Been a while since I posted here.
So a few months ago, my gramps worked at a rummage sale up in NJ. I asked him if he could keep an eye out for computer parts, specifically, laptops. He's been working at the rummage sale for god knows how many years, and he assured me they always had gobs of old comps (*drools*).
He called me up and gave me the specs of the few, and the best was a Digital Hinote Ultra 2000 (Pentium 166, 128mb RAM, 3GB HDD, orig. win95). I told him we'd stop by and visit him and pick it up. I checked it out and it appeared to be in pretty good condition. It was fully stocked, came with two fully funcitonal batteries (hell, one was NIB), all the equipment, a nice carrying case, and six dozen Win95 install floppies
I figure I'll eventually install some iteration of linux on this thing. The disturbing issue I had with the computer is that the BIOS was locked. I was NOT going to send it in to unlock it. I tried different suggetsions for P/W's, but none worked. So I figured.. why not just yank the CMOS battery? Well, I'd never, ever, ever opened up a laptop before, and I secretly hope I never will again. Stupidest thing I ever did. It never did really turn back on :-/
I was totally freaked out. Fortunately, I grabbed one on ebay for like $30 (then a bit more for teh shippz0rz), and I was like I'll just patch this bad boy up. The one on ebay was listed as missing the following:
- HDD
- Battery
- RAM cover
- Page Down key
I, of course, had all of those. I've replaced all of them, being the thrifty kool kid I am. However, I've had THE MOST ANNOYING PROBLEM ON EARTH. The laptop doesn't read the charge in the battery. It's not the traditional "old battery loses charge cap", the laptop was unable to determine how much power the battery had in it. Windows 95, AND the BIOS, reported the charge at 0% ... of course, when I unplugged the brother, it would chug away until the batteries died.
Worse yet, the batteries won't charge through this laptop. They'll only charge when I cram them into the remaining pieces of the old laptop and boot it about six times and kick it twice. So it's not like I can just plug in the AC and take it out when I think it's done. This is very frustrating.
Eventually I decided I was going to use nubby Xandros linux, you know, the real user friendly junk. I really wasn't up to learning hardcore linux yet for teh lappy lap. Of course, I format the HDD, and attempt about fifty billion Xandros installs, none of which work. The install randomly tells me to eject CT and reboot. According to the people at the Xandros forums, this occurs. One guy had the nerve to say, "Well, the minreq of RAM is 128MB, and you only have 98MB" ... seriously, I don't need that extra 30 megs to install 'nix. I've installed WinXP on 50MB of RAM....
I'd gladly up and get that 128MB of RAM, and possibly a bigger HDD, but I won't because of this nagging battery issue. I know someone here must have a clue, because I surely don't, and I know that most of my comp issues that my leet arse can't solve, someone here can.
Link to my xandros thread:
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=17162
Thanks in advance
