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]

Re: computer question

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/t...Model&x=30&y=5

Here are toshiba's stats:
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...kcghcfmfdglj.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/l...ve.com%2flogin

[Fused]

thanks for all your help

[mfreeck]

Re: computer question

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.