In this installment we will cover:

1. Installing RAM and wireless cards.
2. Replacing the operating system without an external cd drive
3. Using Backtrack

Back when I first entered college many years ago at the grand old age of 14, some people called me the littlest freshman. Many years later I am finally through with school, and my most illustrious partner in crime gave me a netbook for graduation. (That’s right. I have a master’s degree!) So naturally I decided to turn my new Asus eee 901 into the littlest hack station.

Everything you need to do everything we do here (notice there is no cd drive included): little screwdrivers, pc, 2gig laptop RAM module, Atheros based mini pci express wireless card, grounding strip, SD card.

The first thing we want to do is upgrade the RAM to 2gigs.

Turn the netbook upside down and remove the two screws indicated. The back slides off easily.

Note the placement of the RAM module and wireless cards.

To upgrade the RAM to a 2gig module pull back the black cover and gently pull back the clamps to release the current RAM module.

The module will pop up and can then be removed. Put in the new module, push it down gently, and secure the clamps.

While we still have the netbook open we want to change the wireless card to one that supports injection and is natively supported by Backtrack.

There are 2 small screws that need to be removed.

Also gently remove the white and black wires from the card.

Remove the current card, and replace it with our new card.

Now when we boot up Backtrack the card is natively supported. Yay!

Now we want to replace the Xandros operating system. For now I replaced Xandros with Easy Peasy and boot Backtrack off a SD card.

To make a bootable USB drive or SD card install UNetbootin.

Choose the ISO and the location of the card.

To boot from a bootable media, press ESC at the ASUS screen.

Choose the bootable media from the list and press ENTER.

To use backtrack select BT3 Graphics mode (VESA KDE).

Backtrack will complain about an undefined mode number. Press ENTER.

Choose number 6.

And we’ve got Backtrack.

Georgia

Coming up in Part 2: Persistent changes and drivers in Backtrack.