time passes, so I decided to brush the dust off it; (2) even though the hdd refused to boot (even while trying to install/boot from an Ubuntu cdrom the system told me that there was a problem with the disk although it never said what it was) or Ubuntu to get installed I did captured some files from it & put some there (don't remember what the filesystem is but it was running XP, so ntfs should/might be.

I remember having tried my DSL in the Flash HD but it didn't boot then, last night that was my first thing to try: it wasn't locked anymore & DSL booted up in less than 3 mins.

My problem then was that never got it to get connected to the net via LAN, the desktop got connected automatically. DSL/me failed to get a conn. My main purpose at trying to boot up this laptop is to be able to establish a lan for booting it up from my current PL OS &, finally, move to that hdd the big W8CP iso file from sda1. Once I've done that I can try to install PL in that laptop's hdd (frugally or otherwise) &, if successfully done I would open this one to try to fix the monitor's belt connector &, if succesfully done, try, finally, W8CP os to satisfy my curious mind.

Note: Tried to make a startup floppy disk from the offering within DSL but never got completed but don't know if I really need it, for now.

As you can see, many small/big projects at once, all related between them. What do you suggest to try first? I would like to try the FIFO method, correcting the mounting of sda1 at boot up would be mine because I really dislike that partition to be unmountable.

petget is already installed by default in Puppy Linux. No need to search for it. If a .pet is downloaded and saved in like /download folder. When you left click in rox file manager. That is when petget opens and asks if you wish to install the downloaded .pet file. Think of petget like gdebi in debian and a .pet as a .deb. When I download a .pet file. On the download window I get a gui that asks whether to open with petget, or save to file. If I wish to install without saving the .pet file. I pick open with petget.

Well. I can can do is show you how I install jre and flash myself in Puppeee 4.4 which is even harder to install plugins than Puppy 528.

http://puppylinux.info/topic/flashja...ee-4#post-4882

Something I also do in Puppy Linux for music

http://www.smartestcomputing.us.com/...and-using-vlc/

I can't really comment on DSL. I have not used in ages.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/...on-compaq.html

My above link explains how I got around that. I still have that floppy disk, plus I also have a PLOP Boot manager floppy disk I have made also for tricky situations.

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Well, today I was trying to use 'netboot.me' & d/l 2 files: one for booting from a floppy disk & another for the same from an usb stick. When I re-booted the VAIO & heard the splash fanfare I hit PF11 --what a surprise for me to see a long time not seen screen: the splash screen for the VAIO & covering the WHOLE screen.

The 1st time the sdcard was in its slot (formatted vfat), the 2nd time it was attached to the usb adapter. In both cases I obtained the same results.

I know this isn't a thread for dealing with this but since it appeared shortly after starting it I decided to post it here to let rokytnji know that there exist a quirky 'something' with this notebook. Who knows, it might help directly or indirectly someone.

Note: I rebooted for trying the Delete & Escape buttons to get to the BIOS setup but those failed me; it might be that I used the wrong button in the middle of my surprise.