NC 10 Archives

Fan Maintenance on my Samsung NC10

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My Samsung NC10 Netbook has been in constant operation since 2013, for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s doing a great job as our internal office server, purring along quietly running CentOS 6.

When I put it in operation 5 years ago, I made sure no mechanical parts we being used anymore to avoid wear and tear: I’ve added an SSD, and once a day valuable data is backed up on a permanently mounted SD card.

The only mechanical thing still in use is the internal fan. I knew the day would come on which the poor thing would either give up and need replacing, or at least require some maintenance to make it go a few extra miles. Well, that day has come at the beginning on this month, when I noticed a bit of rattling noise that started happening behind my big monitor. That’s where I keep the little guy.

Turns out that the fan can be easily whipped back into shape with a drop of bicycle oil. It’s really easy to disassemble too – let me show you how I did it.

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How to open up your Samsung NC10

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Here’s a great video by Floppydonkey on how to open up your Samsung NC10 (and NC150). This comes in handy if you’d like to replace the hard disk. The tools we need are a small philips head screwdriver, a small flat screwdriver or spudger, and a tough finger nail. In a nutshell, and VERY CAREFULLY: … Read more

How to enable WiFi on your Samsung NC10 under Centos 6.x

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NC10When I installed CentOS on my NC10 last year I did so knowing that its battery was bust. Since it wasn’t going to live without a power supply, I didn’t setup WiFi at the time – the NC10 being tied to one cable, I simply added another (the network cable) and that was that. Worked fine and without problems.

Today a new battery for my NC10 arrived, breathing new (wireless) life into the little guy – and needless to say now I wanted to setup WiFi. Sadly I don’t know enough about network adaptors under CentOS, so I thought how hard can it be?

Actually it’s easy – it’s just not very well documented on the whole wide web due to the multitude of Distribution vs Hardware configurations.

Thanks to two great articles (by Joris and Paul – find links at the end) I managed to connect my NC10 to my WiFi network: an Apple AirPort Timecapsule. It works a treat. Thanks guys!

I deviated a little from both articles, so here’s the “remix” which should work specifically for the Samsung NC10. I’m running CentOS 6.5 in 32bit, minimal installation without any bells or whistles, on a 1GB Intel Atom machine.

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How to install CentOS 6 on a Samsung NC10

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NC10

Today was a rather exciting day for me: I’ve successfully turned my aging Samsung NC10 Netbook into an internal server in our office.

I bought the little guy in 2009 and he’s been my trusty companion on many jobs before I got an iPad. He still works fine, even though Windows XP was getting weird of late – and admittedly I hadn’t even turned him on in over 8 months.

Now my trusty pal is running CentOS 6.4 while sitting quietly in a corner next to the printer, serving as an internal Linux server. This is great for testing and automated backups – and in the same spirit as playing with a Raspberry Pi (in a much neater battery powered package).

Refreshing the NC10 wasn’t a picnic though, and some of the steps are rather involved. Here are my notes, in case I either have to do it again or you want to follow along.

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