[TynesideLUG] Continuing the refurbishment of Discovery Museum computers, Dell Latitude XT

[Ian Bruntlett]

Hi,

 I have finished work on a Dell Latitude XT netbook style laptop today.

Two things slowed me down:
1. BIOS setup program is password protected.
2. HDD is protected by Microsoft Windows Bitlocker (whatever that is)

One thing saved this computer. When the Dell BIOS logo appears, press F12.
This gives you a one time boot device listing available boot devices.

So I set aside a USB VENTOY stick with these isos on: aban, dban,
memtest86+, ubuntu, lubuntu, debian (i386).

I attached the USB VENTOY stick, switched on the laptop and pressed F12
when the Dell logo appeared. Then I ran dban from the VENTOY menu. I forgot
to remove the VENTOY USB which meant that the USB stick and the Hard Disk
Drive got erased in parallel.

After the HDD had been wiped for 1 full pass, I recreated the USB VENTOY
and booted the laptop with Debian 11 i386. Installed Debian, had to install
the Broadcom BCM4321 WiFi driver post install.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU @1.33GHz
RAM: 1GiB  (there may be a 2nd socket for another DIMM),
HDD: 59GiB

It is quite a compact system and lightweight. system.

HTH,


Ian

-- 
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