[frgeek-michiana] LAPTIOPS...
- From: Richard Zimmerman <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Free Geek Michiana <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:47:44 -0500
Ok, with the demise of the Toshiba laptop (Bummer) I got the ok at the
board meeting to take the two Gateways and see what I could do with them....
Actually, I could do a lot!
Gateway Solo 9150:
Problems:
Bad screen - Red or Yellow line through the vertical of screen
(not a deal breaker if your willing to live with it - maybe 5 pixels wide)
Hard drive dead
Resolution:
Took the the good screen / hard drive from the 9100 and got
one complete laptop working
Final result:
128mb Ram
6g Hard Drive
DVD-ROM / LS120 Floppy (1.44mb Floppy mode works!)
ATI video chipset
keyboard / touch pad fine
BIOS version: 12.02
* Battery seems to hold a decent charge. I had fully charged it and ran
for over an hour WITH the CD-ROM / HD in almost constant use. I have
installed an older Debian "Woody" Distro on it just to see how well it
would work. Everything went fine. Battery was about 61% when I tried to
use the floppy disk drive, then the battery went from 61% to ZERO like that.
* The one remaining problem with the 9150 is the power jack. Apparently
from my research Gateway had problems with this. The fix from Ebay is
like $10 buck including shipping. It's not a pain right now but we need
to be aware of it.
* I still need to get networking going on it. It has a PCMCIA 10 mbit
adapter but I've never done PCMCIA networking before, so I have a
learning curve there.
Gateway Solo 9100:
Problems:
Bad keyboard
No CD-Rom / Floppy tray
Battery won't hold a charge
Resolution:
97mb Ram
4.3g Hard Drive (Memory / HD from Toshiba)
Bad screen
Bad keyboard
No Floppy / CD-ROM (known issue)
BIOS version: 8.46
The keyboard / CD-ROM / Floppy for the 9100 can be had off Ebay for
around $55 to be safe. No screens were available. Like I said, if you
can live with the Red line through the vertical of the screen, the
screen works fine. Unknown if the touch pad for the mouse works or not.
* For what ever reason, the 9100 WILL NOT recognize a CD-ROM in the BIOS
/ BOOT screen! Once Linux loads, Linux sees it just fine. I don't have
an answer as to why. I'm thinking a BIOS bug. The workaround was to use
the 9150 to do the base install on the HD, then move the HD /
CD-ROM/Floppy to the 9100 and let it finish the install. That worked
just fine. As long as you don't need to boot from a CD-ROM, your just
fine.... Then again, might might pick-up a straight CD-ROM just fine.
Don't know.
***Summary***
I hate it when Tom is right! <Joking> We ended up with one good
working laptop - the 9150. The other one (9100) is repairable with a new
keyboard and a CD-ROM / Floppy cartridge is purchased for it. This is
assuming we live with the Red line through the screen. We DO HAVE a
spare DVD-ROM upgrade for 9100 that DOES work! There is a third DVD
drive but I haven't tested it to see if it works or not as yet. I had
also found another 2.5 in HD that turned out to be only an 810mb drive
so I didn't bother with it...
See ya Tuesday, at least that's the plan...
Goose
--
Richard "Goose" Zimmerman
Safety Assistant / IT Guru
K&B Transport, Inc. - Elkhart, IN
(574) 389-1986 (574) 389-8527 Fax
(800) 548-2718 (574) 850-5764 Cell
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