thinkpad T42 freezes randomly still, kind of wondering if it could be the ATI GPU

@wyatt
>The generation where the mobo is apparently thin enough that you can pop off the GPU by holding the case "wrong" (as in: one-handed).

@moses_izumi t42 is not that generation i think?
i guess possible but... is that a thing that's real on the T42?

@wyatt GPU failures were particularily common on the T41, if the Thinkpad forums are anything to go by.
I heard the T43 fixed it for good.

Got a T42 because it's supposed to have sturdier Win98 support and because I could find one for fairly cheap. (Radeon 7500 Mobility seems to be the earliest laptop GPU that isn't a total disappointment for 3D games).

While I'm at it: is Linux still a viable option on Pentium M devices (software support, device drivers, third-party package repositories), or should I go straight for NetBSD?

@moses_izumi sort of but not really. For a radeon, yeah it can be. For GMA 915, mesa has done a lot of damage.
Debian doesn't exist for it anymore but you can install an old version and then change sources.list to sid and everything but the kernel can be updated.
Third party repositories? why do you want those

@wyatt
>3rd party repositories?
I don't use external repos that often, but the ability to easily find binaries that aren't part of The Mothership and where the official release is a Flatpak (urk) or Appimage (not perfect either, but has doesn't explicity demand a runtime/sandbox/updater contraption and has some uptake in the 32bit scene) is pretty reassuring.
It's one the reasons I've stuck with Debian: though I can see myself building certain software from scratch for the sake of optimizations.

As for the NetBSD situation: if I'm gonna use some lesser-known distro with an equally unpopular package format I might as well using the OS that still supports Motorola 68000 machines.

@moses_izumi you still didnt say what exactly you actually need that's not in the repos

@wyatt
>Librewolf
>DRD Team has LZDoom (GZDoom lite) and Slade3 (fancy Doom editor)
>Debian Multimedia has a YT-DLP that can actually connect to Youtube
Can live without these specific packages on a secondary machine: first two projects only offer AMD64 and ARM64 anyway.

Any excuse to do Seamonkey again is probably a good excuse (Albatross would be a far better name for a big internet suite TBH).

@moses_izumi I build my own personal firefox patch set
not sure what lzdoom is or why normal doom isn't good enough.
no idea what slade3 is.
i use git to track yt-dlp's sources and have a wrapper script in ~/bin that calls it

@wyatt
To each their own, there are many ways to skin a cat, etc.
Let's leave this thread be.