Toshiba Sattelite 4030 CDT - questions

[_Karnaaj_]

OK, just got this beast a few days ago, with one extra 4.3 gb HD (condition/contents unknown) and one extra battery (possibly dead). Win 98 is on it, but something (PGPNet uninstallation, mebbe) has borked the networking ability. (About to get a wireless NIC, soI'm not too worried.) Only 64 meg of RAM, combined with a Celeron A 300 mhz, leavesa me a little underpowered but for $20... <G>

Questions:

1 - Will this sucker run XP? I can add another 128 meg, but I don't know how badly this will wheeze.

2 - Is there any way to upgrade the processor, or even just OC it some? (Probably not, but I saw that some other lappys could be done...)

3 - On a randomly-selected psrts site, I saw various HDs - the 30 gig looked nice, but will that physically fit in the case, or am I looking at a mighty leap up to a 6 gig?

4 - Of course, being about third-hand from the original owner, I have no recovery discs. Other than buying 'em off eBay, what's my best bet? Toshiba themselves?

5 - Saw an eBay seller of this same unit, but he'd managed to get a DVD drive installed. Is this particularly difficult?

6 - Playing with the lappy, I've found that Media Player Classic (from the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, which I installed) will play my Divx'd movie, but after a few minutes the movie will stutter, audio-loop with frozen scene, and lock the system up with Explorer non-responsive. (Movie on CD.) Attempting to copy the 700-meg file will fail with the CD somehow becoming non-readable (temporarily). In fact, it's real finicky about CDs, sometimes requiring multiple disc swaps to make it recognise and access the disc. (All probs seem to be with burned discs.) Is this possibly a bad drive, or just a dirty/loose <?> one?

6a - If not the drive, am I just trying to do more than the RAM/CPU can take at the moment? Smaller movies I managed to copy to the HD seem OK, so I still suspect the CD drive more.

Guess that's it for now. Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Whoops, one more:

7 - Where *is* the HD on this thing? I have the spare drive, might even have a full OS/networking (came out of a second [dead] 4030CDT before it got shot full of holes), but where do I start chiseling away?

 

[_Karnaaj_]

OK, never mind #4 for now, I may have a recovery disc coming. We'll see what happens...

Hmmm. Looking over the assorted Toshiba disassembly guides (none for mine - mebbe I should borrow a digicamera and make one? <G>), it appears that this one is not one that has a nice, seperate HD cover to be popped. I'll try ripping it open this weekend, see if the hamster is getting tired.

 

[_Karnaaj_]

Answering most of my own questions, it seems, but someone might be able to use the info so "nyaah".

#1 appears doable, but it surely wants that RAM. Did see some 128 meg modules for $25 <!> but I might check the local old-hardware joints to try and get some today, instead of thru the mail. It'll really eat the HD space as well, which brings us to..

#3 - 2.5" notebook drive, 9mm high (I guess - looks thinner than that). Whether BIOS will recognise larger drives, well, that's the question, but I'm sure it can be faked around.

#2 seems to be overtaken-by-events, as well, but can be adjusted:

2a - I've seen a listing for a Pentium 2 @ 300 mhz "upgrade". Would that actually make a difference from the original Celeron A @ 300? Also saw an eBay listing for a unit with a "PIII Celeron", but I suspect that's a typo/assumption more than anything else.

#5 was easy - I asked the seller about it, and he said it was pretty simple. So, now I have to sleave a DVD-ROM in the same form-factor and (hopefully) using the same cable... that, I can take my time with.

#6 is a bit of a puzzle. If I burn the disc at 32x (max on my NEC drive), it fails to read. If I burn at 24x (max read of the laptop drive), it works. I didn't think the *burn* speed had to match the target's *read* speed... and it didn't give me any crap about the 32x burn audiodiscs or MP3 discs. Which play just fine, no probs at all, but gee, I have an CD/MP3 player that's smaller than the disc wallet I carry so I don't think using the lappy is an improvement unless I load up many gigs onto it... and even then, I can always swap discs, so no, it's not going to be the Big Walkman. <heheh>

#6a is still under investigation. I appear to have the resources, and the CPU doesn't seem to be taking the hit. Might be that massive 2.5 meg of video RAM... might try recoding the movie to somewhat less quality, see what happens.

 

[_Karnaaj_]

Another update...

The recovery disc wasn't the right one. <sigh> Oh well. Either I'll find one, or I'll just try installing XP on the spare drive, if it works.

Leads me to the next bit - still haven't torn it open. Since the wireless card worked (albeit with somewhat more wrestling with config options - defaulted rather easily to the unsecured WAPs in the apartments nearby <G>, but I did want to be able to access *my* stuff on the secure WAP...), it wasn't as vital to swap drives and see if the spare had a functioning network setup. <shrug>

Using the wireless to leech to movies off my big box, they play nicely (until I get into very high res/bitrate - "Bellum", an IL-2 Forgotton Battles movie in high-res, will go slideshow in some spots, while Predator 2 (Divx) only loses a few frames, from what I saw), so I expect that the bottleneck is the CD/HD pipe. DVD-ROM might help there, more on that when it happens.

Memory - apparently the spiders ate all the 128meg PC66 SODIMM SDRAM in the parts basements, so I ordered some - arrived Saturday night in town, so I may see it Tuesday (FedEx). That, at least, is a slap-and-go operation; the memory expansion has its own little hatch.

Elsewise, haven't done much due to extreme tiredeness and an overabundance of other things to do. Might grab another fullsize keyboard, since it'll plug right in and I'm not that enamoured with the smaller/redesigned laptop one. Might also see if I can do something goofy - I have the AIW 9600Pro on the big box, with TV feeding in. Now, if I can con the assorted software for the *lappy* to see that feed (via the wireless)...

 

[_Karnaaj_]

OK, newest update - swapped the 4.1 gig for an 11.5 gig HD, and currently installing XP Pro. We'll see how laggy it feels. 192 meg or RAM now, but still the piddly Celeron A @ 300.

Note for those wishing to swap drive in the Satellite 4030CDT: there's a load of tiny screws in the bottom and back of the laptop's case. Multiple differing sizes. But, if you remove just the one on the left side (viewing from the keyboard/display open position), just south of the keyboard, that little cover on the left side of the case will pop right off and show you the hard-drive tray. <mutter><snarl> Also, they seem to have used a liberal amount of Loc-Tite (and possibly power-drivers) in installing those screws. (I managed to chew up the head on one of the screws holding the HD-tray to the HD, but luckily there was enough head to used needlenose pliers to remove the screw.)

Time to see if I can remember how to make the wireless talk to the network again...

 

[_Karnaaj_]

Time to curse some more... have finally gotten the 11 gig drive repartitioned/changed to FAT32/Win98 installed, and now am trying to copy over some utilities and such to the 98 side... and am running into the same ferschlugginer CD problems ("cannot read from device" - except for the other files on it, of course, and all the probs trying to read from the install CDs). I'm beginning to wonder if there's a physical probalem with the CD ROM drive, and it's not able to read certain areas of the disc?

Example: I made a CD-RW containing the Partion Magic 8.0 install, about 4 Toshiba utilities and drivers, and the drivers/utilites package for the wireless card. PM8 was "cannot be read from device", yet everything else copied fine. Erase, stick just PM8 on the disc, "device not ready" - couldn't read it. I'd run into this oddity when I originbally was trying to copy over the Cisco utils, and had to add more stuff to the disc to make it "recognise" that it was a disc...

Whole bunch of crap and PM8 is on now, let's see if it copies... "The device is not ready". For Battlefield 1942 Disc 2, it's ready. (It was handy to test with - no way Im wasting the time trying to install it. <G> I remember how I lagged with the P3 @600, a Cel A @300 will catch fire and sink into the swamp...) And yet, the CD-RW fails again.

I'm gonna start drinking now...