Notebook Upgrades: Hacking your Dell/Compaq/Toshiba

David Steele writes "Ever wondered what you could do to prolong the life of your notebook? Or upgrade it to meet today's standards? Or maybe you want to turn your mid-range notebook into a high-end model? Hardware Analysis has an article up that takes a a closer look at the available options."

Comments

Difficult

[bonzoesc]

The hardest part of working on a notebook is putting it back together when you're done. It's like 3D Tetris with $200 pieces.

The second hardest part is running your website off it when it's slashdotted. :)

Re:Difficult

[Rick the Red]

The hardest part of working on a notebook is putting it back together when you're done. It's like 3D Tetris with $200 pieces.

Yeah, but thank God there isn't someone handing you a new piece every 2 seconds!

Re:Difficult

[sharkey]

Yeah, but thank God there isn't someone handing you a new piece every 2 seconds!

Perhaps they should. We could have a blind-folded laptop rebuilding contest like the carb-building contest on the Dukes of Hazzard. The winner would get five positive moderations on /. as a reward.

Re:Difficult

[scumdamn]

I love my laptop(s) and have opened it up and completely taken it apart a number of times. Of course, I really can't upgrade mine at this time. It's kind of hard to find an upgrade for a system with a 1.13 GHz processor, a 32MB GeForce2Go video card, and a 15" 16x12 LCD.

Don't go getting jealous now!

Re:Difficult

[bonzoesc]

Don't worry - I won't. I would only end up using it as a desktop, and my desktop is better for what I do.

Re:Difficult

[Jimmy_B]

"The hardest part of working on a notebook is putting it back together when you're done. It's like 3D Tetris with $200 pieces." --bonzoesc

"Yeah, but thank God there isn't someone handing you a new piece every 2 seconds!" --Rick the Red

Personally, I don't think I'd mind someone handing me a $200 piece every 2 seconds.

Re:Difficult

[vanza]

The hardest part of working on a notebook is putting it back together when you're done.

And the best part is, after hours of restless work and when you finally say "It's done!", you look at the table and see you have some spare parts that were not there before...

Re:Difficult

[bonzoesc]

I replaced the battery in my wristwatch, and I had it all together and re-sealed when I noticed the tiny 1 mm spring on the table. I opened it up, found the place it went, and put it back in. While re-seating the seal, I accidentally pushed the spring down, and it disappearred off into the sunset... My watch has been mute ever since.

Re:Difficult

[darkonc]

It's kind of hard to find an upgrade for a system with a 1.13 GHz processor, a 32MB GeForce2Go video card, and a 15" 16x12 LCD.
Don't go getting jealous now!

Too damn late. You shoulda put the warning at the beginning of your post.

Re:Difficult

[jallen02]

You have to be jealous, he has one of the biggest portable penis extensions you can buy!

Jeremy

Re:Difficult

[(void*)]

You would mind, if you had to drop the one you are holding ...

Re:Difficult

[dattaway]

You too can make one of these tiny springs (I launched a few of these springs myself.) Strip off a few inches of insulation from one of the conductors of a IDE hard drive cable and grab one strand. Take a pin off your grandma's sewing pin cushion. With the pin in one hand, wrap tightly a new spring. The annealed copper spring should provide enough tension for your quartz noise transducer.

Extra points for repairing broken pins off tiny IC's.

Re:Difficult

[Tychoma]

You can easily make replacement contact springs by cutting apart a spring bar. You know, the things that attatch the watch to it's strap.

Re:Difficult

[Anonymous Coward]

The last one I did only had one extra screw. Darn I'm getting good! -ric

Lack of laptop need?

[weslocke]

I've thought about upgrading my old laptop, but why? Personally I used to live out of a Compaq Armada (P133, etc)... then I got my first Palm Pilot. Ever since I believe I've actually lugged my old laptop out once or twice, and then only to offload pictures from my digital camera while on trips.

I can see where there would be definite needs for an honest-to-god laptop, but it really seems that the days of the old notebook have come and gone when you consider the sheer handyness of the alternatives like Palm and PocketPC.

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Malc]

I have a need for a laptop. I work from home, and have very flexible hours and work arrangements. I often like to take off and work from the family cottage out on the shores of Lake Huron, or take a long weekend in another city. The laptop makes this possible as I can lug virtual desktop power with me in a fraction the size and weight. On about 5 occasions in the last couple of years we've driven from a home in SW Ontario to Ottawa or Montreal for the weekend, and I've got an almost complete day of work in in the car (thanks to my student wife who offered to drive!) Other times, I've left the home office earlier and finished the day on the way to Toronto. It works for me ;)

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[scumdamn]

There's really a need for laptops when you consider the flexibility. I have both a desktop for gaming and a portable that I actually use all the time.

A portable with wireless can be used in bed, on the couch, in the pool, on the chais lounge, while you're pooping, while you're cooking, at a desk, and sitting on the porch swing out front. How can you beat that?

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Heem]

(thanks to my student wife who offered to
drive!)

Student wife eh? is that simaler to Student Teacher, Student Driver etc? if so, how do I send mine to wife class? :-P

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[bagel]

Lots of academics have notebooks as well. It makes it possible to give powerpoint presentations in conferences. You can also show your peers when you've been working on while visiting their universities.

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[oni]

while you're pooping

I find I need a chair to put the laptop on... the problem is that I'm too lazy to remove the chair from the bathroom when I leave. Have you ever tried to explain why there is a chair in your bathroom facing the toilet?

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Malc]

Hahaha! Sorry, my clumsy way of saying my wife doesn't have a job and so has some spare time to drive whilst I carry on working. As for wife classes, I'm all for it: woman of today don't spend enough time in the kitchen! ;)

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Mr. Foogle]

Why? I was pondering this today.

I have a 4 year old Toshiba Tecra on my desk. Next to is a 4 month old Dell Inspiron 8000. The Dell is what I need - roomy hard drive, fast processor, yadda yadda. But I *like* my Toshiba.

The Dell feels cheap, which is a rotten thing to say about a 3k laptop. The lid doesn't move up n down smoothly. The catch doesn't feel solid. Typical Dell, in other words.

My Tecra's lid still hinges up and down nicely, after 4 years. The catch makes a satisfying 'click' when closed and opened. It's a damned nice solid piece of work. If I could upgrade it, I'd toss the Dell to someone in our office who needs it ....

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Suppafly]

maybe you should take up your concerns with dell and explain that unless they can give you reasonable explanations, you wont be dealing with them in the future.

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* I wish I could get my Tecra 750DVD to work though. It randomly locks up, and the battery doesn't charge. Screwed up power regulation methinks. Sucks :(

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[Anonymous Coward]

One word..."Blumpkin"

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[bdrexler]

Or does that mean his wife is his student? Thought people got in trouble for stuff like that......

Re:Lack of laptop need?

[hanakj]

.....and if his wife reads this, he will!!!

tiBook personalizations...

[torpor]

Dunno about upgrading it (well, a tiBook with 1gig of RAM and OS X is pretty much as sweet a platform for my work as I'll ever need), but I've been designing a new cover for the screenlid that protects things a bit better.

I'm going to coat the entire outside surfaces of my tiBook with the same material that's used in industrial-strength warehouse floors - gripping material - basically, rubberized grit.

That way, it'll be a *lot* better protected than the existing metal exterior, which is sexy at first, but over time rapidly deteriorates as life goes by... if you're getting a tiBook, get used to having to keep it clean. It loves grime.

I'll probably customize the logo too, while I'm at it. As much as I love Apple, I hate being a walking billboard for them, so I'm going to cut a smaller logo template as part of my modification, and use the LCD-backlight shining through the Apple logo as a light source for my own design - maybe with coloring, too, we'll see how things progress.

If anyone's done anything like this already, followup with details. I'd love to know of others that are wililng to modify their tiBooks in kind ...

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[X-Dopple]

I'd like to know how you can rubberize your laptop like that. My cousin recently dropped my dad's laptop three feet and it survived the fall. Well, the notebook itself did, anyway, the hard drive's head was knocked out of alignment as evidenced by the loud clicking noise when the laptop is turned on.

The notebook in question was a ThinkPad 600X that felt delicate to begin with. Now that my dad's getting another laptop, are there any rugged models that can survive a 1 meter plunge?

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[torpor]

You can buy the rubberized grit in large rolls at your local Home Depot. Cut a single piece to size, remove adhesive, stick it on.

Or, you can get it in spray-cans - takes a lot more work to prep the case for application, but it'll be a nicer job.

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[yesthatguy]

Panasonic's Toughbooks claim (and look) to be pretty tough. I'm not sure if they're worth the expense for your dad though. There are a few less-rugged options that I've heard of, but I don't have the links handy. Check /.'s archive, I think there's something recently about them.

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[jred]

I don't know much about the thermal properties of the tiBooks, but keep in mind that a rubberized coating is going to insulate it quite a bit. Higher heat = greater chance of hardware errors & general flakiness...

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I believe that the entire metal case is used as a heatsink, so rubberizing it is probably not a good idea. You could probably get away with just rubberizing the screen/lid and corners of the computer, though.

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[Jaysyn]

1.) Remove Electronics
2.) Add thick coat off Rhino liner (what they use for rubberized truck beds)
3.) Allow to dry
4.) Replace electronics

You now have a shockproof badass TiBook

Jaysyn

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[firewort]

I second the -replace the drive- advice.

If the 600x itself survived (and thinkpads are built to be pretty damn solid, I'm using a 385xd) just buy a new drive and put it in. On the Thinkpad, it's easy.

Re:tiBook personalizations...

[Anonymous Coward]

We had those when I was in the Marines. They really sucked. Very slow, poor power managemnet, the docking stations didn't fit quite right, CD-ROM drives that wouldn't tolerate ANY scratches, etc. Overall, very poor quality.
They did have a standard 2.5" harddrive that was encased in this weird gel. The drives were very shock-proof.

laptops,heavy duty

[Diplomat73]

I have been hearing alot about a new line of notebooks. They are called 'heavyduty' notebooks and can sustain drops of up to 10ft. I beleive the military has expressed a great intrest for these laptops. They also have some anti-liquid resistant on them so you can drop a coke onto it without worrying. The only downside is that their about 10 ibs, very heavy compared to most standerds.

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[Papa Legba]

This keeps florring me everytime I see it. 10lbs is not really that heavy, I have a pair of workboots that way more than that, and a leather jacket also. I think people may be a little to converned with "light weight" when it comes to notebooks. I'd lug an extra pound per hour of battery life easy. The orignal "darth vader lunch boxs" had an issue with wieght, but at 40 pounds each they had an issue definatly. Everyone got scared with these first portables and now obseses ,like a high school prom queen, with weight.

To a lot of people 10 pounds is not that much. I wish they gave us the option when we bought them to add weight to add features, then I could custimize a laptop to do what I want and make sure the wieght was inside the limits I set for it, not some abitrary number set by a diminutive asain woman. (not a slam on asain women btw, more of an example of how much carrying capacity can change across the human race.)

Now let's see how many trolls I collect referring disgustingly to asain woman.

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[depungtpana]

Panasonic has been making the ToughBook for a few years. It does weigh a lot but it is tough.

We have one that was left on top of a car and fell off on the highway. Still works great.

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[wdavies]

Heck carry two notebooks like me :-) I have to work for a living now, and thus have to program on a machine of someone else's choosing (wintel), but can't be parted from my old WallStreet (well I could be parted from that, if someone has a spare TiBook :)).

Guess the weight of the two together is around 15lbs... and I carry them both in my daypack :)

Winton

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[Anonymous Coward]

I am asian woman and I use Dell Inspiron 8000. It weighs over 7 pounds. I could do 10 pounds no problem. But you are right. My friends and family always say carrying bricks.

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not so true anymore, but not that long ago, taking 1 pound off of a notebook meant a $1000 increase in price.

That indicates that lots of people consider weight to be a critical factor. After running around with a 7 pounder on my shoulder, I could certianly feel the difference with I switched to a 5.5# thinkpad. (And yes, I also have a heavy leather jacket and often have a backpack full of books. Maybe the real problem is the laptop bags.)

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[Anonymous Coward]

Mount a laptop in an aluminum briefcase. Use mono or something to pad it. Cheap solution, has worked for me for quite some time, and it looks like you are carrying the nuclear football (unless you get a slim suitcase, then it looks like you are James Bond)

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[matt_wilts]

I worked for a while for Compuserve Network Services here in the UK and as a pre-sales engineer was issued with a Panasonic CF-25, what looks to be a predecessor of the Toughbook.

Obviously we took them apart ;-)

The case was pretty thick aluminium. The screen had an extra protective screen over the front. The most fascinating thing was the hard drive, which was encased in a little coccoon of jelly.

I dropped the laptop a couple of times when the strap snapped on my Tenba bag, running through airports usually! The hinge cracked, but the laptop was ok.

Matt

Re:laptops,heavy duty

[Anonymous Coward]

in ergonomic terminology the "diminutive asain woman" is usually refered to as a 5th percentile female. I'm not sure of the exact description but she is not tall or very strong. She can't lift more than 7 lbs. on a regular basis & about 20-25 lbs. max. My 105 lb., 5'2" wife on the other hand helped me lug around 80 lb. bags of cement, she aried at least 15 of the 50 bags in one afternoon.

The Money Game

[N8F8]

The link is already slashdotted of course.

I currently have an Inspiron 8000. I know the motherboard is simply an intel motherboard with a small form factor. I'd sure love to upgrade the video since so many new video cards supporting good 3D gaming are out. The only thing that would stop me is the 3 year Dell warranty and the lack of OEM notebook video cards for sale. Why aren't the video card manufacturers selling these on the open market? A year from now I'd sersiosly consider taking the risk. By then a faster CPU and video card may outweigh the risks of voiding the warranty.

Re:The Money Game

[mnassri]

From what I've read on the Dell forums (I have the I8k too), you CAN upgrade from an ATI to NVidia GeForce Go, by replacing the video card in the socket. Several people have reported successfully upgrading, although it does void your warranty. I believe the video chip is for sale, in the refurbished sales category, if I remember correctly.

-Maher-

Re:The Money Game

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get the NVidia GeForce2Go video card and replace it in the socket but there are numerous problems concerning power since the Nvidia card uses a little more juice than the ATI cards.

Re:The Money Game

[Anonymous Coward]

That system has a removeable video card. If you bought the base video card with it, it's an ATI card like the one I had. Dell has a mini agp card in this system. It is removeable, meaning you can upgrade it. I just put in a GeForce2 in mine for games that would not run with the ATI card. Works great.

Re:The Money Game

[jchristopher]

Disregarding the warranty, your Inspiron 8000 is pin compatible with a GeForce2Go chip. You can buy them from Dell spare parts, although they will not do the installation nor support you afterwards. The option is there, though. The CPU's are socketed too.

Re:The Money Game

[N8F8]

Thanks. Does the CPU use a special package, or the standard one?

Re:The Money Game

[jchristopher]

It uses a CPU specifically designed for laptops. It is, however, a standard, and thus also replaceable. I believe the architecture is called MMC-2.

Re:The Money Game

[equalize]

You really think that when Dell comes to take a look at your computer they are going to say, "Oh, you upgraded your Video Card, we're not going to fix your motherboard problem."

Naw, Dell talks a lot of trash about voiding the warranty but when it comes down to it, the service repairmen don't care what you've done to it... They get paid to replace the part and move on to the next job. We frequently have Dell technicians fix the Latitude notebooks we have, and even when they notice something fishy they seem to just laugh it off.

On a related note, when putting a laptop back together never listen to your coworkers tell you that you can't put a GIG of memory inside the notebook. Sometimes having those SIMMs floating around in the case is not good for the life of the equipment.

Re:The Money Game

[N8F8]

Thank you for the information.

Re:die american scum

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's worse, the Hall of Fame has stopped working too.

Slashdotted

[grantedparole]

Mirror please. Asap.

Thanks in advance.

"Let's build three new towers in place of the old ones and make sure that we make the middle one taller than the others. This way we'll have a middle finger pointing to the f@ckers who did this!"

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree, the terrorists ass is next.

I still fail to see what a picture-free website without any laptop information has to do with the posters request.

Or did you forget to check before posting?

The virtue of Powerbooks

[Xunker]

Here is where one of the vitures of Mac PowerBooks comes through -- Upgradeability.

The examples abound: before I retired it, my old 1400CS had been upgraded from it's stock 117mhz 603e CPU to a 366 G3, and G4 upgrades are nearly availble for the 'Wallstreet' Line, that debued with 233 mhz 7400 CPUs.

The upgradeability is probably not due to the hardware as much as the scope; there are a million-and-one difference makes of x86 notebooks, while Apple is the only real manufacturer of mobile PowerPC hardware, so hardware developers spend a lot more time on one specific model, developing upgrades. If memory serves, this began with the PB 520 in 1993 which started out with a 25mhz 68040 and can be taken all the way up to a 183mhz 604e.

Of course, Powerbooks can't run Windows Natively, and some people still don't think that the MacOS is a *real* OS, even though the only two OS options you have for a Powerbook are MacOS and Linux.
.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[peter]

> ... the only two OS options you have for a Powerbook are MacOS and Linux.

You obviously meant to include the qualifier "mainstream". Even at that, you left out NetBSD. (I don't know if BeOS will run on a PB.)

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

BeOS will run on a G3 i believe.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Matthew Weigel]

OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, mkLinux, MacOS, MacOS X.

Plenty of options, even for snobs ;-)

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Phroggy]

OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, mkLinux, MacOS, MacOS X.

And QNX, last I checked (which wasn't recently). And obviosuly Darwin, if you count that seperately (might as well).

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[jchristopher]

The parent post is not "informative". On the contrary, probably 75% of Apple notebook CPUs CANNOT be upgraded. Only those specific examples cited can be. There is also no G4 upgrade coming for Wallstreet, despite what the original poster says.

None of the 1x0 series is upgradeable, neither is any of the Duo series, neither is the 3400, 5300, or original G3.

And yes, I'm aware that most wintel notebooks are not upgradeable either. But upgradeable CPUs is not a reason to buy apple - which models have been upgradeable appears to be entirely based on luck, since Apple certainly won't tell you ahead of time.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Suppafly]

no it wont.. beos will only run on pre g3 type ppc chips..

basically old macs..

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the 1400 , 5x0, and the Wallstreet Powerbooks were the only ones that had an upgradable CPU.

Pretty much every other Powerbook has a soldered-in CPU, just like most PC laptops.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[saintlupus]

no it wont.. beos will only run on pre g3 type ppc chips..

Actually, it won't run on Powerbooks at all. Desktop Macs and clones only.

--saint

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[4444444]

neither is any of the Duo series

sorry the duo 280 series with the 68030 procesors is upgradable to a 100Mhz PPC

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[jchristopher]

You're right, the Duo 280 can be "upgraded" to a 100mhz Duo 2300, but the "upgrade" includes swapping the motherboard for one with a different CPU on it. Hardly a CPU upgrade.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[Xunker]

There is also no G4 upgrade coming for Wallstreet, despite what the original poster says.

Hmm.. seeing as how I have been told by Sonnet PR that G4 Upgrades *are* in the works on two separate occasions, well, I have to side with Sonnet on this.

Re:The virtue of Powerbooks

[tonywong]

Of course, certain series of powerbooks wind up at dead ends. You can't expect a powerbook from 1991 to be able to take a processor from 2001. The party's over at some point for each chassis type, some sooner than others.

While you can say that none of the 1x0 powerbooks are upgradable to PPC, you can logic board swap and screen swap most of them up to the 180c as an end point. Thus a 25 MHz 030 passive matrix PB140 could be moved up to a 33MHz active colour PB180c.

The duo series is even more upgradable. All of them allowed you to swap in a 100MHz 603e logic board. That's quite a jump from a 25MHz 030. The 2300c can even take scsi or ide HDs.

The 190 (33MHz 040) could be logic board swapped for a 5300 series logic board (100 or 117MHz 603e).

The 3400 series could be logic board swap from a 180, 200, or 240 MHz 603e to an original powerbook G3 (250MHz 750).

The original poster also cited a possible forthcoming G4 upgrade for wallstreet and lombard, but those are only rumours without direct confirmation. They can, however, be upgraded to faster G3s currently.

Only the most recent of the powerbooks don't have an upgrade path at introduction of the new 'chassis' type.

Perhaps they will have an upgrade path at a later date, but Apple never says their computers are upgradable ever since they got sued for advertising that the LC/performa series could be upgraded to PowerPC (and priced it so sky high and delivered it late that people got massively pissed).

The most potentially upgradable powerbook is the much lamented 5x0 series. I think they came out in '95 or so, and featured two swappable bays, a CPU and RAM on a daughtercard, and on-board 10Mb ethernet (AUI). The only thing it missed was a big enough cavity for CD-ROM drives. In fact, the daughtercard could theoretically take G3 and G4 chips and more RAM than any of its closer descendants (no specified maximum other than physical size), but no upgrades are ever going to be made again as the connector (or controller?) for the daughtercards has been retired.

A highly upgradable laptop

[cluening]

The most easily upgradable laptop I have ever run across is a friend's CTX EzBook somethingerother that had a desktop - yes, desktop - pentium processor in it. Just pop that little thing out and stick a new one in and boom: an instantly upgraded laptop. Of course, it ran hot as could be and sucked batteries like nothing else, but I imagine it was cheap to produce!

Re:A highly upgradable laptop

[Suppafly]

man that would be cool to have..

Re:A highly upgradable laptop

[^me^]

Cool, sure. Battery life? hell. WinBook does the same thing... 1.5 hours or so last WinBook I saw in PeeCeeWorld.

Re:A highly upgradable laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Compaq 1200 / 1600 series. I've had a 1250, 1675, and 1685. The all have standard AMD K6-2 processors. The 1675 and 85 come with 380mhz, but you can upgrade to (at least) 550. I had to underclock to 500 to overcome overheating problems.

Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[IMZombie]

on both OEM and laptop PCs. Especially in the laptop market. Not much room for an upgrade w/o replacing the entire main board.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Teferi]

On my inspiron 8k, the video chip and stuff seem to be on a socketed card.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[IMZombie]

Very cool - good for Dell. The whole Inspiron line is their "new technology" stuff so that doesn't surprise me. Unfortunately I get stuck dealing with the Lattitude series (mainstream).

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Teferi]

Heh, it's not just that...my old laptop, a model N30W from the now defunct Fountain Technologies, had a socketed card too.
Dell sold those as the Inspiron 5000e, fwiw.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[scumdamn]

Golly, depending on the video card you have you could probably buy the GF2Go from Dell spare parts and put it in your system.

You might just need a BIOS upgrade, though.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[aaronleif]

unfortunantly, some of Dell's products, lack in quality. my one friend got a new inspiron a few days ago, and already he has had to get the motherboard replaced twice becuase of "factory defects". like the headphone jack just came unattached to the motherboard, and the thing to control the fans weren't working, so the one was never turning on.
so i dunno if dell's "new technology" is that awful good.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Teferi]

Already have one. :)
I love my inspiron8k - 900MHz P3, GF2Go with 32M RAM, 15" UXGA display (native resolution 1600x1200) 320M RAM, 20G HD, dvd drive, two batteries (almost never use floppy, heh) - only thing I plan on changing in the near future is adding some more RAM and maybe a new HD. Great machine, even has a decent keyboard.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you happen to know if the Inspiron has the same keyboard? I've got one on order. I can hardly wait (mmmm 1600x1200 15" LCD screen)....

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Teferi]

Er...what model are you talking about?

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[Anonymous Coward]

you can go to dell.com and customize your laptop. i have pretty much the same thing except it's 10gb hard drive and 128mb of ram.

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[McKing]

It would be nice if Dell would sell that part, though. I have a year old Inspiron 7500, exactly the same components as the current 8100 except for a slightly slower CPU and smaller hard drive, and I called up to ask about getting the GeForce2Go part. They wouldn't sell it to me! I looked at my friend's 8100 and the card is exactly the same. I thought about swapping his card to see if it would work, but I don't want to void either of our warranties if it fries something...

Re:Most the video "cards" are intergrated

[scumdamn]

Order it online using your friend's service tag.

Re:laptops,heavy duty | Panasonic Toughbook

[asv108]

Panasonic Toughbook" is a heavy duty laptop that looks like a suitcase. As mentioned in previous Slashot articles, it is spill, shock, and dust resistant.

Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[Black Art]

I reciently upgraded my Vaio 505VE laptop. It was not the most easy thing in the world, but possible.

Here are the things you need to know about:

If you have fried the laptop power supply cord and need a replacement, Targus makes a laptop power supply replacement. The web page at http://www.targus.com/ does *not* list the plug end you will need for the 505VE. (It is weird and non-standard.) The plug number you will need to order is number 62. It costs as much as Sony's charger, but has much more use since you can use it with all sorts of other devices.

Memory replacement:

Kingston makes a memory module for the 505VE that is much less than what Sony charges. They also have a lifetime waranty. Buy the 64 meg module. Two 32 meg modules do not equal one 64 meg module. Each is actually two weird chip-like things. If you get the 32 meg set hoping to just get another 32 meg later, you will find that does not work and you will have wasted your money. You can only expand the 505VE to 128 megs.

To open the 505VE, turn the laptop over and remove the screws with an arrow AND a dot next to them. Make sure you do not lose the screws. (A saki cup or other small cup is helpful.) Turn over the lattop and carefully remove the keyboard. It should slide up and out. Remove the screws under the metal plate on the left. The modules plug in under that plate. Carefully put everything back together and it should work.

Replacing the hard drive:

You can upgrade the hard drive. (Sony's web page says you cannot.) Good luck finding one that is bigger though. the 505VE uses a Toshiba 8.45mm laptop drive. It is the thinnest laptop drive made, other than the IBM microdrive. (Which is REALLY tiny.) I have heard that you can use a 9.5mm, but I have never tried it. Toshiba has an 8.1 gig drive that size. The specs are only listed on their Japanese web pages, not on the American. The only company I could find that had one was Atlantic ComputerTech in Brooklyn NY. (I am not certain of the model number. it is in my laptop.)

Getyting the drive in your laptop requires a great deal of care and patience. You will need to remove all of the screws out of the back of the laptop. You then need to remove the keyboard and remove more screws. You then can pry the laptop housing apart at the bottom by about one inch. You need to remove a couple of screws holing the drive into place and carefully unplug it. be careful as there is a fragile cable that connects to the power switch. Once the drive is removed, you can unscrew it from the metal mounting plate and put in the new drive. Put everything back together.

Installing Linux on the 505VE:

You can only boot off the CD-ROM if you are using a Sony CD-ROM drive. (And it is more expensive than the normal drive.) After you boot off the disk, when you get a boot prompt (under Redhat it will ask if you want expert, text or graphical install), type "linux ide=0x180". This give it the non-standard i/o port location of the cd-rom drive. If you do not do this, the drive will stop working when it tries to figure out what ide devices you have.

Hopefully that will help. The 505VE is a nice laptop. Battery life sucks. Sony reams you on every part you have to buy seperatly. Other than that it has been a good laptop.

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[juuri]

Toshiba makes many drives that fit in the 505s... all the MK 8.5mm series of toshiba drives intended for portable devices will fit.

However I don't think the sony is compatible with them due to heat concerns. I put a 20gig in my 505VE and the drive died shortly. Perhaps the drive was defective? I don't know but I have gone back to a 6 gig drive in it.

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[TekkonKinkreet]

Installing Linux on the 505VE: You can only boot off the CD-ROM if you are using a Sony CD-ROM drive.

I had a related problem trying to get Redhat 7.1 onto a Thinkpad 240 with a USB CD-ROM a few weeks ago. I wound up putting the ISOs on the hard drive, where Redhat's installer can find them just fine.

(Not that this was genius or anything, but I had a lot of people smarter than me wonder how to do it. Once Linux is installed, the CD-ROM worked fine.)

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a 20 gig in my Viao. Was thinking of putting in a 30gig the other day.

Last time I was in Hong Kong i got the 6 gig removed, and installed a 20gig ibm - cost less than 1400HK$ = about 200US including installation for you americans. The 505VE is still my favourite laptop, i've moved to an i(ce)Book now, but it weigh's twice as much, and is about 2 1/2 times thicker. If only Sony would make more that size...

I've had the 20gig in there for about a year now - my vaio is getting on for 2 1/2 years old now. Still a workhorse though.

Lawrence.

www.shanghaiguide.com
The Shanghai Guide - Shanghai's Guide to the internet

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[Black Art]

The 505VE ships with a 6.5 gig drive. The only larger drive in the 8.45mm form factor seems to be the 8.1mm drive. That may change now that the Toshiba Libreto is now back in production. The 8.45mm drives were originally developed for those tiny little boxes. (In fact Keith Packard (of XFree86 fame) used to use one as his test server. Weird seeing an X server that could be crushed by the monitor displaying it.)

But now that I know the 9.5mm drive will work, I will need to get one of those. (There is never enough space...)

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[Black Art]

If you can get a look at the boot messages when it initially installs, you can sometimes determine the i/o port being used. It is not easy to figure out. (I had three people try to get it working, all three of them major open source developers and they could not do it. I was able to do it, but it took a lot of research and voodoo.)

Re:Vaio 505VE Upgrading

[Polo]

Forget CD-ROM booting.

For my old Vaio PCG-505F, I've always booted off the net (I used Redhat). I never bought the CDROM drive.

You just need a system with the redhat CD's copied to a directory. Then just put in the pcmcia boot disk and a cheap pcmcia ethernet card and point it to a machine, access is easiest through ftp or http. It's way cheaper than buying the CDROM and faster too.

After owning this sony laptop, I've always liked it. However, the sony proprietary EVERYTHING is a real pain. Special sony memory. Special sony battery. The battery died after quite a short time and I never bought another one because of the sticker shock. I like the special sony charger - It's well designed to wrap the cord around itself. But it too has special connectors and voltages. Sigh.

By the way, if you're into Windoze, you might want to check out CD Space, which lets you encode all your CD's as image files and mount them on "virtual" cd drives. Even games like red alert 2 or diablo 2.

replace the hard drive ....

[taniwha]

both laptops I've had (Dell and IBM) have had easily replaced hard drives - I've replaced the drive on the Dell twice (once when it started making too much noise, and the second time to increase the disk size). Trashing your disk isn't a reason to replace a laptop - just pop down to Frys (or wherever) and buy a new one - convince yourself you can remove the old one first.

Easy upgrade

[harkal]

Well the most bloodless upgrade you can do to a laptop is remove windows XX it came with and
install a fine debian linux on it... :) Better performance for no extra cost...

p.s. And you get to keep the warranty!

Is it possible to scavenge the display?

[wtpooh]

I have an old Pentium Pro 200mhz laptop, which is mostly a piece of crap (battery pops out, it overheats until it freezes, etc.) Is there any way I could use its display as a second monitor, short of running X on the laptop? I'd like to be able to just install a second video card on my home machine and hook the display up to that.

Re:Is it possible to scavenge the display?

[omega9]

It's possible. We dismantled a laptop at our facility here because of (what we thought was) a dead screen. The only two leads coming from the LCD were for power and VGA. Power was easy enough to splice in, but the VGA cable was a ribbon cable, as I imagine most are. It was all a task of trial and error, figuring out which trace matched to which pin on a standard 15 pin D-shell connector.

If you're lucky, or know people, you can sometimes find white papers or tech-specs on those "pinouts". I've only done it once, but I bet there's a lot of similarity within brands or even in laptops in general. If I can find my notes from back then I'll post the process we used to attatch the ribbon to the D-shell.

Re:Is it possible to scavenge the display?

[Peale]

That sounds spicy. I'm sure there are quite a few people that'd like to see you put up a page on it.

Incidentally, what were the power requirements?

And, off topic, does anyone have any info on and old RCA camcoder, the CC011?

Re:Is it possible to scavenge the display?

[juuri]

How exactly did you splice power in?

I have a couple of LCDs I would love to modify.

Re:Is it possible to scavenge the display?

[StormAngel]

Yes, yes, do tell! I have a dead Gateway Solo that I've been trying to find info on how to do this with.

It's almost as easy as a desktop

[Inthewire]

I used to work on Fujitsu and Hitachi laptops. Not that there's anything special about them. But it taught me that replacing components on a laptop is no mystery. Memory is a no brainer, HDDs swap in and out, even CPUs in older models (and probably current ones). The only problem is that most have the video and soundcard built into the mainboard. But the heart of the system can be changed by opening the case. Just keep track of what fastener goes where...my Fujitsu E has something like 14 screws between me and the motherboard.

Re:It's almost as easy as a desktop

[Inthewire]

Well...the tool didn't fit right...wrong number of slots for screwing.

Uses for a laptop

[linuxguy]

Well, here are some of the things I use my laptop for:

1. Code perl while riding a train to downtown Portland.
2. Debug C++ apps in the coffee shop.
3. Read Slashdot while taking a dump (Thanks to 802.11 wireless networking).

I have noticed that I am more productive when I change the enviroment I work in, regularly.

Re:Uses for a laptop

[blindbat]

Read Slashdot while taking a dump

You must be having to moderate through all that fp schlock.

Re:Uses for a laptop

[matt_wilts]

3. Read Slashdot while taking a dump (Thanks to 802.11 wireless networking).

Either it was a slow news day on Slashdot, or you're constipated, mate..

Matt

Re:Uses for a laptop

[stud9920]

3. Read Slashdot while taking a dump (Thanks to 802.11 wireless networking).

I can do that with AvantGo on my Visor too

Re:Uses for a laptop

[MisterPo]

Whats wrong with.... 1) A newspaper 2) The same newspaper 3) Yet, again the same newspaper (actually it may now have another use - gotta love recycling) Old Shool Po

Re:Uses for a laptop

[ALuddy]

> Well, here are some of the things I use my laptop for:

> 3. Read Slashdot while taking a dump (Thanks to 802.11 wireless networking).

Wow! Full duplex, with simultaneous upload and download! We are impressed. 8{)}

Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[steppin_razor_LA]

I have an Inspiron 7500 w/ one of their 15.4" LCD screens that is broken. I checked out Dell's site to find out the replacement cost. It was ~$1200! Ouch - hard to believe that a replacement LCD costs about as much as a new laptop. So now I am using it as a server. :)

Re:Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[frknfrk]

i'm still using my gateway 2000 handbook 486 as a server. with a sandisk flash IDE drive, the whole thing makes 0 noise and serves fantastically (web/dns/mail). the 0 noise makes my wife happy, the serving makes me happy. when i upgraded from 8 MB RAM to 20 MB, i could actually use PHP :)

Re:Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try looking for a third party parts store online. If you're lucky there might be one that sells a replacement. Or you could try eBay; sometimes people sell inoperative "parts" laptops that have a broken chip or hard drive but an intact screen you can use.

I cracked the screen on my iBook (the old 800x600 model). Apple said it would be something like $700 to fix. pbparts.com sells a replacement screen for $375. The only drawback is replacing the screen yourself, which can either be easy or a nightmare, depending on your computer. Mine was the latter.

Re:Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[Inthewire]

Pull off the bezel and get the manufacturer's part number. Most LCDs I've seen are made by Sharp, IBM, or Fujitsu. I'm sure there are others, but the bulk of them are sourced from one of the main suppliers. ONce you get the REAL part number you can punch it into google or a similar engine...I found a replacement screen for one of mine online for $120 plus shipping...better than the $900 that Hitachi wanted.

Re:Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[Suppafly]

just get one off ebay for $50 and call it a good day.

Re:Try repairing! Dead LCD...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the samething happen here.

Inpiron 7500 w/ 15.1 inch screen went dead. Dell claimed anything to do with the motherboard or LCD was $900 ontop of the $300 service charge.

So I up(down?)graded to a Inspiron 3800 (half the weight, twice the power) for half the price of the 7500.

Low on the specifics, anymore info?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article lacked a lot of the specifics.
What models can and cannot handle what upgrades? For example an old Gateway Solo 2500, can I upgrade it's processor?

Are there other pages with more installation instructions?

And where can you purchase separate processors? The Intel page linked to from the article just points you to vendors of entire computer systems.

Re:Low on the specifics, anymore info?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa,
what is this place? am I in moderated purgatory?
Please forgive me for hinting that I could use more information than an article provided.
Please unbanish me from the eyes of the slashdot readership so that I might bask in the blinding light of their knowledge.

Would it be kosher: (and vaguely on-topic)

[Karl Cocknozzle]

To upgrade our society and make trolls like this Anonymous Coward obsolete?

Compaq 1200 hard drive upgrade

[eweaver]

I upgraded the hard drive in a Compaq 1200 the other day for a friend, from a 6 Gig to a 20 Gig, and also added 128 Mb more ram for a total of 156 or something weird like that. All in all it was very easy.

We got the parts off Knowledgemicro.com, total cost $135! Very cheap. If you unscrew all the screws and stick a screw driver under the lip in the front, and carefully slide it back and forth, the panel with the touchpad and the speakers pops out. This releases the keyboard. Once you have those out of the way, just unscrew the metal hard drive frame, and remove the drive from that with a screwdrive made for those star-shaped hex screws.

Slide the new one in, screw (not that way, sicko), connect the IDE cable, and pop everything together.

The Compaq System Restore CD worked great, except the partition it created was slightly small. Just use FIPS or the Mandrake-Linux installer disk to fix that.

Bingo, a $1000 laptop is now worth approximately $1500 configured, for a minimal total cost.

Mac

[dasmegabyte]

I recently upgraded my PowerBook G3-500 with a 30 gb hard disk and 640 meg of ram (that's 256 meg for OSX, 256 for Classic and 128 mb for virtual PC, for the "good lord thats a lot of ram" people amongst you). It cost me around $280, which is substantially less than the $2400 a nice new g4 powerbook with loads of ram would have run me. Furthurmore, I fetched $100 for my old 12 gigger.

Laptops get hard drives which are substantially slower than desktops and generally need more (i don't like to carry about my volumes of CDs when I'm on the road). A lot of memory allows you to avoid hyper slow virtual ram, which means less time spent opening programs (you just leave them open). OSX seems substantially more stable with > 256 meg of ram...never panics when i remove my wireless card.

How easy was it? took me an hour, all told, and I got very nice detailed directions in quicktime form from apple's knowledge base.

Re:Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree with the point about memory. I have an iBook and OS X performace increased by leaps and bounds when I upgraded from 128 to 320 MB of ram.

However, my iBook has rather limited upgrade options. The only card I can put in is an Airport card, and it has only the single USB port, which is usually taken by my mouse.

Re:Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

They have USB hubs for laptops, very small, powered off the USB port. Try pricewatch or Ebay to find some.

Re:Destroy the Muslims. Kill All Islam.

[Phroggy]

Don't feel bad, I'm an American and I don't know what he's talking about either. Just ignore him.

Macintosh Portable

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember the Macintosh Portable? I stumbled across one of these last year at a computer junkyard. Never got it working, the power management chip was blown out. But from disassembling it and reassembling it several times, believe me, this was an amazing machine. You don't even need a screwdriver to take it apart and put it back together-- everything snaps nicely into place!

Macintosh Portable article on lowendmac.com

Re:Macintosh Portable

[Anonymous Coward]

All Macs are like that. Well, you need a screwdriver for some parts, but I've worked on most models since the Performa and they are designed from the ground up to be opened up an tinkered with.

Site Slashdotted & MySQL is a P.O.S.

[Danborg]

Here's the error:

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /web/admin.hardwareanalysis.com/include/db.php on line 7
Unable to connect to database.

Re:Site Slashdotted & MySQL is a P.O.S.

[notbob]

This is why we don't use PHP in a production environment...

BAD ERROR TRAPPING

and a language coded by little haxor wanna-be's with no real background in it, they did a decent job for a weekend hack but not a real language at all.

Somebody skipped the class on the OSI model.

Dell inspirons seem very upgradable

[TheGratefulNet]

how to upgrade DELL inspiron laptops

it appears that MOST of this laptop can be upgraded. I saw an ebay ad talking about upgrading the video "card" and it had a link to the Dell site, which I listed above.

I have not tried this myself, but am very anxious to upgrade my cpu, once I can find one that is faster than what I currently have; fast enough to justify the risk of opening my laptop, that is.

Re:Dell inspirons seem very upgradable

[frknfrk]

i've had a lot of fun opening my old gateway handbook 486. from this guy's page i got all the info i needed. i've upgraded the RAM (from 8 MB to 20!), and gone from a 120 MB hard drive to a 1.7 GB to a 2.5 GB, and now to a 128 MB IDE Flash disk from Sandisk (no noise whatsoever). plenty of room for a minimal linux distribution. and a lot of fun to hack around on :) i highly suggest grabbing a handbook from ebay, probably several for sale. great little servers, and i used it as my only computer through much of college. can be used with orinoco wireless cards, too! hide the little server in the corner of the closet, makes no noise.

Re:Dell inspirons seem very upgradable

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded my Dell Inspiron 3800 about two months back. I bought a 20gb IBM hard drive (previous, 10gb) and a Pentium III 750Mhz MMC-2 processor (previous, Celeron 500) both off ebay (yes, I know, but they work great :) ).

Following the instructions off dell's website it took about 30mins to get everything up and runnning.

O.T. Anybody know anything about speedstep support in Linux?

Upgrading Compaq Presario 1600 series

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Compaq Presario 1685 which originally came with 380Mhz K6-2, 64MB RAM, 4.3GB Fujitsu HDD.
1) I upgraded it to 128MB after buying 64MB from http://www.crucial.com(anyone can do it)

2) Then upgraded the processor with a 450MHz K6-3+. I run it at 500Mhz with some DIP switch settings which can be found at
http://www.mgrudkin.clara.net and
http://www5.compaq.com/athome/support/msgs/1683- 16 94/index.html
Got the processor from www.axiontech.com for $54. Now it's probably available in ebay. Go to http://www.amdzone.com forum (K6 group)to see availability.

3) Recently I upgraded the HDD with a 20GB Fujitsu drive
http://www.edgemicro.com/item.asp?cartID=127AWUL F5 7&ic=FUJMHM2200AT
Any standard 9.5mm HDD will work. I got Fujitsu, because I have read reviews that it's quiter than IBM. So far it's running very good with 3 OS (WinME, XP RC2, Mandarke 7.1)
Refer http://www5.compaq.com/athome/support/msgs/1683-16 94/index.html for removal sequence

4) I tried to replace the DVD-ROM (Toshiba SD-C2202 4X, firmware 1021) with a Toshiba SD-C2202(newer firmware 1327 - got it from ebay), but failed. So running the old drives. The BIOS didn't detect the new drive at all. This drive doesn't have any jumper select or anything. The old drive runs fine in secondary master position. Don't know whether the new drive firmware (may be ide position is hardwired in firmware) is conflicting with my config.

Opening an IBM thinkpad

[bagel]

The link is slashdotted so I couldn't read the story. But here's so 2c I want to give for anyone interested in changing the harddrive for the thinkpads. (I have a i series).

To open the laptop, do not unscrew the screws from the bottom. Instead you have to lift the keyboard (and mouse buttons) out. All the goodies, including your harddrive, are hidden underneath your keyboard. Try poking around to see where the keyboard is screwed down. For me, it's underneath the "i series" panel below the keyboard. You'll need a flat head screw driver or any flat headed object to help lift the panel and the keyboard out since they are clicked into the laptop.

Good luck upgrading.

Time to upgrade to Postgres or Interbase

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /web/admin.hardwareanalysis.com/include/db.php on line 7
Unable to connect to database.

IBM Thinkpad NOT so difficult to upgrade

[n76lima]

About a year ago I "hot rodded" my 4 year old IBM Thinkpad which started out life as a P-133 w/16 MB RAM and 2 GB HD.

I was able to find info on IBM's web pages http://www-1.ibm.com/support/ to change the dip switches for the clock ratio and the CPU voltage. I bought a used AMD K6-233 CPU off of Ebay for $30, a 32 MB RAM upgrade from McGlen Micro http://www.mcglen.com/, and a 6 GB Fujitsu HD from a local store and upgraded it in an afternoon.

Because I was not willing to clip the pin on the CPU I am limited to 200 MHz as the dip switch settings did not support 3.5 clock multiplier, and the backplane is limited to 66 MHz. But the increase in raw CPU speed was 50%, and with the extra RAM (48 MB total) even WinDOZE 98 was able to perform acceptably well.

By adding the 6 GB HD I had room for both the WinDOZE and RH 6.1 (Cartman) and all the apps I wanted.

A full install of Office 2K and Star Office 5 allow me compatibility where ever I roam.

Now if I could just upgrade the 56K modem with "portable" DSL when I travel....

Re:IBM Thinkpad NOT so difficult to upgrade

[Peale]

You may not need to clip it. It would take a good eye, but you should be able to coat the pin in something non-conductive, perhaps clear nail polish. That would serve the purpose, AFAIK. Any one else have anything to say on that?

Re:IBM Thinkpad NOT so difficult to upgrade

[syukton]

I've got an IBM Thinkpad 755CD (486 DX4-100, 16 MB RAM, etc..) and I was wondering where _exactly_ on IBM's site you found the technical information for the dip switch settings for your particular thinkpad. Any help in regard to what you searched for and/or where you found the information on the site would be _most_ appreciated. I've been under the impression that my laptop is un-upgradable... but even upgrading to a low-end pentium would make me a happier camper. =)

Re:IBM Thinkpad NOT so difficult to upgrade

[rotor]

I've got the Thinkpad 760E, which sounds like the same model you've got. I don't see the info you've found on the ibm website, but I'm obviously VERY interested in seeing it. If you could post more specific info, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.

True upgradable notebooks would be nice

[green pizza]

For example, I bought my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite 1650) when a 450 MHz Pentium was all the rage. Today the thing is almost worthless, even with the ram upgraded. Yet the keys and screen are still in good condition. I really wish there was a way to upgrade this thing's motherboard, video card, and cpu. As it stands, I'll be giving it to my cousin and begin shopping for something that can handle modern OSes and software.

Re:True upgradable notebooks would be nice

[Jerf]

Ship that worthless piece of crap to me, and I'll trade you a useful 133MHz Pentium. No skin off your nose, trading one piece of crap for another. I'll pay for shipping.

Re:True upgradable notebooks would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

shit, my desktop isn't even a 450 pentium. I'm sporting a Celeron 300A overclocked to 375....I guess it's time to upgrade.

Re:True upgradable notebooks would be nice

[Suppafly]

i wish i ran into people that thought such hardware was worthless or near worthless in real life.. as a college student i could really use a decent laptop.. esp considering your worthless laptop is about as good as my everyday desktop computer..

Re:True upgradable notebooks would be nice

[Tazzy531]

There are truly upgradable laptops available. I know a couple companies in Taiwan that use regular desktop components for laptops. However the problem with this is that desktop components have no power limitations. I know the laptops that I looked into in Taiwan had a max battery life of 1 hour or so.

Suggestions.

[saintlupus]

As long as we're on the subject of laptops...

I was wondering if anyone could suggest a super low-end solution for me. I've been doing a lot of work setting up home networks and the like for people, and I need a 486-class laptop that is well supported by NetBSD to use as a temporary DHCP server and the like. I really like the Thinkpad 755C, but I haven't been able to find any commentary on its NetBSD compatibility beyond v1.3.

(I know, if it used to work, it still should. But I had a Quadra 700 that became magically unsupported between 1.4.2 and 1.4.3. Call me cautious if you like)

Any suggestions as far as models go? Bonus points if you know a matching PCMCIA ethernet card that'll work with the GENERIC kernel.

--saint

Re:Suggestions.

[920]

Ref pcmcia nic's :
The 3 com/megahertz xj-10 Works perfectly fine with my debian dist (2.3x). The pcmcia drivers ID it correctly and insmod the necessary drivers. My choice of the card was purely based on teh fact that it was given to me, but hey, luck was on my side and Debian loves the card. Good luck.

CPU, Other upgrades???

[green pizza]

Most laptops allow those upgrades. I was able to do much the same on even an Apple PowerBook. Since I bought it earlier this year, I have installed 512 MB (total) ram and a 30 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive. I've even replaced the stock "UFO" power adapter with a much smaller model. And as soon as they make a model for my PBG4, I will order one of those nifty keyBORG replacement keyboards from Digitalhipps.

What I would like to see would be (easy) CPU and LCD upgrades that span generations. i.e., buy a ThinkPad today with a 1.1 GHz CPU and a 1280x1024 15" LCD. Replace the CPU in two years with a 2.2 GHz model and upgrade the LCD to a 2048x1576 15" LCD. Maybe even upgrade the video card. There's nothing sepcial about upgrading ram/drives/OS.... that's easy and should be expected, even on an Apple.

Re:CPU, Other upgrades???

[__aaahtg7394]

where'd you get your parts from? i've been wanting to find upgrades, but haven't found anything (partly because i'm new to apple with my PB).

i'm particularly interested in the HDD, as i've only got 10GB (i got the base TiBook, right before they went and dropped the price a few hundred bucks)

IBM's screens are the same

[bagel]

My old man cracked his thinkpad's LCD and I rememebered IBM quoted a price just as ridiculous as yours. He ended up buying a new thinkpad. Guess that's what IBM wanted all along.

thinkpad 701cs

[firewort]

thinkpad 701cs
486 dx75 butterfly keyboard model
upgraded to a 133mhz amd
8mb up to 48mb
540mb ub to 2gb
windows to linux

Re:thinkpad 701cs

[shr3k]

windows to linux

Yes! The upgrade for free that actually improves performance dramatically! Nice work...

Re:thinkpad 701cs

[jp93023]

How?? Links?? I have one of these and would LOVE to get it running linux with some basic gui (windowmaker?). It is my favorite laptop of all time, but up till now I didn't think much could be done.

Re:thinkpad 701cs

[firewort]

here

here

and here

These links all are by other users who installed linux on the TP701 laptops.

Notebook Hijaacking, for your Dell/Compaq/Toshiba

[BierGuzzl]

Although few have ever attempted such a feat, and it would require a very unamerican personality to pull this off, notebook hijaackings have been known to happen. In recent days, there has been widespread fear and panic that these activities are on the uprise, but there is no conclusive evidence to support those claims, and the Central Processing Utilitarians have issued press releases emphasizing that those who are responsible will be rebooted.

I wanted more "hacking"

[Qeyser]

Not to poo-poo the article, because it is a very well done artice, but I was looking for more tips on doing things that could *really* void my warranty --seriously.

It was telling us what we already know : that with a laptop you can upgrade the RAM and the hard drive -- both of those operations take about 10 minutes.

To be fair, the part about upgrading the processor was *uber* cool -- I certainly thought that one wan't able to remove a mobile PIII from its mobo. But what I would like to see is a novel cooling method for a 1GHz PIII installed into a chassis originally not meant to take that much heat. (such as mine, A dell latitude L400, which IMHO is just slighly less sexy than the venerable TiBook.)

Another thing I'd be interested to see is how to play around with the mobo and its components; with integrated everything, laptop mobo's are the most expensive part of the machine next to the TFT -- and when one component breaks, the WHOLE THING has to be replaced.

I'd like to see if there are any solutions for this particular problem -- THAT would be laptop hacking.

I know I personally have a grave fear of hacking around in my laptops innards, partly because it is a relatively expensive device, but also because I know next to nothing about how it is put together, how the components interact and how the damn thing /works/ in general (wheras I will cheerfully crack open a PC and will feel confident about violating the warranty many times over in order to figure out how it works, how to fix things, etc.)

Does anybody else share this laptop apprehension? ; ) Has anybody out there conquered their laptop's guts and become confident/skilled in do-it-yourself repairs?

-q

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Quantex W-1400. I recently got a hold of a Dell Inspiron 5000 motherboard. The reason I wasnted to do this was for one, the Quantex has a cylidrical plug for an AC input. I can now use the proprietary 3 pin plug which is the same as thwe one for my Inspiron 8000. My sugrical skills in the motherboard change was tested fully on this job. I must have had about 50 screws laid out. I removed the LCD as a whole. I removed the keyboard, top case, (of cource battery, HD, DVD, Mem and Mini-pci modem first. Then the CPU heatsink, CPU, video card, floppy drive, lower chassis, IR board, LCD Mount, CPU fan and finally the motherboard. I ended up with no "extra screws" and everything works first boot up try! Looking at the service code on the Dell BIOS and referencing it to DELL online webiste, it now states that my warranty lasts untill 7-2003! Wowiee. I betcha $100 that DELL will not warranty it now. hahaha..

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh BTW.. my Inspiron 5K MB was $20.00 Thats twenty bucks.. :)

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[Inthewire]

If you can remember where all the screws go you can take your box down to the major components.
Four types of screws to watch for...long thin ones that hold the screen to the base, short skinny ones that hold the plastic parts together, short wide ones that hold the keyboard and pointing device down, itty bitty ones that hold the CPU and fan together. There might be more. If so, remember what they do and keep 'em in a different pile.
Disconnect all cords, batteries, drives, etc. If it's removeable then remove it.
Pull off all visible rubber covers. You will probably find two on the front bezel of the LCD, maybe other places. Use a dental pick or needle, stab the rubber, pop 'em out. Remove all screws, making note of the function and position of each. Gently pry the shall open. Watch for hidden screws, interlocking plastic tabs, cables, etc. If something isn't releasing, stop! Rethink what you are trying to accomplish. Look for obstacles. Once you figure it out, fix it and continue.
Now that the plastic is off find, remove the keyboard and examine the laout of the components. The CPU, HDD, RAM, BIOS, CMOS battery, ports, and soundcard are all easy to identify. Determine if you have an upper board. Likely this is a multifunction board that includes the video processor. It may be upgradeable. Look at the ACTUAL manufacturer of the TFT. Note the part and serial number.
With this information you can go bargain hunting...$1000 range screens can be found for $100 and up online, happy hunting.

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[Suppafly]

is that the going rate or did you get lucky.. id like to play with some laptop components but can see to get any reasonably.

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[grover]

I would NOT mess around with the CPU on a laptop you care about at all. The guy talks about replacing a mobile Celeron with a mobile P3 - ummm..they're most likely different voltage parts. They most likely have different bus speeds. They need different BIOSs (SpeedStep needs BIOS support.) The laptop may only have been designed to handle a CPU of a certain power dissipation.

...and, upgrading the mem and HD will result in a bigger performance boost anyways. ;-)

Regards -- Andy

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[el_nino]

Simply check the manufacturers website for information on what processors your laptop supports. If there are models with Mobile Celeron 650's and PIII 850's, they're probably not going to use different mobo's since that wouldn't be cost effective. They're probably not using different BIOSes on different models, either, and if they are it's a simple question of reflashing it.
The difference between different laptops of the same model is CPU, memory, hard drive and a HUGE markup. The rest of the components are in most cases exactly the same.

Re:I wanted more "hacking"

[Qeyser]

Wow, thanks for the advice. I take it you do this often?

-q ; )

Re:Notebook Hijaacking, for your Dell/Compaq/Toshi

[Animgif]

I'm sorry...I may be modded down to -1000000 karma...but I can't allow this without rebute. This is not a time, or place, to be mocking one of the worst trajedies in American history! You may, or may not, be from the US...but that aside...please respect the people who lost their lives, and their familes!

toughbooks (was: tiBook personalizations...)

[kenfrid]

If you don't mind getting an older, slower laptop, I'd say check ebay or pricewatch or something for a Toughbook. I have a Pentium 166 Toughbook. It does everything I want it to except recompile the kernel in less than 5 minutes and play Quake 3. I haven't tested the claims of its sturdiness much yet. It was still too expensive ($500) for me to try dropping it on purpose.

Re:Cherish my balls!

[kiwipeso]

sticking them up your ass?

There's more

[Pope Slackman]

Docs for the full Inspiron line.

C-X C-S

This bullshit is here because of CrapDot's fucking lame-ass compression filter.
Goatse.cx links follow.
Goat #1
Goat #2
Goat #3
Goat #4
Goat #5
Goat #6
Maybe now this poorly-engineered piece of rubbish will let me post.

Off Topic: Laptop sagas.

[M@T]

We recently purchased two laptops - one was Dell, the other was a Toshiba Satellite Pro...

The Toshiba power supply broke and upon getting it fixed, the Toshiba rep. told us that we had definitely voided the warranty because we had installed Win 2K over the top of Win 98.

The Dell guy told us we most definitely had voided the warranty on the Dell laptop because we had upgraded the RAM from 128Mb to 256Mb...

As niether modification had anything to do with their respective problems, we told both companies that they'd most definitely end up in court if we had to pay to get them fixed (both were ~2 weeks old), and the issues were resolved... but not without a lot of pain.

Thinkpads are the shit.

[Shiska]

True Story:

A friend of mine had his thinkpad propped up on the one far end of a long board sitting on top of a big box in my basement. He walked away for a second, and one of my cats decided to play "seesaw". He jumped on the other end of the board, and the Laptop went a'flyin through the air. While airborne, it hit a cup full of water, which landed on the concrete floor just before the laptop smashed into it. We all gasped. Surely, that thing was never going to work again.

My friend went over and picked it up. He toweled it down to get the water off, and noticed that there wasn't really any exterior damage. the laptop had just about closed before it hit the ground, and there were no nicks or scrapes. He then held his breath, opened it up, and hit the power button.

BEEP! ... It booted right up. No problems. Amazing.

From that moment forward, that laptop has been referred to as "The Tank".

Re:The Money Game - Inspiron 4000

[j0ee]

I have an Inspiron 4000 G1000GT... its great, lots of ram, lots of speed, but its got an 8MB Ati Rage 128 Mobility Pro.... !!!!! I would LOVE to have more than 8MB - is there anyway to whack a new chip in or extra ram to fix this up,... what are the odds?

Simplest way to extend life of notebook...

[dbirchall]

Delete Windows, install *Linux or *BSD.

I've got a '486DX4-75 (NEC Versa 2000C); my wife has a P-120 (NEC Versa 4080H). The two of them handle primary and secondary DNS for several domains (yes, we have other secondaries that are geographically and topologically distant), as well as WWW and SMTP for those domains.

Both are a minimum of 5 years old now. Both were bought secondhand. When my Windows-using friends say things like "Well, I've got this old machine that's only a PentiumII-300," I just laugh.

Re:Simplest way to extend life of notebook...

[djmurdoch]

Linux on my Libretto subnotebook is a lot slower than the original OS (Win95), because KDE uses more memory and all I've got is 32 MB. Sure, I could run it in console mode, but I like a GUI. Linux programs also seem to be less careful about making sure things fit on the little 640x480 screen.

I imagine any flavour of NT on this machine would be even worse than KDE. But Win95 works, so why change?

To add to the original discussion: replacing the hard drive on a Libretto is very easy and very worthwhile. For about $200 you can upgrade from the original 1.6GB disk to a 20GB disk. You have to watch out because the BIOS was written for 8GB max and writes the hibernation information at the 8GB limit, but disk overlays and careful partitioning solve that. Physical installation is a breeze: unscrew a cover, slip out the old drive, slip in the new one.

I got my disk upgrade from WEESCO; they were helpful and quick.

Re:Simplest way to extend life of notebook...

[Strog]

Try using Blackbox. It uses very little memory and can be prettied up pretty good if you want. I use it on all low mem computers when KDE just crawls.

Re:Simplest way to extend life of notebook...

[jawtheshark]

Strange, I have a Satellite 210CT which is technically seen a P120 with 32 Meg RAM and I run Peanut Linux with kernel 2.4.8 and on top of that WindowMaker. Easy compile/install, very sleek.
Peanut comes with KDE2 and a lot of apps....KOffice works perfectly on the machine, tough it is quite long at first load. I already did surfing sessions with Netscape 4.76 with about three browsing-windows open, a LICQ session open plus some other little tools. Works okay to me. I have been using this machine for 4 (5? years) and this was the most accountable upgrade I ever did from W95-OSR2.
Of course the 640x480 resolution might be a little on the low side, but even then with W95 things get cluttered fast too on that res. (Mine does 800x600 and sometimes I find it too small)

Amazing..

[Ogerman]

Just today I went browsing for any info I could dig up on notebook upgrade options. This always happens. I get an idea and see it on Slashdot the same day. Freaky.

Anyways, I've got a P2-266 laptop that I really wish I could upgrade the CPU on, however all I've seen are P2-300 replacements. It's really a shame because it has everything else I could possibly want--DVD, 14.1" TFT, everything's Linux friendly, etc.. Anyone have info on any sort of hacks to install a mobile P3 or other chip?

extra parts

[Pope]

Or, as my car-building buddies used to call them, "profit!"

Re:The Money Game - Inspiron 4000

[Anonymous Coward]

my laptop (A Sony VAIO) also has this video card, but i can'yt get it to accelerate 3d reliably. i sitll play half life in software mode. even though 30fps is nice, i'd REALLY like ot get abetter resolutoin than 640x480. any suggestions?

Vaio C1XN

[PhilHibbs]

I'm expecting delivery of a Travelstar 30GN 30GB HDD any day now, and will be fitting it to my Sony C1XN (currently 6GB).

Re:The Money Game - Inspiron 4000

[Anonymous Coward]

ack, of course i would leave out a contact info.. if you know whati can do about it, please drop me a line at novastarr@hotmail.com [slashdot password forgotten :( ]

Processor upgrade in 505?

[X_Caffeine]

While you had it open, did you happen to notice if the CPU was removable? I have a z505 333mhz, and I'd like to replace it with one of the newer mobile P3 chips. Not for the speed, but for the speedstep (runs cooler).

Bigger screen, please

[RennieScum]

I love my Thinkpad. P-150, MMX, 64MB/2.1 GB, 56K and 100-BT. 800x600x16 screen, which made it IMPOSSIBLE to read the article without sidescrolling. -You- may have a 19" monitor, but I don't (not on my porch, anyway):

<!-- ### BEGIN BODY ### -->
<table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 width=991>

I like it for doing design and programming, because I don't need a hella-fast machine for that, and it keeps me honest ;)

I'm using xfce with RH6.2, and it's completely fantastic. I get 160K/s steady on a DSL link, and for the most part it's as fast as my K62/475 Win98 box at work...but anything to do with graphics is crap. Scrolling, drawing windows is slooow. Xmms-P150 uses less cpu than Winamp-K62/475, but when I scroll a window, even one line, it sounds like a frog sat on the record needle.

I kinda want either a G4 titanium, or a Sony picturebook (the Transmeta sub-notebook), btu the first one is real pricey and the second has a slow hard drive...anyone usign these?

Re:The Money Game - Inspiron 4000

[AndyChrist]

WTF...I get playable (~20fps) performance at 5??*3?? in half-life. With a 4 meg Rage Mobility.

And I thought all the Vaios used that SiS shit.

in case you want to upgrade your iBook or TiBook:

[shiva600]

adding a bigger Harddrive to your iBook (dual USB): heres the URL [mac.com]

adding a bigger HD to your TiBook: Here [xlr8yourmac.com]

overclocking the iBook (dual USB) to 600 MHz and 100 MHz system bus: Here [xlr8yourmac.com]

note that especially the iBook upgrades arent exactly easy to do. LOTS of parts and screws.

VAIO notebooks

[chrysalis]

Sony Vaio notebooks are really neat, especially the super-slim ones.
Newer models can receive a landing station, with a DVD/CD burner, and everything you need to make it a full featured computer.
In all Vaios, upgrading the memory is trivial, because the slot can be easily accessed by removing some screws. This operation is also documented by Sony.
And as we're talking about memory, the Memory Stick cards are also excellent to store private data like SSH keys. They can be used in any operating system, because they are seen as regular drives, FAT-formatted. Plug the card, mount it, and it works. Excellent.
But some times ago, I decided to upgrade the internal hard drive. First surprise : on the Sony web site, Sony says that this operation is impossible. Damn! Changing the hard drive, impossible? What the hell?
In fact, it's possible, but it's a very delicate operation. I did it on a PCG Z600 RE laptop. First, you have to remove all screws. Easy. Then, you have to remove the plastic protections on the left and on the right of the screen (at the extremity of the power supply) . It's hard to do without breaking them. Moreover the speakers are at the same place, and they are very fragile. So you have to remove the plastic protection with extreme care to avoid ripping the speakers.
Finally, you can remove the keyboard, to discover new screws that have to be removed. Once removed, you can lift the mainboard and.... too late! The mainboard and the base of the notebook case are linked by tiny ribbon cables. If you lift the mainboard too much, these ribbon cables are going out, and plugging them back is very difficult. So, lift the mainboard, but carefully.
The hard disk is screwed in a metallic slot. But to remove it you have to remove the screws. 4 screws, 2 easily accessible (on the front), 2 difficult to unscrew (on the back) . Use a screwdriver that attracts metal, to avoid losing screws. And have someone help you to lift the mainboard while you are unscrewing the drive.
It took me 4 hours to change the drive. So it's not impossible as sony states, but it's long and stressing.
For everything else, I enjoy this laptop a lot. BeOS, QNX, OpenBSD, Linux and Windows installs properly on it. The "jog dial" rotative button is recognized on Linux, hibernation works with all operating systems, the built-in network card is a standard EEPRO 100 chipset (so no compatibility problem), and I've no problem with the sound chip, either.

underclocking for battery life?

[robin]

I have a question: is it possible to underclock laptops to improve battery life? I'm thinking of buying a T23 Thinkpad, and I want the big screen. That means I'd be getting a 1GHz+ CPU, which is massively overpowered. That means the battery life takes a serious hit, and a decent battery life is important enough to me to be worth a bit of fiddling under the hood. I'd be prepared to underclock that bad dog down to say 1/4 speed for 90% of what I do. Can SpeedStep do this, or is ther any other way to achieve this result?

What's the point of all the research into battery technology going into keeping my lap hotter for the same length of time? I believe the T23 line generates something like 75W of waste heat! It's like some kind of portable space heater rather than an efficient computing device.

Re:underclocking for battery life?

[egghat]

Take a look at SoftFSB. Windows only, never tried to find a Linux alternative.

With my Asus Notebook I can set FSB from 100 MHz to 66 Mhz which lets my CPU run at 566 MHz instead of 850.

Extends battery life on my notebook from 3 hours to 3 hours and 20 minutes.
The CPU cooler does start less frequently with an FSB of 66 MHz.
SoftFSB does not support every notebook/mainboard but with a ThinkPad you'll probably have good chances.

Bye egghat.

Sony R505

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a sony R505TSK, does anyone know of a way to upgrade the video in it? I am extremely doubtful since it is intel 815e chipset based, I guess that it's built into the chipset as well. Any pcmcia voodoo2 type overlay cards or anything?... Great laptop except sucky video card.

Re::(

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people that don't have friends are the slashdot moderators.

HAHAHA mod me down baby!!!.

Notebook Kick-Off with ASUS L8400B

[egghat]

Under Asus Notebook Upgrading you'll find a close inspection of an Asus Notebook. How to reach the inner parts, how to upgrade them, etc. Perhaps Tom's hardware has some other notebook articles like this.

Bye egghat

Where to buy (Ultra) Low Voltage CPUs?

[egghat]

I can't see them anywhere ... at least over here in Germany. Any sources?

TIA!

Bye egghat

SONY Sucks, I need a new mobo

[Anonymous Coward]

When my vaio laptop died after 18 months and SONY
was so kind as to offer a replacement motherboard
for $1500 ($1000 if I did it myself) I junked the
thing.

I searched around quite a bit, but I've yet to
find any source of replacement motherboards. Of
any make.

Puff piece?

[Peter Simpson]

Although the article shows pictures of a Dell,
nowhere in the artcle are there specific
techniques or references to specific Dell models.

It basically says that you can change things in
your laptop. I knew that. How to get around the
40 Mbyte limit in the older Dell Latitudes would
have been a bit more useful...I don't think it's
as easy as adding a couple of 128M SODIMMs...

Pretty useless article, IMHO. Now, if we could
just get the laptop manufacturers to stop hiding
the CMOS batteries...they're almost impossible to
replace without completely disassembling the laptop!

New notebooks have new weight?

[dmccarty]

I doubt that this will be seen, posting so late into this thread. But with all the recent terrorist events, I heard a radio program on airline security this morning. The security analyst said that bombs have been known to be placed in laptops and was ripping apart American security by showing an example from Germany.

"In Germany," he said, "they don't just ask you to power on your laptop or wave a magic wand over it. They take it to a scale and compare it against known weights for every laptop model." Sounds impressive, but I wonder how upgrading a laptop would affect its weight, and thus, international security restrictions.

Re:New notebooks have new weight?

[Dr. Mutex]

I have a slightly different concern. My battery is totally dead. The machine won't even try to come on. I can just see me with guns pointed at my head saying, "honest, it has a bad battery!"

inspiron

[mattr]

Anybody have a Dell Inspiron 7.5K?

Yes, Linux is working on it, mostly, but does anyone know if there is any reason the new IBM 48GH hard drive (5400rpm, 48gigs) wouldn't work in it? Plenty of space for it, and it works in say the Inspiron 8000.

Processor compatibility?

[leperjuice]

I have a Gateway Solo 3150 with a Mobile Pentium II @ 366. That was the maximum processor speed available at the time of purchase. What I'm trying to discover is what processors are compatible with my system? (I'm not yet sure if it's the mini-cartridge or BGA package).

My question: does anyone know of some sort of guide that will allow for processor comparisons? I'd love to be able to swap out for a ultra-low voltage 600Mhz celeron, but how can I tell if the board will support it?

Changing video card in Dell Inspiron 7500?

[Brummund]

The Dell Inspiron 8000 has a Geforce 2 To go (or whatever :) card. I've noticed that it is possible to change the gfx card in the 7500 model.

Anyone know if it would be possible to put an GF2go card in my 7500 model?

And where can one buy those Geforce 2 go cards?

Toshiba Satellite 1800-400 CPU upgrade easy??

[olafc]

Hi,

I'm about to order a Toshiba Satellite 1800-400 (european model) and it comes with an celeron 800.

Does anyone know if you can upgrade a mobile celeron with a mobile pentium3 (should it also be 800 MHz, or should it be less)?

Are the mobile celerons and petium3 compatible?

-Olaf

Re:Toshiba Satellite 1800-400 CPU upgrade easy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Acc to toshiba technical guru on their website wwhen I asked if it was possible to upgrade the AMD K6-2 cpus like I had recently done on my Compaq, I was told, rather emphatically, that this was not possible as Toshiba solders the cpus to the mainboard (no zif socket as on Compaq). Since Toshiba prides itself on making (relatively) rugged laptops able to withstand the shock of minor drops onto the pavement, they probably solder Intel cpus to the mobo as well.

bigger batterys

[throwaway18]

I upgraded the batterys for my laptop. A pair of the original batterys lasted 40min-1h each depending on usage and weighed about a kilo each.
Since I allways carryed the laptop in its padded suitcase I bought three 6 volt 10 amp-hour lead-acid batterys for USD45 which fitted in a long thin compartment in the carry case.
The original batterys were 12V 3AH though they were somewhat below rated capacity after a years use.
The mains PSU is 20Volts, the laptop works fine with 11-20 volts in. The new batterys last about 7 hours. I wired the
batterys in series to give nominally 18volts so I can charge them with the original PSU.
I'm a bit of an electronics whizz but it wasn't too hard. Connections are insulated so nothing can short out and the batterys are fused for safety.
Some foam rubber keeps the batterys from bouncing around.
Added about 4 kilos to the total weight.

Power Source

[dasunt]

Since the original poster didn't elaborate, I am assuming there are a few ways of dealing with the power. First thing is, how much? To find this out, either you can play around with our friend, Mr. Multimeter, or you can hunt down the specs, or, (and I'm guessing on this one since I have never taken a laptop apart) it might be possible to see if the LCD is fed directly from the powersupply, and then check the specs on the power supply itself.

To power it, an AC adapter might have enough power to do it (I'm hesitant though, most wallwarts output a fraction on an amp, and I just checked the flatpanel display here, and it's p/s is outputting 4 amps), or, the uber-robust solution is to grab an old AT (or a modified ATX) powersupply, and either convert, or (if your lucky) be able to use the 5 and 12 volt leads to power the LCD (remember, test the power first with Mr. Multimeter). A more eligant solution involves hunting down old laptop powersupplies on Ebay and ending up with a power solution not held together by ductape and comes complete with its own cooling fan.

Oh well, just my $.02

Re:Hi moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

ok! waste mod points me too! kthx.

Re:The Money Game - Inspiron 4000

[Totally_Tux]

Hiya,

Yeah I use a Dell Inspiron 4000 fitted with a Pentium III 700. The 8MB ATI Rage 128 mobility surprisingly performs quite well in most games. Counterstrike and Quake 3 at 640x480 16-bit delivers very good gameplay, 800x600 isn't too bad, but at 1024x768 it starts to get shunky.

Still Homeworld at 1024x768 is pretty solid.

From my understanding the video logic is part of the motherboard, and I doubt any upgrade can be done.

The Inspiron 4000 is very Linux friendly, the software/hardware 3Com modem is the only thing I can't get working under Linux.

Getting it back together.

[DivideByZero]

I usually get a large sheet of paper, and run a strip of double-sided tape across the top. As I'm dismantling, I draw a sketch of the laptop and label the holes the screws came out of, then stick them on the tape next to a matching label. If you have to move it, lay a layer of clear packing tape over the screws so they don't jump off.

Likewise, quick notes on tricky sliding/prying that is necessary will help you when the hardware you ordered arrives next week and you're scratching your head and muttering 'Now, did I pop this first, or that?'

Go at it with the kind of mindset that most people would use for handling a bomb, and you'll do fine. :)