This article is the next in the “I have a Nokia Booklet 3g netbook and I want to do retro stuff on it” series. I’ll install virtualization software (namely Microsoft Virtual PC) on Windows 7 and virtualize some operating systems, which is an amazing thing to do on such an underpowered netbook (Intel Atom CPU, 1GB RAM). Remember you’re probably connecting a severely outdated operating system to the network, so you might get the chilly willy.

Microsoft Virtual PC

Virtual PC is an x86 emulator for PowerPC Mac hosts and a virtualization app for Microsoft Windows hosts. Virtual PC emulates the following environments:

• Intel Pentium II (32-bit) processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset (with PIIX4E southbridge).
• Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB by manually editing a virtual machine’s settings file).
• System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI).
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP.
• DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.
• Programs using undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work.

Lately I’ve been having fun with my Nokia Booklet netbook and Windows 7, and I wanted all Internet traffic blocked when there is no active VPN connection (VPN killswitch); this can be done with just Windows Firewall.

There are several steps involved:

1. Download and install OpenVPN GUI for Windows 7 (make sure you don’t install OpenVPN Connect by mistake).
2. Get a OpenVPN profile from a VPN provider (Proton, Njal.la, Riseup).
3. Setup all VPN traffic to be allowed.
4. Setup all other network traffic to be blocked.
5. Fine-tune the firewall rules.

Go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. In the left panel click on Outbound Rules and once the outbound firewall rules are listed, click on New Rule in the right panel.

The Nokia Booklet 3G is a premium netbook by Nokia and if you want more info about it make sure you read my project page to get an insight in the device and its hardware. It’s my favorite netbook and despite the fact that it has only 1GB of RAM and is powered by a ultra low voltage Intel Atom CPU, plenty of stuff can be done with it.

All Nokia Booklets came with Windows 7 Starter preinstalled and you really don’t want to use that, so let’s install something better, like Windows 7 Professional. You can update your Starter edition if you have an original installation and it will keep the preinstalled Nokia software, if you want so.

Modern 32bit software can be compiled and ran on any low-powered machine (like my Nokia Booklet 3G) with as low as an Intel Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM. Just make sure you have enough swap space (and maybe install a SSD instead of the old HDD) and don’t expect to compile Firefox or Chromium. You could cross-compile stuff on your beefier machine but that would be cheating, right?

IM: Ricochet Refresh 👍

Ricochet Refresh is the new updated version of Ricochet, supported by Blueprint for Free Speech.. We are a non-government, not-for-profit organisation working to safeguard the freedom of expression for whistleblowers, activists, and everybody else, worldwide. Blueprint was the original sponsor of Ricochet, written by developer J. Brooks. source

$ sudo apt install cmake tor build-essential libprotobuf-dev \
	protobuf-compiler libssl-dev libfmt-dev qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev \
	qml-module-qtquick-layouts qml-module-qtquick-controls \
	qml-module-qtquick-dialogs qttools5-dev \
	qtmultimedia5-dev qtquickcontrols2-5-dev
$ git clone https://github.com/blueprint-freespeech/ricochet-refresh.git
$ cd ricochet-refresh
$ git submodule update --init src/extern/tor
$ mkdir build
$ cmake -S ./src -B ./build -G"Unix Makefiles" \
	-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel \
	-DRICOCHET_REFRESH_INSTALL_DESKTOP=ON \
	-DUSE_SUBMODULE_FMT=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/
$ cmake --build ./build -j$(nproc)
$ sudo cmake --build ./build --target install

While I usually have many ideas and most of them are quite stupid, here is an idea that’s not stupid (or at least I’d like to think that), inspired by Tie’s “I want a Computer that I Own”:

How about going back to the roots and ditching your top-of-the-line computer and use one from more than 10 years ago, for one month?

I can see you people already cluching pearls and crying for your Discord, XCode, Electron apps that use 4GB of RAM, Chrome with 100 tabs open, Docker, Adobe Photoshop, Android Studio and the likes. But hear me out, what if using an older (and obviously slower) computer will make you focus better? No more distractions (no, you can’t run Overwatch on a 15 years old laptop), you won’t be happy if you spend 3+ minutes to load Youtube or Twitch in your browser and if you think you can watch 4k I’ll just LOL at you, so you will either do actual stuff or just give up and run back to Steve Jobs’ (or Bill Gates) ample bosom.

Maybe write more. Maybe write more code. Or Allah forbid, maybe even write better code. You will definitely have to adapt and adapting is one of the best features of us humanoids even though most of the time we’re failing at it.

So, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and do that, replace my 2020 Apple MacBook Pro laptop with a 2008 Nokia Booklet 3G for one month and try not to die while doing it.

You can access the Nokia Booklet sensors in Linux if you install the required packages.

Temperature

Main thermal sensor is a SMSC EMC1402-1 that is connected to the SMBus and is linked to an external diode on the CPU via the THRMDA and THRMDC pins (T5, U4) ↔ DP and DN (2, 3).

$ sudo apt install hddtemp lm-sensors
$ sudo sensors-detect
$ sudo modprobe drivetemp

And you can view the temperature using the sensors tool: