my new Dell 8100 book (fixer upper)

Zardoz

2[H]4U
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Aug 27, 2000
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I got a Dell Inspiron 8100 yesterday, it looks to have a bad display (white screen) the VGA output on the back works fine. anyways this book has no devices (floppy,ram, cd, batt) but I was able to pick the book up for 100 bucks. Today I been able to get a floppy drive, cd-rom drive, batt, dockstation, (I have ram and hard drive) and spent about 60 bucks for the parts, so I am now about 160 in cost for the book. Still not bad. looking around I found I might be able to get a UXGA screen for about 250-300 bucks or a SVGA for about 200 bucks, so worse case 460 bucks for a 1.13Mhz P3 notebook, not to bad and I get to fix it up...

di8100screen.jpg


di8100.jpg
 
Nice find. I did something simular with an Inspiron 8600 I got a few months ago.

The 8xxx series are build like tanks, it should treat you good.

Good Job man!!
 
yeah, I like the 8x00 line, they are tanks... BTW I have it loaded and running WindowsXP pro. so when I get a screen I will be good to go...
 
Yeah, all you gotta do is nab a screen from an 8x00 (excluding the 8500 and 8600, they're part of the D family) or you can snag one from a Latitude C8xx for less usually. eBay has them in spades.

before you go off and buy the screen though...have you checked the connection between teh screen and the video card? Sometimes that can give you problems. You just have to pop off that bezel that's above the keyboard to get at the connection. Might save you a bit of scratch. Had I a spare cable I'd send you one.

Also, for about $40 shipped you can get a Latitude C-Dock docking station that'll let you add in 2 PCI cards and a spare modular bay device. I have instructions on what you need to do to get it to work (Have to switch to Latitude BIOS plus one physical modification to that keyboard bezel)
 
Mr_Evil said:
Yeah, all you gotta do is nab a screen from an 8x00 (excluding the 8500 and 8600, they're part of the D family) or you can snag one from a Latitude C8xx for less usually. eBay has them in spades.

before you go off and buy the screen though...have you checked the connection between teh screen and the video card? Sometimes that can give you problems. You just have to pop off that bezel that's above the keyboard to get at the connection. Might save you a bit of scratch. Had I a spare cable I'd send you one.

Also, for about $40 shipped you can get a Latitude C-Dock docking station that'll let you add in 2 PCI cards and a spare modular bay device. I have instructions on what you need to do to get it to work (Have to switch to Latitude BIOS plus one physical modification to that keyboard bezel)


Yeah, I have checked that cable out, but it was a no go. I have a dock, and know about the C-Dock trick, but I am not going to do that (at least right now) every thing else seems to work great. I am replying with the book now.
 
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