Project: Mobility Charles

[The Black Pumpkin]

Well, it's time to post my first worklog!

I have an old laptop that I'm going to revitalize in a few ways.

Specs:

Compaq Armada 1750
PIII 500
320MB ram
4GB hdd
14" screen
cd-rom (no dvd! )

I'm not going to do anything that sacrifices portability, as I still want to use it now and then for traveling.

I plan to do the following:

Paint job (colors will be posted later)
Increase hdd space
Add internal usb hub
Integrate wireless and LAN
Upgrade to dvd-rom

...and more, maybe.

I'll post more in a few days, including better pics of what I'm working with, but for now, here's a pic I found showing what the laptop looks like:

[chaksq]

Good luck. I would like to see how you upgrade everything.

[The Black Pumpkin]

Well, ideas are slowly being drawn together for this. So far, my idea is to use this usb 2 hub to add the internal ethernet and wireless, and I might add a wireless mouse to the mix.

Also, I had a thought to save on power, and use a flash drive for a hard drive. This one in particular. Does anyone know how usb drives fair in speed verses ata laptop drives? Keep in mind that it would be competing with a 4gb ata33 drive, probably with 4200 rpm.

I plan to use a cut apart pcmcia usb card to interface the hub (I might also have two hubs, to add external ports). The wireless adapter will be hacked apart as well, hopefully, and have an antenna routed around the screen for greater signal strength.

[XcOM]

for a flash HDD, vs an ATA33, yes you will see a speed increese (Provided you get fast r/w )

Also you need true flash memory, thats a USB stick, which if my memory serves me correct your laptop dosen't support boot from.

Use CF for example with an addapter.

[luciusad2004]

I guess ill just mention that if you plan on using flash memory to boot from you will kill it quickly. The flash memory only supports so many read wright cycles so if your swap disk or swap partition (i think its called the page file in windows, not sure though) is on the flash memory you will kill it quickly. Just a heads up.

[chaksq]

I was looking into using a solid state hard drive (Flash memory) a few weeks back so I'll post what I can remember. As luciusad2004 stated doing this will significantly shorten the life of you flash memory.

Basically there are adaptors to connect a compact flash card to run as an ide hard drive. There are bennifits to this such as no noise and runs cooler. Being that you are using a laptop I recommend this adaptor: 44 pin IDE adaptor. Which will fit within most laptop HD trays. The website has regular 40 pin adaptors as well to use in a regular laptop. You can get CF cards in many sizes it all depends on what you want to spend. Keep in mind that you will probably need to replace your card fairly regularly if you go this route so keep backups.

I doubt that computer will support a USB boot. Only recent computers have that capability.

[XcOM]

i forgot to mention the life span of a CF card. i think they have 1000 rads and writes before the data begins to degrade, Unless you pay MEGA BUCKS and you get about 2000 r/w then.

FLash wasn't designed to run an OS,
What about one of these? there small, quite

[The Black Pumpkin]

I'll test my laptop's usb booting capabilities with a 256mb stick, just to be sure. CF seems like the future, but I had already dismissed it because of the aforementioned short lifespan.

I guess I might just have to stick with a traditional hard drive, it doesn't make much difference to me.

More to come!

[The Black Pumpkin]

Ok, first real work entry!

I'm doing mainly internal mods/upgrades at this point, until I get my other, regular laptop back for lappytop uses. (It's with my sister...)

Anyway, here are some external shots.

Closed and open. As you can see, there is some sticky stuff on the screen I have to remove.

Sorry for the fuzzy pic,

For reference, this laptop shipped with a Pentium II and Windows 95.

Here you can see both the left and right screen "clips". Unfortunately, the left one is broken, and needs to be replaced. Fortunately, I have a spare 12" screen, and it has the same clips, I'll just take one out of it.

The speaker opening are just some small holes in the bezel. I haven't decided yet, but I'll either drill out the rest of the holes, or cut out the whole little section and use mesh. I'll probably just drill out the rest of the holes.

Just a quick "under the keyboard" shot.

Here is the mod for the day! A DVD drive! Yay! It's an LG DRN8080B.

I'll have to take this bracket off before I can use it.

Can you see the small switch? It's for selecting cable select, slave, or master. This laptop only has one IDE channel , so I had to get one I knew could be put as a slave.

Here you can see that even laptops need adapters for the slim drives!

Here the specific laptop adapter is fully installed on the new drive.

And here it is being slid into the laptop! It fits! The bezel doesn't sit right with the laptop, I think it's from some Dell or something.

And it works!

[Luke122]

Congrats on the working dvd drive! Laptop mods are great, and I hope that this project works out well for you.

On a side note, have you considered going with a solid state hard drive? I know that it's kind of a big investment of cash, but they are available in both 1.8" and 2.5" versions, and up to 8gb from Tigerdirect. No moving parts, no noise, much less power usage, and much lighter... that offsets the $ in my opinion.. but then space is a concern, as you are already using a 4gb hdd.

If you are intersted, I've got a 20gb toshiba 2.5" hdd from my Compaq Presario 710CA, which is just collecting dust atm. (I upgraded to a 60gb)