So, you got an old laptop

Well, in my case, I have two old laptops, that still work. (a third one is a brick)

http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/10-useful-things-to-do-with-an-old-laptop-908760

Some uses for them. Donate clock cycles, use in the kitchen as a recipie book, a wireless bridge, a file server, or whatever else.

Hmmm, I might see if that Chrome OS is any good.

So I picked up yet another free laptop, a Toshiba A135-S2326, with an 80GB drive, a RAM stick I can't immediately indentify, and all the parts on a bag. Threw it together, fired it up. Screen may be dead. Will plug in an external monitor and see what happens.

This gives me FOUR old ocmputers (three laptops and a desktop) that I have no idea what to do with.

Well, I have ideas, but I'd need to convince the wife to allow me to perform some shennanigans. She's not too keen about shennanigans right now.

Okay, so plugging in a monitor does nothing. Might be a motherboard issue. BIOS might be screwed up, too, as that doesn't even come up.

wow dude. you should make a white trash repair immediately. Do want.

I got it stashed in my car - waiting to see if The Governor is willing to put up with the other two working free laptops, first. Only then I can use it for parts.

What I was thinking of doing:

Thinking of putting the silver Dell into the kitchen as a recipie book. That or keep it on the wife's nightstand so she can surf net and whatever else.

Since the old church rig has no wireless capability built in, I'll use it as a combination file server for backups and donate clock cycles to some university. Or, since the monitor is half-broke anyway, stick it on the wall and make it a digital photoframe with ALL the pictures.

---

Use ALL the computers!

Pay all the electric bill?

I'm on the old church laptop now. Scored my wife's old D-link N-adapter, as she's cabled into the router directly now. That USB 2.0 card is getting used, yo.

Had to shuffle widgets around as the awesomeness of the 16GB thumbdrive was too much drive for the stock single 1.9 USB connector to handle.

Ah, a nice trip through memory lane, when a Pentium III was all the rage, and having a hard-drive in the double digits of GB was considered a lot.

I might think about doing D*** Small Linux on this thing. 50 megs for an OS? Sweet. It's supposed to be compatible with 486 machines. Remember those...?

Hey Roman - looking to score RAM for the 4100, as it has only 576MB installed (a 512 and a 64) - I shoudl look for SDRAM, right? DDR is a bit too new for that rig, I think.

Ah, found it - SODIMM 133Mhz-rated, maximum supported size per slot is 512.

To Newegg I go!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820159406 Errrrrgh, 50-bucks for old RAM. Criminal, I tell you.

Also, a way to fix that stupid hinge. Erector-set, maybe. I'm worried that I'll end up snapping the monitor off entirely. Oh well, that'll make it easy to turn it into a picture frame.

MY WISH LIST (paw through your old junk piles, and hit me up)

1. working IDE 2.5" drive, more than 20gigs capacity.
2. PC-133 144-pin SODIMM RAM cards (512MB is best, will take 256MB)
3. old case fans

I'm thinking of making my own USB cooling fans - I got a soldering iron and plenty of old USB cords, all I need are 5VDC fans.

Hey Ian get with me some time about the parts. I got some extra PC stuff. I think it's all in storage right now, but not hard to get out. I got a lot of cables, and I know I have some 140mm case fans. On da big kine side, though. I have a 500gb 2.5 HD, but it's SATA II and I'm using it, lol. It's mainly for storage.

Nah, I don't need any 2.5 SATA drives, I have an 80 and a 150 I'm using as spares. The missus has a 500GB in her machine, but we'll probably end up using that for the desktop as a secondary. Heck, even the main drive, unless there's some sort of rule against using a 2.5 drive in a desktop machine (irrespective of enclosures and stuff).

So, there I was, typing on an old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. It has more ram, the monitor hinges work right (bit of slop in them but oh well) and it actually has a built-in wireless card.

Only to find out that it won't connect to WPA2 networks.

Did some driver searches on the Dell Support site, and used the Intel PROset/Wireless manager and actually got it to work. REstart, bam, I'm on teh internetz. I think I picked up 150xp from that.

pvtnum11 wrote:So, there I was, typing on an old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. It has more ram, the monitor hinges work right (bit of slop in them but oh well) and it actually has a built-in wireless card.

Only to find out that it won't connect to WPA2 networks.

Did some driver searches on the Dell Support site, and used the Intel PROset/Wireless manager and actually got it to work. REstart, bam, I'm on teh internetz. I think I picked up 150xp from that.

The white trash repairs sends you their regards. HAHA. Actually, this sounds nothing like white trash repairs, more like McGuyver!

The 6000 has amazing speakers for a laptop. Was watching a bit of Sesame Street with the youngest, and I had to turn it way down. Still nice and loud.

I'm glad it worked out for ya!

So, did you manage to find an old case fan or two?

I got plenty of old USB cables I can trash, and a soldering iron, too. Just need a fan and some way to make a box for it.

Then I can get my ASUS GPU temps down below 90-celsius.

My fans are burried in storage. They are 140mm and 80mm. I will let you know. I might be moving out of here soon and when I do BAM I gotta clear the storage.

Oooo, moving day.

Update: The Dell 6000 is dead. Scrapped it for parts, scored some DDR2 laptop RAM, a 40GB IDE drive, some other crap. Gave it to Katie to pound on, so she doesn't end up breaking Ashley's working Netbook. Kids are pretty hard of stuff, yes?

So, I took this opportunity to upgrade the hard drive on the Dell 4100. No go. Ok, not a problem, I can always load a stripped-down XP custom build and run that... Only problem is, the 4100 will not allow me to change the boot device order, so it will not boot from a CD or floppy; the HDD takes priority.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I loosened the retaining clip, and slid the harddrive out an inch so it's unseated. Let's try spoofing it. Boot from CD, slid in HDD. Loads the preloader, but fails to find the HDD.

....figures that it's not hot-swappable...

So I'll have to remove the CMOS battery for a bit and get into the BIOS settings that way. This XP build only uses 86 megs of RAM sitting still, pretty sweet.

Ian if you keep this up I'll come to your house, find your computers, and take it out back and shoot it. like that dad on Facebook even! Hopefully a new laptop is in the future for you.

If it still works, it still works.

The wife roger'd up on me getting some Arctic Silver and redoing the grease on the G50. Now if I can only get this stuff locally... Shipping charges for it are exorbiant, as it's a chemical.

Hey I might have some I'll look. Remind me before the LAN Party.

So, why bothe to keep an old working computer around?

Because Information Age.

At approximately 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969 in the Stanford Research Institute, the first precursor of the Internet was activated for the first time. In the intervening 43 years the usage of the internet has spread to the point that as of June 6, 2011 the United Nations counts internet access as a basic human right. The most advanced educational and research tool ever constructed, enabling global communication on a never before seen scale. Social networking has spread to the point where the degree of separation between any two individuals is declining faster that the population is growing, so we are witnessing the formation of a truly global, international, unified and anarchistic-democratic society. We are alive at a time when humanity is on the cusp of moving from tribal nationalism to complete international connectivity.

Even an old 486DX running Windows 3.1 can connect you to that world of information - in an era where many people only are aware of what's going on around their immediate surroundings, the sheer awesomeness of the Internet is truly mind-boggling, and it doesn't really matter all that much if you're running bleeding-edge hardware, or a piece of crap cobbled out of spare parts and smashed into a pizza box - you are just as connected (although have fun running YouTube and other high-end webpages). 1 out of 6 people in the world are connected to the Internet.

Nah man I didn't add a case fan. I need a 80mm I think.

"so you got an old labtop"
that don't impress me much
you got the buff sides
but rough to the touch
no don't get me wrong
because I think you're alright
but that won't get my fps on
through the cold lonely nights

=P

So I have an old laptop
Or did I have three?
The numbers don't matter
Just that they're free

They're dated and faded
And finding parts is a chore
But they fire right up
And the 'Net ain't a bore.

But when I desire to frag things
I'm not without toys
I have a DTR game rig
To score FPS joys