! [occ] Ephemeral update, HP Mini fail
 --- 
agk's diary 
8 February 2026
 --- 
written on GPD MicroPC with vi
 --- 
Update: My work shift was truncated to 8 hours (1:1
with a teen in psychosis), so I had a moment to
briefly test the HP Mini netbook.

Some e-waste, like the mini desktop and set top box
I tested July 6, is anonymous. This HP Mini, instead,
was discarded by my girlfriend Cassie when she moved
from Kentucky to Missouri. She wrote tens of thous-
ands of words of fiction on it before "something"
caused it to retire to her shelf and be replaced.

I'm most sentimental about netbooks. The category's
lineage grew from the ill-conceived One Laptop Per
Child (OLPC), whose demon finally enforced its will,
at least on US children, in the distanced days of
2020. But a decade before, OLPC inspired the Eeepc,
then a class of little, tough, underclocked 32bit
"netbook" laptops like this one.

I had two Toshiba netbooks in those days. Each cost
under $400. Each served valiantly for about 4 years
before severe physical damage limited its utility.
One survived a 2-story fall out a window to a wooden
deck, with only a fan failure. Their grotesquely
twisted mortal remains lay, pillaged of parts, on my
shelf of computer corpses awaiting judgment day.

I never turned on this HP Mini until today.

First boot: CMOS checksum error!!

2-3rd boot: hp splash screen [esc for boot options],
            but escape does nothing. Windows splash
            screen follows, with furious beeps

Fourth boot: Mashed F10, F11, F12. Windows "Boot
             Repair" screen. So much blue. Nothing
             useful here, except Cassie's account
             still exists.

5-7th boots: hp splash screen, then Windows 
             Automtic Repair splash screen,
             and a seranade of the angry beeps.
             No key mashing can save me from this.

Eighth boot: Battery is critically low, may need to
             be replaced warning, then same as
             before.

Have not managed to boot a livesystem from this
sweet little guy yet. I'll let it charge all day.
 ---
PRIOR TO UPDATE: I was out all day July 7 running
errands, and work in the hospital 12 hours July 8,
so no chance to find power cables and test more
hardware, or more completely test and troubleshoot
the hardware I briefly tested July 6.

Hardware tests will continue shortly, maybe after
the Old Computer Challenge ends.

1. Select, flash, customize testing livesystems
2. Test on a bunch of hardware    <--we are here
3. Iterate on livesystems + test more
4. (LoRa?) network and BBS server
5. Deliver to ~10 elementary school-age kids

 ---
[Paul Blair's FUZOMA]:
https://superkeen.com/peacecorpsweblog/learning-software/

[Liam Proven's USB-DOS]:
https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos

[FuguIta OpenBSD livesystem]:
https://fuguita.org/