Old Laptop

[shovenose]

Somebody gave me a Dell Latitude CP. It had no OS, so I put on Windows 2000 Professional SP4...

Specs:
-233MHz Pentium w/MMX
-128MB RAM
-2GB HDD
-USB Wifi adapter

Question is, what practical purpose could it serve? It's too slow for Folding@Home, and I'm really not sure what I could use it for. Any ideas?

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

find a PCMCIA wifi card. Usb ones are slow (since you are on 1.1 or worse, 1.0). keep in mind that usb 1.0/1.1 runs at 11 m MAX, less if multiple devices are used. PCMCIA runs at standard PCI speed IIRC, which is much faster.

an HDD upgrade also helps here.

they have a little bit of a special charm that modern laptops lack.

if my pII or older collection still worked, I'd keep one around just for fun... but most of mine died of smashed screens (during a massive shelf crash that happened, which destroyed a LOT of stuff). I still have an old celeron gateway solo but its missing half the caddy and is crippled by the celeron.

for an OS, you could run puppy linux on it... or 98. lubuntu may be a stretch, but crunchbang may work. the most limiting factor is the hdd, which with 2000, will not work, as a 5gb unit wasn't quite practical the last time i tried 2000 on a tiny hdd.

just do us all a favor and DON'T intentionally destroy it... old laptops from that era are quite robust and due to caddy destruction, are hard to find in a complete state

(ratdude wishes he had a working decent one again, to go with the 20gb hdd and pcmcia network card he has in his stash)

[shovenose]

Re: Old Laptop

Don't have PCMCIA wireless card.
Don't have a 20GB HDD, and it flipped out and wouldn't boot when I put in a 60GB HDD
Don't have puppy linux on CD

I like these computers too, they are much better quality than the new ones... but just a tad (well, more than a tad) too slow...

Any ideas what to do with it though?

[c_hegge]

Re: Old Laptop

They're still OK for browsing the web and word processing, provided that you don't bloat them much (ie, run a small linux distro like Vector or Puppy, so you don't need Antivirus)

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

Don't have PCMCIA wireless card.
Don't have a 20GB HDD, and it flipped out and wouldn't boot when I put in a 60GB HDD
Don't have puppy linux on CD

I like these computers too, they are much better quality than the new ones... but just a tad (well, more than a tad) too slow...

Any ideas what to do with it though?

ok, I was just warning you that it was going to suck with you configuration.

you may be okay with puppy linux... just burn an iso, its only 100mb of a download.

as for what to do with it- either use it or sell it...

[shovenose]

Re: Old Laptop

It's got a Pentium ONE processor, web browsing is painfully slow...

I want to use it, but what shoudl I use it for?

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

It's got a Pentium ONE processor, web browsing is painfully slow...

I want to use it, but what shoudl I use it for?

well... retro computing.

it really has no use if you have a large fleet of new stuff and you don't care for old style computing.

the only use would be just for kicks... you likely don't have a use for it.

ps- the reason it browses slow is likely a combo of OS choice and using a USB wifi card... you are essentially choking it that way... a PCMCIA network device using a super-light linux distro would make it a lot more usable...

[stevo1210]

Re: Old Laptop

...and I thought my Inspiron 4000 was old with it's 800MHz P3 CPU! (laptop currently sitting on the patio collecting dust)

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Old Laptop

Put DOS or W98 on it and load it up with old game ROMs and Emulators.
.

[mariushm]

Re: Old Laptop

^ This. Windows 2000 can work just fine with a few services disabled.

Try to add 128 MB of SDRAM or whatever it uses, eBay should give you what you need.

Load it with zSnes and you'll have a nice super nintendo machine.

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

^ This. Windows 2000 can work just fine with a few services disabled.

Try to add 128 MB of SDRAM or whatever it uses, eBay should give you what you need.

Load it with zSnes and you'll have a nice super nintendo machine.

2000 uses too much hdd. he only has 2gb to work with.

i doubt it is SDRAM.

probably laptop SIMMs (the ones you HAD to pair)

128mb IIRC is the max you can use in most OEM pentium systems. anything after that would have been pII.

also, if you do linux it, make sure the version you install is i386, i486, or i586. i686 will not work, since pentium is i586 based and lacks nessary instructions to run i686.

[shovenose]

Re: Old Laptop

PC100 RAM fits in but the 128 (2x64MB) modules in it right now are slightly smaller, so I can't fit two PC100 normal modules in there, and it beeps no matter what

[c_hegge]

Re: Old Laptop

Odd. Pentium 1 usually means EDO RAM.

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

PC100 RAM fits in but the 128 (2x64MB) modules in it right now are slightly smaller, so I can't fit two PC100 normal modules in there, and it beeps no matter what

i bet you have to use pc66 in it... on second thought, I think there were tiallamook pentiums that used sdram (tillamook is a late model mobile pentium).

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Old Laptop

Odd. Pentium 1 usually means EDO RAM.

I've seen more Pentium 1 that use FPM than EDO, however that particular series does specify 3.3v EDO.
.
http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...ojav/specs.htm
.
BTW: They have this cool new invention called a search engine:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-a...w=1280&bih=839
.

[ratdude747]

Re: Old Laptop

yeah, the dell is maxed out ram wise.

[shovenose]

Re: Old Laptop

I'll compile Java on it
2 hours later: damn it it's still building my program!!!
lol

[Scenic]

Re: Old Laptop

I've got an old laptop like that which I use solely for chatting on IRC and some messengers (via Miranda IM), independent of what I'm doing on my main box. Runs Win2k SP4 on 192MB RAM. Was stripped down a bit with nLite to remove some useless stuff.

It's an IBM Thinkpad though, so it has a keyboard bonus

edit: I could just use my Netbook for the same purpose, but a 10" 1024x600 screen (and to make matters worse, a glossy one) is a bit... claustrophobic. And so is the keyboard in the long run.

[shovenose]

Re: Old Laptop

Well, I found a use for it:
web server for http://shovenose.dyndns.org so my Minecraft server can be dedicated to being, well, a Minecraft server

[momaka]

Re: Old Laptop

Well, I found a use for it:
web server for http://shovenose.dyndns.org so my Minecraft server can be dedicated to being, well, a Minecraft server

Nice!

You could also use it as a print server if you have a LPT-only printer.

I'll compile Java on it
2 hours later: damn it it's still building my program!!!

Yes, but if your program runs okay on that, then you know it will run lightning-fast on any decent computer.
My theory is, programmers should be given nothing more than a PII to work on. If the program runs too slow, then it's not optimized enough .

(ratdude wishes he had a working decent one again, to go with the 20gb hdd and pcmcia network card he has in his stash)

Well I have a box-full of complete Dell CPIx laptops (PII, 400 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 2.5 MB VRAM, 6 GB Hitachi HD, 14" screen @ 1024x768, and power adapter). Free if you don't mind paying for the shipping - which you might since they are pretty heavy .
I put Win 2000 on one and it runs pretty good, considering the slow HD.