First off, welcome to my first IT related post on FuGeRTech. A few weeks ago, my (soon to be) in-laws came to town. As they brought in their bags, Tamara’s father says to me, “hey Tony, I’ve got a project for you.” I turn to see a laptop bag in his hands. I think to myself, “must need an OS scrub, defrag, clean-up, etc.” I reply, “alright, what have you got there?” He pulls out the laptop. I see the first piece of it, and then it hit me… “OMG! My college laptop!” I had a 1200 series Presario my Freshman year.
This machine in particular is a 1277 rev B. Here’s the specs.:
- Processor/Cache
AMD K6-2 433MHz, 100MHz Bus, 512KB L2 - Memory
64MB SDRAM (soldered), 1 SO DIMM 144-PIN SDRAM slot (upgradeable to 192MB total) - Storage
IDE Controller, 4.8GB Hard Drive, 3.5″ 1.44MB Floppy, 24x CD-ROM - Display
13″, SVGA (800×600), 24-bit (16.7 million colors) display - Video
Trident Blade 3D AGP, Shared Video Memory (UMA), External Display up to SXGA (1280×1024) - Audio
Sound Blaster 16/Pro, Integrated Microphone - Input Devices
Keyboard, Trackpad - Telecom
PCI Fax modem, 56Kbps, ITU V.90/Hayes AT command set - Expansion
CardBus Type II, 15-pin HD-15, 4 PIN USB Type A, RS-232 DB-9, IEEE-1284 DB-25, PS/2 style mouse/keyboard, RJ-11 phone line, 3.5mm headphones, 3.5mm microphone
I did not have this specifications list in front of me at the time, so seeing the 433MHz K6-2 and 64MB of RAM was funny to see at first. Onto the rest of the story. So, Tamara’s father asked me to clean it up and make it run smoothly so that Tamara’s mother can use it for gathering information on trips, etc. I power it up and the first thing I notice is…
That’s right folks Windows 98. Now I know what you’re thinking, “but that machine came with Windows 98 from the factory.” Well, it did. I know that. I just expected to see it running Windows 2000 I guess… So, it’s not a shock, but I haven’t seen this splash screen in so long…
So, the machine is running quite slow. I hop online and pray that I can find memory for this thing. Luckily, it wasn’t that hard. I found a handful of places still selling memory for this dinosaur. I ordered the largest DIMM I could (128MB). It was about $20 after shipping. This upgraded the machine to 192MB total.
I proceeded to attempt to install Windows XP. This was a mistake as XP was just about as slow as the old, hosed up Windows 98 (despite Microsoft’s published minimum requirements). So, I found an old Windows 2000 disk and slapped on that OS.
I also ordered a Linksys CardBus Type II wireless card (model: WPC54GX) from eBay for ~$20. I got it installed without a hitch and was then able to go to the Internet to get the latest Service Pack installed. I noticed a very annoying sound coming from the speakers when the wireless card was actively transferring data. After some brief Googling, I found that Compaq had a flawed design where the CardBus slots of their 1200 series and many other Presario models lacked proper EMF shielding. The sound card was susceptible to this EMF noise. The two solutions:
- Try to get a plastic-coated MU-Metal shield package from Compaq/HP
- Plug in some headphones
Having headphones plugged in to the laptop routed the noise to the headphones. I found an old pair of headphones that I did not care about and cut the wires off of the plug. This proved sufficient for hiding the noise while using the Internet… better than nothing I suppose.
Now the machine is up and running and ready to go with Windows 2000, Office 2000, McAfee Anti-Virus, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Spyware, upgraded RAM, and a wireless card. It appears to run very smoothly. I forgot how nice and paired-down Windows 2000 is compared to XP and Vista. I really miss the simplicity of the operating system. It will make an excellent laptop for data gathering on the road.