computer question

[Fused]

i got a toshiba satellite pro 420 cds and its old but it has
2 gig hd
cd rom
28.8 k modem
and floppy drive
win98


i was wondering cant i upgrade the ram in that i am not sure so i have not touched it. i am about to put linux on there to see if it will work or not.
can u tell me if i can upgrade it or not i have no clue.

[simple3]

I'm pretty sure you can. Look underneath for a small panel with a couple of screws on it. tak off the screw, there should be a place to add memory there, but it may already be maxed out. If it is not located there, check underneath the hard drive, or underneath the battery. Linux should work on this just fine.

simple3

[froggy]

Google is your friend. :)

Popping this in directly from your post, "toshiba satellite pro 420 cds" got me this link for starters:

http://www.orcalogic.co.uk/TOSHIBA/Sat_pro420.htm

I guess the question is, how much memory does it currently have?

From the looks of it, it's a P100 with 16 MB RAM standard (Thank you, Ebay!).

My guess is you could probably get it up for 48 megs max, which isn't that bad. You can certainly do some neat stuff with it (albeit it limited). I would suggest against a large Linux distribution in favor of a "lighter" distro. Better yet, screw Linux and install a BSD variant if you're game. OpenBSD should install on that thing no problem with plenty of room to spare for apps. Net/Free should be similar.

If you do install anything on the laptop, either make sure it's patched before hooking it up to the 'net or be prepared to reinstall :)

The tricky part is, does it have a PCMCIA slot? If not, getting Ethernet for it will be slightly more difficult (you will have to find some sort of parallel por Ethernet solution).

In any case, have fun and good luck.

[blackwave]

Originally posted by Fused
can u tell me if i can upgrade it or not i have no clue.

Satellite Pro 420CDS
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modItemList.jsp?ProductMenu_0=Portables&ProductMenu_1=Satellite+Pro&ProductMenu_2=1073769757&BV_SessionID=@@@@1792063786.1026190481@@@@&BV_EngineID=fadceidilfigbfekcghcfmfdglj.0&moid=1073769757&smoid=true&ct=DL&ListType=Model&x=30&y=5

Here are toshiba's stats:
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_outFrm.jsp?moid=1073769757&ct=DS&BV_SessionID=@@@@1792063786.1026190481@@@@&BV_EngineID=fadceidilfigbfekcghcfmfdglj.0

Check out their discussion forums, usually you can find some pretty cool toshiba support people that give you help on so called "unsupported" configurations....
https://login.compuserve.com/login/login.asp?OrigUrl=http%3a%2f%2fforums.compuserve.c om%2fvlforums%2fdefault.asp%3fSRV%3dToshiba%26loc-us%26access%3dpublic&RefUrl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.csd.toshiba.com%2fcgi-bin%2ftais%2fsu%2fsu_sc_modItemList.jsp%3fProductM enu_0%3dPortables%26ProductMenu_1%3dSatellite%2bPr o%26ProductMenu_2%3d1073769757%26BV_SessionID%3d%4 0%40%40%401792063786.1026190481%40%40%40%40%26BV_E ngineID%3dfadceidilfigbfekcghcfmfdglj.0%26moid%3d1 073769757%26smoid%3dtrue%26ct%3dDL%26ListType%3dMo del%26x%3d30%26y%3d5&AuthUrl=http%3a%2f%2fforums.compuserve.com%2flogin

[Fused]

thanks for all your help

[mfreeck]

Originally posted by Fused
i got a toshiba satellite pro 420 cds [...]
i was wondering cant i upgrade the ram

Yeah, I'm getting here really late, but although I don't remember the 420CDS specifically, I have worked with this class of Toshiba quite a bit. All the ones I've seen upgrade to 40megs max. You need a stick of 32mb proprietary Toshiba Satellite ram (of the same era).

i am about to put linux on there to see if it will work or not. can u tell me if i can upgrade it or not i have no clue.

If you have the standard 16megs or ram, it will be painful to run gui (or unpack packages, etc). I have had both debian, and mandrake 7.1. 7.1 was shitty cause there was no crypto, but 8.1 just wouldn't go (I had nothing else). I remember I could never install from the cdrom because it had trouble reading CDRs well enough to install packages. I either installed off the net (debian) or over NFS (mdk). If you get a pcmcia nic and intend to install deb over the net, I would recommend 3com over xircom.

It ran ok on 40megs ram, though I wouldn't recommend doing anything fancy with it.

Go for it, it will be fine. :)

[astcell]

I had a 420, I remember paying $2250 for it way back when!

[mfreeck]

Originally posted by astcell
I had a 420, I remember paying $2250 for it way back when!

Yeah, even passive color was hot shit then. I paid $1500 for my 486/33slc (cyrix, ugh!). 80mb removable drive, 2mb ram, 256 shades of grey, 2400bps modem. Woo.

[astcell]

Ex father in law had an old laptop back in 1988, it was a Toshiba, the screen was about 8" wide and 3" high, only two colors, black and white (or realy gray and black), I believe it was an 8088, 256K ram, took a 720k 3.5" floppy, had a 1200 baud modem...ready for this? *****$4000.***** I had my Radio Shack 100 before that.

How long before today's Pentium 4 2.0 laptop is worth $5.00?

[L0nd0]

Well this year I finally shelled out and bought a new laptop (cheasy ass dell P3 1.1mhz, but it came witha free cdrw and 256 megs extra of ram) wasnt a bad deal.

But for the last three defcons I have been running off of an old ibm thinkpad 486 with 20 megs of ram and the upgraded 16 color screen. That thing kicked ass. Im just debating what I want to do with the old thinkpad.

[blackwave]

about 12 years ago or so I picked up a Zenith 286 laptop, still have it too.. the thing is heavier than anything I have carrried. I tried to sell it at a garage sale... but no one knew what it was.

[mfreeck]

Originally posted by blackwave
about 12 years ago or so I picked up a Zenith 286 laptop, still have it too.. the thing is heavier than anything I have carrried. I tried to sell it at a garage sale... but no one knew what it was.

Yeah, we've gotten a couple of those in, I believe. I volunteer for an organization that takes in old, donated machines, recycles the crap, puts the rest together, and gives it away free to people who volunteer their time. I'm just there for educational purposes. I work with the laptops, so I see all the old stuff. We had one laptop that had a full ISA slot in it! Those Toshibas are actually some of the better machines we have. People give them up because they are so damn heavy.

[converge]

hahah.. the same friend I bought that Tandy I posted about in the "best computer" thread also had one of those zeniths.. those were heavy little beasts

[blackwave]

Originally posted by c0nv3r9
hahah.. the same friend I bought that Tandy I posted about in the "best computer" thread also had one of those zeniths.. those were heavy little beasts

A long time ago my father bought me a Timex Sinclair with the external memory hook up... anyone ever had one of these? All the data was loaded via a cassette tape player (that didn't come with the sinclair)... It hooked up to the TV and had a chess game, a database, a few other external applications.

[mfreeck]

Originally posted by blackwave


A long time ago my father bought me a Timex Sinclair with the external memory hook up... anyone ever had one of these?

Although I didn't get a chance to play with it, we sold one in our store several months ago. I do have a tiny Sinclair BXZ(? B8Z?) that I haven't yet found the time to tinker with.

[blackwave]

Speaking of computers... I have a TI-92 with the serial link (which was a serious bitch to find a few years ago)... anyhow does anyone have the TI-92 Plus? I am not sure if there are enough new features to buy this latest model. Does it have sound support? Anything new? I loaded my old one with a doom script. :) http://education.ti.com/product/tech/92p/features/features.html

[astcell]

Here is a questions about Internet Explorer 6.0.

I have my icons up top. Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh etc. They are all tightly grouped. Now I wish to delete the Edit and Mail icons. I do so, and the bar get smaller. Great. Now I want to add an icon, the Print Preview. I edit the bar and all that icon. Whoa now look at what happened. The icons take up extra space, stretching out the space between them, adding a good quarter inch to each icon. I liked them tightly spaced, what gives?

[blackwave]

Originally posted by astcell
Here is a questions about Internet Explorer 6.0.

I have my icons up top. Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh etc. They are all tightly grouped. Now I wish to delete the Edit and Mail icons. I do so, and the bar get smaller. Great. Now I want to add an icon, the Print Preview. I edit the bar and all that icon. Whoa now look at what happened. The icons take up extra space, stretching out the space between them, adding a good quarter inch to each icon. I liked them tightly spaced, what gives?

Hmmm...
are you using small icons or large icons?
are you using separators?
Are you locking the toolbar?


I am not able to get icons on a windows xp box to stretch out following the procedure you listed.

[astcell]

I'm using W2K, large icons, unlocked toolbar, one spacer. I took out another spacer and it makes no difference.

Let me see if I can do a screen capture. Here are the two results, all I did was take out the print preview icon!

[blackwave]

Originally posted by astcell
I'm using W2K, large icons, unlocked toolbar, one spacer. I took out another spacer and it makes no difference.

Let me see if I can do a screen capture. Here are the two results, all I did was take out the print preview icon!

That browser looks pretty old based on the style of the icons, are you sure that is IE6?

Have you tried changing your text labeling?

[converge]

I was gonna say it looks like the old 5.x look, but wasn't sure how 6.x looked in OSes older than 2K and wasn't sure which OS was in use...

[blackwave]

Originally posted by blackwave
That browser looks pretty old based on the style of the icons, are you sure that is IE6?

See below

Originally posted by c0nv3r9
I was gonna say it looks like the old 5.x look, but wasn't sure how 6.x looked in OSes older than 2K and wasn't sure which OS was in use...

Hmmmm, yeah I just checked an old 2k box and noticed that IE6 did look like that.. but I played around with the settings without making them stretch out :/ hmmm I wonder if astcell has some modified registry settings that change the size of icons on the desktop such as size and spacing that could be creating this anomaly.

[converge]

I can't imagine what else it could be... I've played with the lock settings and everything and can't duplicate it.. maybe tweakui or something to change his windows metrics?

[astcell]

I use 6.0.26

I think it is the text "Print Preview". If I can find where to change that, it may help. I think it expands the width of the frames for the icons.

[blackwave]

Originally posted by astcell
I use 6.0.26

I think it is the text "Print Preview". If I can find where to change that, it may help. I think it expands the width of the frames for the icons.

why use text? customize and use pictures only :) unless of course you want to go to your Users/.default registry settings...

[astcell]

I used text because (embarassed) I can read!

[blackwave]

Originally posted by astcell
I used text because (embarassed) I can read!

ROFL!

[astcell]

Quick question for Windows 98SE users:

I have a new ISP so I created a new dialup account, but this one does not have the little box to check for me to remember my password every time I dial up. I am always prompted for a password and I cannot save it. I know it must be a registry hack. How can I get the little box back to remember my password?

[blackwave]

Originally posted by astcell
How can I get the little box back to remember my password?

Here you go... courtesy of Microsoft... :)

Save Password Check Box Is Unavailable
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q285189

Dial-Up Networking Password Is Not Saved
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q148925

[astcell]

Dang I was afraid it would be more than a simply registry hack. Guess it's time for a new PC.