Absolutely NOT a "tech guy". 45y/o tradeworker, left off at DOS & Qbasic in '93. Found some 2016 tech during eviction remodel: 2016 Galaxy Tab-A and 2016 HP Stream 11. Do not be fooled; all the "tekkie lingo", specs and processes I will be citing are new to me, learned over the course of these projects. I knew absolutely fuck-all about it before I started.SM-T580 tablet has 2gb ram. when found, it was running Android Oreo. slow as shit and no storage space for anything. I could surf the web and shitpost on Chan, but had no space for memes, Pepes and/or videos. did lots of research and relied on Grok for a fair amount of process. that said, NOTHING was easy aboot this... for me. I found the tablet and craptop last December. tablet has been in a bedside table since it had no storage and was too slow to be of practical use. I will try to outline the entire 2 day ordeal (15 fucking hours) as succinct and condensed as possible. I found a 32GB micro SDHC card while tearing oot the carpet & padding in a remodel. my first thought was "COOL! I can double the eMMC storage on my Linux Stream Craptop!" however, after a quick discussion with Grok, I decided my first use of it would be to flash a new OS onto the Samsung Tablet. did a little research into available OS options and learned aboot the basic hardware/software that operates little phones, tablets, etc. quite different from "regular" computers, it turns oot. Decided on "LineageOS" for what is essentially a clone of Android 13 but with full current patch and security support. I found the Lineage file on some website, perhaps Github, unsure exactly where. I was also told that I needed to I stall "MindTheGapps" to access Google app store and run anything other than basic web browser on it. I started my questionable journey at 8:00 Saturday morning. I wrote the aforementioned files onto SD then connected tablet to craptop via USB data cable, which I used to install something called TWRP by "TeamWin".
>>2946936>2016 Galaxy Tab-Athese are worthless, they are out of date and barely work. I had a pair my kids used as tablets up until last year and I wound up throwing them away (fuck you mother earth). I have neighbors with young kids but the tech headache of keeping these going wasn't worth saddling them with outdated system and hardware. I saw them going for $100 used at the time and I can't imagine they were selling for that but many such listings.
TWRP is required to enter some mode that allows removal of old OS & data and the installation of new OS and the Google app store "bridge" program "Gapps". this is when my (literal) headache began. i wiped, fashed, and rebooted this thing for hours. kept getting various installation errors. by 20:00 all I had managed was to get a stalled soft-brick screen with a blue "frown" logo with a blue 'O' moving across it. finally, had to take a sumitriptan (migraine abortive) and call it a night. I had pretty much given up. the next morning, after a bit more dead-end Ouroboros action, Grok suggested a full format and exFAT swap in addition to the wipe. FINALLY I was able to successfully install Lineage20 OS. "Gapps" continued to fail. at long last, I was able to at least get the fucking thing to boot up and it did, indeed, function as a browser. great, but useless outside of surfing. After several hours and multiple conflicting suggestions of "MindTheGapps" arm64 vs arm(32) file installations (for the record i DID need the arm64), Grok finally suggested that perhaps the files were simply too large for my pathetic little tablet. It directed me to hunt down NikGapps-arm64-core, a much smaller version of the same program. FUCKING HELL!! it worked on the first try. BOOM! I now have an awesome & fully functional tablet, that I don't even need. it was 15:00 on Sunday, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!I do enjoy it now. it's nice for couch and bed browsing on The Chan. easier on the eyes than my little Galaxy Note 20 phone screen.
>>2946937that was the purpose of the process. The LineageOS takes up aboot 2.25GB less space than the Oreo AndroidOS and it operates much faster and more smoothly. on top of that, I may eventually add SD storage to it if I feel it's nessesary. for now, it seems to do everything I could want or need. 50% of what we do around here at DIY is just for the simple challenge and satisfaction of the accomplishment. that is exactly the story here. free shit, repaired & upgraded for free, with a free SD card, all found in units I was getting paid to remodel after evicting trash who then abandoned their mediocre possessions. I didn't need a tablet. I didn't need the HP stream Craptop. I have my wifes $3k Macbook pro if i need to use a computer other than my Galaxy Note 20 phone. they were free and taught me some new stuff in the process of salvaging them.
My little HP Linux Mint XFCE craptop is a similar story. I actually found it in the same eviction/remodel as the tablet. was passcode protected, but the lockscreen wallpaper had a giveaway password clue: "Last name 13". password was literally the evicted's last name + the number 13.at that point (December 2024) I knew exactly Ø aboot modern computers, software, or coding. I tried to just use it as-was with the factory-installed Windows 10. it was totally unusable. could not update due to storage constraints (<2GB available) and it would take up to 2 minutes to load/view a 4MB image on Chan.I knew aboot Linux from my childhood nerd days of Basic programming. I had never used it or even seen it, but I knew the older, better computer nerds gravitated to it. Anon from /g/ suggested Linux Mint XFCE. I dug around the ol' junk drawer and found a 32GB USB stick from the wife's old job. I found the XFCE file somewhere, downloaded it and probably some other bootloader crap, and after a bit of frustration & fucking with it, got it to install, boot and have been learning Linux & Terminal command ever since. Now it has 15GB eMMC available + the 32GB SDHC mentioned in the Galaxy Tab-A story above.My XFCE craptop is now my daily driver. I don't touch my wife's $3k Mac because I am notoriously hard on equipment. if I fuck up my Craptop or spill coffee on it, little is lost. it's main purpose is tracking my dairy sheep pedigrees and shitposting on 4Chan.2 months later, the battery failed & bloated. I got another one for FOR FREE from Amazon Vine. watched a few how-to videos on installation an voila: new life!total cash investments on these projects: Ø.00if I ever find the motivation & time I might consider learning Python or some other useful language, but as it stands now, I have more tech than I need as a Farmer/Rancher/Tradeworker.
You can pick up i5 thinkcentre m900 for next to nothing and have a reliable daily driver if you ever need a real pc op. I have two one with windows and one running mint XFCE. They can take regular sata ssds which can get up to pretty high capacity for memes. I even ran a wow private server off one of them. Better than using a raspberry pi.
>>2947039I doubt I will ever need an actual computer, but I did look it up, just to keep learning and expand knowledge. luckily I don't have any real need for any form of computer. I do 90% of any sort of "computer stuff" (mostly how-to videos, Amazon for parts/supplies and occasional email) from my Note 20 phone. same goes for all of my shitposting and political information aggregation sites. I only use my HP linux craptop when I'm eating breakfast, because it's a better viewing angle & one-handed operation. Flashing/programming the Samsung Tablet was the first time I can remember in 10 years that I HAD to use an actual computer. as a Farmer/Rancher/Tradeworker I'm just not in *need* of common computer technology. it was fun **in a very masochistic way** to do my little "programming" ventures with the Craptop and SM-T580, but It's just not something that is a nessesary part of my lifestyle.
>thanks to grok even a moron tradie can navigate the complex world of custom roms without bricking his device multiple times so this is the power of ai
>>2947111You are replaceable. my real world skills & experience, my hands, eyes, and body are not. where was this tablet for the last 10 months? in a bedside table, because it is a replaceable plaything. a superfluous gadget. something that is not *needed*.>All of your jobs are belong to me>-A.I.
>>2947128all workers are replaceable
>>2947302indeed.however, *currently* desk, office, tech, factory & I.T. workers are on the chopping block at a rate of 20/1. by the time the trades are getting eliminated (be it Grok or Jeets) I'll be sitting on my porch, flocking my sheep, drinking my tea, on my own time.
>>2947357If sw engs are replaceable how come the average retard isn't making $$$?That's right, coding is already only like 20% of my job and the rest is also barely replaceable by LLMs.Most IT work is learning a specific domain and not coding from prepared tasks, I'm already well versed in finance, insurance and gov management of car stuff
>>2947051>as a Farmer/Rancher/Tradeworker I'm just not in *need* of common computer technologyI'm not so sure about that anon. A lot of my customers are farmers and they have a whole bunch of embedded Linux devices controlling various equipment on their farm. These boxes the equipment vendors connect to the network add up quickly. If farmers want to keep up the well established tradition of fixing their own shit they are eventually going to have to learn a thing or two about computers and networks. Otherwise, the vendors are going to continue milking them dry with selling trivial shit on a raspberry pi for a 2000% markup.
>>2947524which is why I am learning and teaching myself (cough* bullshit. Grok is teaching me) how to program, flash and create custom software, and build hardware systems and network integration. I'll admit being behind the curve, but I am learning. I have just begun to tiptoe into Python. everything has to start somewhere.
>>2947532Check out /mcg/ and /ohm/ when Grok starts contradicting itself.
>>2947532Python isn't so important just yet, though a programming language will eventually come in handy.First step is getting networking under control. I usually discover 3-5 address conflicts the first time I look around a new customer's network because the guys who put up boxes like to assign random static IP addresses to their boxes. Once you've got that out of the way, you might want to play with eavesdropping network traffic by inserting switches with monitor ports in strategic places to listen in on traffic between devices, such as the computer talking to the milking robot's controllers and the controllers themselves. Communication over the wire tends not to be encrypted and you can learn a lot about things you may later want/need to emulate without being too deeply into reverse engineering.If you want to go real crazy, you can learn a bit about flash storage and desoldering/accessing flash memory chips. That lets you access the box' software and allows and backup it as a first step. Often enough, that's not necessary, though - you'll find commodity SFF PCs inside lots of boxes. The programs running on these boxes often have fun little treasure troves such as the SPS code they send to the equipment's PLCs if e.g. you hit the "start feed pushing robot" button in the program. Also, you may find other stuff in common data formats that you may be able to work with. For instance, a lot of software keeps its data in sqlite databases - if you know a little bit of SQL or can query it using a graphical tool that'll go a long way.Only at this stage, learning a programming language comes into play. As you develop theories on how communication works, you'll write small - at first - programs that will eventually involve into something that can control the equipment in question. Sometimes, the software running on various boxes will be written in scripting languages, such as Python. That is the ultimate lucky break for you'll be able to modify the program directly.
>>2947532Also, having and reviving ancient hardware ain't all bad. I recently transferred an old-ish CNC mill's control software to a contemporary machine. I was only able to do that because I still had an ancient mainboard with an IDE controller around.
>>2946936Cool threadFor me the hardest part was unlocking the bootloaderHad to jump through hoops for unlocking xiaomi bootloaders.You don't need gapps. Google has turned into shitshow.Just install from free repos fdroid etc or plain apk filesBanking software wont work anyways or mostly will be unstableI'm currently set to building lineageos for my own. Anyone experienced?
