Old, but new.

[stevo1210]

Today I was bored and decided to take my dads car for a drive to the open market a few kilometers down the road from my place. I was actually going there to look for an IEEE 1284 parallel cable but ended up buying a second hand AS-IS laptop for $20AU and forgot about the parallel cable.

I was looking through Pentium's thread the other day about his purchase of a Norsat Newslink laptop with no AC adapter and I thought I would never end up like him and buy a laptop with no AC adapter. Well that's exactly what I did so I am stuck in the same boat as Pentium, I don't know if this laptop works or not. The Dell Inspiron 4000 that I bought has no AC adapter. It uses the Dell PA6 AC adapter which I've gotta find.

I've opened it up and I can't find any visible damage or any being spilt into the electronic stuff inside it.
What I did find was a large amount of human hair in the laptop (falling in through holes in the keyboard assembly) in which I have cleaned out.

Physically on the outside it's in a good condition with a few scratches from wear and tear but no bumps or dents.... apart from a small broken plastic tab above the ethernet port, but it's not serious. There's no hard drive caddy so I can't put in a hard drive. The caddy will come later If I can get this laptop working again. It would be nice If I could get this laptop working again because I can then replace the Inspiron 3200 that I currently use for school.

I don't know what CPU it has, but I can see 2x 64MB PC100 SDRAM chips and a DVD ROM drive. The old owner of this laptop probably forgot to take back the Netgear Network card that's in the PCMCIA slot, so I have that one now except I don't have the dongle part with the Ethernet port.... but that doesn't matter because I have a Xircom PCMCIA Ethernet card here.

What I did find though was the CMOS battery (made up by a few cell batteries to make 7.2V and is manufactured by Varta). It's leaking some white stuff that looks like a powder and I presume that is battery acid. There is no residue on the motherboard. I think there was like a few specks of power in which I have cleaned out. The battery is mounted on a seperate metal bay and a wire connects this battery to the mainboard (looks like Dell probably knew thae battery was going to leak one day and did the wise thing not to put it on the mainboard).... so this is where I stumble. I don't know where I can find this CMOS battery so I don't know If I can make this laptop become good again.

What do you guys think I should do?

Oh, and here are some pics.














Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: Old, but new.

I pulled the whole thing apart into pieces a while ago and along the way broke some small slips that hold the palm rest plastics to the base. But I've just screwed it back together again and I don't see any serious issues so I think it's still OK. I managed to get to the CPU and clean out the heatsink which was full of hair. The CPU has the markings of 700 in the code so I think it's a Pentium III or Celeron 700MHz CPU.

Thanks.

[Paul S]

Re: Old, but new.

I don't think that you really needed to black out the code for Windoze 98!

A co-worker gave me a laptop last year. He wouldn't give me the power supply, he has other laptops and wanted to keep it as a spare. What a dipsh*t, it most likely won't work with a different laptop! And he runs our water meter/meter reading department.

I ended up buying a knockoff one off of eBay. It was less than US$10, but shipping was twice that. I cleaned it up (WinXP) and gave it to my niece. I guess it still works OK.

With WIn98 in it, this laptop is a perfect candidate to install Linux on. I would recommend Ubuntu or even better, Linux Mint. Linux mint is a Ubuntu derivative. Both are good for Linux newbies.

[370forlife]

Re: Old, but new.

From what i could find, most of those that came with 128mb ram also had 1ghz processors.

[pentium]

Re: Old, but new.

Bahahahaha!
You have a shitty and proprietary power connector just like I do.
Welcome to the boat.
Toot! Toot!

[Wizard]

Re: Old, but new.

hehehe. That's mobile PIII and you can upgrade it to 900MHz. I own C600. EXACT chassis internally. I picked up brand new motherboard for very little cost (16 bucks) and stuck it in to replace the defective board. The new board is revised for better cooling design and emlimated second 1" fan that is extremely noisy leaving one blower to cool the CPU.

It will take pair of 256MB PC100 144 pin SO-DIMMs.

Secondly, power bricks are very plentiful, just find any Dell with same plug, even the one from CPi, CPx also works.

Cheers, Wizard

[zandrax]

Re: Old, but new.

A nice notebook: quite sturdy, P3 with the old but good 440BX (so up to 256 MB of ram per slot, 512 MB in total), ATI Rage 8 MB (enough for dvd playback, but surely not for games); major drawbacks are heat issues and the single USB 1.1 port. Yours laks the trackstick too, that's a pity. You can find manuals at Dell site.

Try it with a live cd linux: 128 MB should be enough for Knoppix 5.x with XFCE. Once you find everything is working, buy an used Dell psu (it should cost $15-20 plus shipping) and an hard disk frame (I suspect way more expensive than a psu). In a second time, you may even think about upgrading ram to 256-384 MB, which should be plenty for a recent linux distro and sufficient for XP.
Note: next time do not buy a portable without important pieces unless you're looking for spare parts

Zandrax

[willawake]

Re: Old, but new.

Note: next time do not buy a portable without important pieces unless you're looking for spare parts

yeah i would have been hesitant on the basis of the missing caddy. the ac adapter ok should be no probs from our chinese friends. i dunno about old laptops, batteries are very expensive, maybe need new cold cathodes, not expensive but hard to source the right ones.

[370forlife]

Re: Old, but new.

Thats what I like about my old 3500, It originally came with one battery, slides in the front next to the cd drive. I bought 2 new ones for it from batteries plus, expensive (actually about 50 dollars,) but now the thing lasts about 12 hours with cpu at full, hd running constantly, but when it downclocks the cpu (333 is slow enough on xp, but 150mhz is really bad.) and with low screen light, and with the hard drive in suspend mode, it will last about 15 hours.

Of coarse if i used it for 15 hours streight on 150mhz on xp i would go crazy.

[Topcat]

Re: Old, but new.

my inspiron 5100 will last about 3~4 hours with everything running. If I turn off the wireless, it'll last a couple hours longer.

[stevo1210]

Re: Old, but new.

Here are some pics of the internals that I took as I cleaned the laptop out. The CPU says KP700 from the picture. Is that a PIII 700 or a Celeron 700?.
In regards to why I bought the laptop, well I actually bought it because I wanted the 128MB of SDRAM for my Inspiron 3200. So last night I took the 2 memory modules and put it into my Inspiron 3200 and they worked out fine so I got one part done. This laptop now has 64MB of RAM instead of the 128MB. If I can get it to work again, the 128MB the inspiron 3200 is going back in here.
I have also enclosed a picture of the CMOS battery which was leaking acid. Um, well I found that there is very small leakage onto the motherboard.... it somehow followed the battery cable and now has residues on the connector. It's very hard to see, I know but there is some blue stuff on the metal connector. None of which has actually touched the motherboard PCB. I cleaned the residue off with isopropyl alcohol and it's about 90% gone, I am just wondering if isopropyl alcohol will damage anything because I have a feeling Ié used the wrong chemical.
On another note, I forgot to take out the battery as I was removing the RAM in this laptop.... the battery is completely flat (I think) no lights come up on the indicator and also I can't get it to boot at all, so I think I am still safe or am I wrong??

In regards to the power adaptor, I think I might drop into a laptop repair shop somewhere and ask them if they could get a PA6 power adaptor and see if the laptop turns on and that's it. I am hoping they won't charge me anything for just plugging in a AC adaptor.

Thanks.

[Wizard]

Re: Old, but new.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...e+Search&meta=

This is PIII 700 mobile. That is correct way to find out what they are.

I use S-spec number.

About the battery, you can find the same size of NiMh coins that is used for cordless phones and make new one. You will need new connector or get new battery pack from ebay. Or leave it out wholly because it only serves the sleep power just to keep small areas live while changing batteries.

You'll MUST need 256MB SO-DIMMs if this notebook works. No if or buts.

Cheers, Wizard

[stevo1210]

Re: Old, but new.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...e+Search&meta=

This is PIII 700 mobile. That is correct way to find out what they are.

I use S-spec number.

About the battery, you can find the same size of NiMh coins that is used for cordless phones and make new one. You will need new connector or get new battery pack from ebay. Or leave it out wholly because it only serves the sleep power just to keep small areas live while changing batteries.

You'll MUST need 256MB SO-DIMMs if this notebook works. No if or buts.

Cheers, Wizard

OK well I feel more confident that I can just make a new battery. I thought I had to go buy one except they didn't make any at Dell. I just called Dell and they said they don't have any spare parts for this laptop, not even the CMOS battery or HDD caddy. I need to buy a HDD caddy if this thing works so where can I buy a HDD caddy?

In regards to the RAM, do I really need 256MB memory modules if I run Windows 98?

I've another question. Is sticky tape static conductive??? (I'm talking about clear tape by 3M, not electrical tape). I had to use sticky tape get clean out the hairs tha were sticking everywhere inside the laptop and I dunno if using sticky tape was a good idea. I don't have compressed air and that would defeat the purpose because i'd be blowing hairs into other places of the laptop and the vacumm cleaner was too powerful for this job so I used sticky tape and lots of it to clean out the huge amount of hair inside the laptop.

Thanks.

[linuxguru]

Re: Old, but new.

That's a nice socketed mobile Coppermine, which maxed out at about 1 GHz. But you're better off with the cool-running 700 or 800, the difference in performance at 100 FSB is negligible. The unit will accept standard Dell parts, including hard drive caddies, batteries, AC adapters, floppy drives, CDROM drives, DVD drives, etc. from a lot of earlier machines, starting from the Pentium-based Latitude CP/CPi. You should be able to get everything on EBay or at a Hamfest/Swap Meet for not much money, really - but you should probably verify that you have a working system before sinking money into it.

Several years ago, I paid nearly $150 for a Latitude CPiA with an MMC2 Celeron 366 or similar - I was able to upgrade it to an MMC2 PIII/600 (off EBay) with just a BIOS upgrade. The socketed mobile Coppermine in yours is far easier to find than an MMC1 or MMC2 module in good condition. It's still in fine working condition with Fedora Core 4 on a 30 GB HD (from another upgrade of a Thinkpad R51 to 120 GB), though the Li-Ion battery died a while ago.

If your system boots, I predict that it can be made to run for another decade - the weakest parts are the plastic, especially near the hinge.

Edit: You should be OK with 64MB for Win98. Mine has 256 MB (2 x 128MB), which is actually overkill for FC4 with Xfce 4 - but I also have OpenOffice 1.1.2 ( a memory hog), so everything works out nicely. It can also run Xine and MPlayer comfortably without dropping frames.

[stevo1210]

Re: Old, but new.

If your system boots, I predict that it can be made to run for another decade - the weakest parts are the plastic, especially near the hinge.

I agree on that statement. There are very small hairline cracks appearing on the base area near the hinges. Barely noticeable because they are so small, but they are there.

Thanks.

[Wizard]

Re: Old, but new.

On these notebook design. It's not held up via plastic, It's reinforced via metal chassis.

You did right thing to disassemble and reassemble to insure screws are tightened properly.

Get the standby battery made or buy good one off the ebay once you know this works well.

The funny IDE adapter can be had from any C600, D600 etc that use this same
adapter.

Worth to upgrade to 800 if you can find one rather cheap. This will run 2000 rather well with full 512MB and this notebook have no problem with large hard drives like 20GB, 40GB, 80GB. Don't use 7200rpm. No cooling provision for this extra heat.

Dell dropped 98 and prior drivers. You'll have to get them from other people even me who downloaded some of them but honestly best thing is put
2000 on it. This will give you best USB support and much reliable.

Cheers, Wizard

[Scenic]

Re: Old, but new.

hmmm... i dont know what battery is in this laptop, so i cant look up a picture of the connector.

i also had a laptop here a while ago. same problem.. no AC adapter and propritary connector. it also had a battery (of course flat after sitting for more than 1 year)

what i did was find the pinout of the battery pack (as i couldnt find a pinout of the power brick connector) and i tried to charge the battery.
unfortunately i didn't hold a charge..
so i tried to connect a power supply (close to the batteries original voltage and amperage) to the battery pins on the laptop, after i found out what is + and what is - (this battery had 4 pins)...

i was able to power up the laptop..
was beeping all the time (low "battery") but it worked .. good enough for testing

edit: i'm talking about the main battery... not the BIOS one..

[Scenic]

Re: Old, but new.

found this on the net. dunno if it's the same connector..

[zandrax]

Re: Old, but new.

No idea about the scotch tape: I think the glue isn't conductive but I have no evidence.
The P3 700 is fine, Win 98 FE not so much: on a P3 class I'd consider 98 SE at least (better USB support and the higher stability among 9x line) or 2000/XP (according to available ram) if you don't need old dos programs. Spartan linux distros such as Knoppix, Debian, Slackware are another viable choice if you don't have a Windows license handy and you don't need any software for Windows only.
I reccomend at least 128 MB for 98, 192/256 for 2000 and 384/512 for XP in order to minimize swapping, given you want to use your laptop everyday for surfing, editing documents, watching youtube/dvds and such while running an antivirus and a firewall: you may run them with half the ram I suggest, but Windows would rely too much on the swap file and give you a sluggish experience. For linux I wouldn't accept less than 256 MB unless you know how to configure it properly.
Running your older Inspiron with 64 MB, I think you got my picture and know why I'm picky about available ram

Of course you've to know if the laptop works before buying parts: being the battery dead, the power adapter is your #1 priority now.

Zandrax

[jpdoe]

Re: Old, but new.

After using windows 2000 / xp, I wouldn't reccomend going back to win98.
It's too unstable in comparison. Buy some RAM to move win2k or xp.