Laptop resurrection?

[cstone]

Have you figured out how to remove the current hard drive? Some are easy and others...not so easy.

Depending on what you plan to do with it, it might be worthwhile. It won't take much RAM and with an IDE/PATA 2.5" drive, it won't do anything quickly. A new battery would be a deal breaker, so if you do anything with it, it will probably be semi-stationary and used for checking email or posting on COAR15. If you do it, check out some of the lighter Linux distributions like Puppy or Linux Lite.

[JohnnyDrama]

What operating system are you going to use? There is a chance that if you are installing the latest version of anything that you will not be able to find drivers for all of the components in the laptop.

I thought of that. I was thinking of something Linux based. All I really want is to be able to make and run a database. If I can play CDs/DVDs that's a bonus. I don't mind no interwebs connection. That way when Skynet becomes....

@cstone - I've removed the hard drive once already just to see if I could do it. It's two panels and five screws. Pretty straight forward. That exercise inspired me to look into this rabbit hole.

[Mazin]

So YOU'RE the one...LOL

And only one

Vista was about as good as Win ME imho. It says somthing when even the gov stayed on XP till just about 5 years ago (USDA anyway).

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours

[DOC]

CDOT should have kept with XP since they got hijacked recently. You can do it and for a few bucks it might be worth it. You should see if you can clone your old hard drive to the new one before you go all out and try and reinstall everything.

[TheGrey]

I am the one, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Vista and I got along like a house on fire, wheras Windows 8.1-10 is an absolute dumpster fire.

[hobowh]

I am the one, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Vista and I got along like a house on fire, wheras Windows 8.1-10 is an absolute dumpster fire.

Don't feel bad, I have not liked a windows product since 3.1.1 and I have my original laptop still but it is much older... and the screen is capable of 16 colors lol, oh and it weighs almost 25 pounds. I so wanted one of the retro commodore rereleases for nostalgia but never saw them released just hyped up.

[DOC]

Don't feel bad, I have not liked a windows product since 3.1.1 and I have my original laptop still but it is much older... and the screen is capable of 16 colors lol, oh and it weighs almost 25 pounds. I so wanted one of the retro commodore rereleases for nostalgia but never saw them released just hyped up.

I still have one that was saved from the landfill.
Never got around to using it since it was out of our families budget to get one.

[JohnnyDrama]

CDOT should have kept with XP since they got hijacked recently. You can do it and for a few bucks it might be worth it. You should see if you can clone your old hard drive to the new one before you go all out and try and reinstall everything.

Keeping you stuff backed up so you can move it to another machine is good advice to everybody. I moved everything I wanted off that drive a long time ago. It seems like a lot of people think XP was the apex of Windows operating systems. I liked it better than 7 or 10.

Don't feel bad, I have not liked a windows product since 3.1.1 and I have my original laptop still but it is much older... and the screen is capable of 16 colors lol, oh and it weighs almost 25 pounds. I so wanted one of the retro commodore rereleases for nostalgia but never saw them released just hyped up.

You piqued my curiosity on that one. I sold a Commodore 64 with disk drive, monitor, dot matrix printer, and a plotter printer for $50.00 to a guy back about 1998. It couldn't do much, especially by today's standards, but if you knew how to work the plotter printer you could produce pretty cool drawings/diagrams. I ran into someone who does custom engraving work and uses a C64 to operate the engraver. She puts one job on each cartridge. When it's time to go to work she just plugs it in and goes.

[SideShow Bob]

Don't feel bad, I have not liked a windows product since 3.1.1 and I have my original laptop still but it is much older... and the screen is capable of 16 colors lol, oh and it weighs almost 25 pounds. I so wanted one of the retro commodore rereleases for nostalgia but never saw them released just hyped up.

You want to talk about old lap crushers, I’ve still got a KayPro 2000 gathering dust in my hoarder space. It still booted up the last time I ran across it, the batteries are flatlined, but it booted up when I disconnected them and hooked up the power supply.

[TFOGGER]

My 1997 Digital still boots. 192MB of RAM, 1 GB hard drive, Pentium 100. That thing was a rocket, man!