hey jaye:
sorry to ask the obvious questions:
do you know the model number of your gateway?
sometimes even if you don't know it, you can zero in on the model number by typing
in the manufacturer & cpu speed.
have you checked ebay for that model of laptop?
have you googled for a service manual or disassembly instructions?
here's a case history:
last week, when my 6 year old laptop decided it no longer wanted to charge from
the ac adapter, i went to ebay and keyed in the specific model number. i was
amazed that you could buy individual parts for it in addition to buying
complete laptops.
apparently ebayers have figured out that it makes sense to "part out" old
laptops.
i was lucky that my model of dell still had instructions on how to disassemble
it available on the net. i studied those instructions and figured that since
mine wouldn't charge any more, i didn't have much to lose if i hosed it.
i got lucky and found someone in the lug (thanks jabela !!) that had the same model
laptop and transplanted everything from mine to his. i had to take off the
keyboard, palm rest & lcd panel to get to my processor. i wouldn't have
understood how it all fit together and the sequence of disassembly without those
instructions...
i also ordered a bunch of used parts from ebay: keyboard (with trackpoint), palm
rest & touch pad, battery.
i learned the part numbers of the individual parts that from browsing ebay. so, i now know that only certain dell dvd drives will work in my laptop.
i also learned that my laptop shares common parts with a specific model of dell's
business laptop. this is good news because it broadens the number of potential
"donors" for used parts.
lots of detail & trivia learned via ebay & google. and now i've got some spares
stashed for when the next problem occurs.
btw, i went through the routine of looking at new laptops, but after
researching what was available and reading up on linux compatibility, i decided
not to buy a new laptop. one of the biggest impediments to going this route was
all of old software i had on my win2k and linux hard drives for this model
laptop. i have partition backups of it all but partition backups don't help
much in the windows environment when the operating system is no longer
supported. i'd have to reinstall it all on a new version of windows. i don't
want a wide screen, dvd-playing, nuclear powered, touch pad only laptop.
which is why i went the ebay route...
Jaye Inabnit, ke6sls wrote:
It will boot via network/cdrom/hd/floppy.
Not an issue getting an install. The bugger is I really want the built in
cdrom working. How does one find replacements that will fit? The floppy
drive usually won't work, but I couldn't care about it. My main thing is
getting a cdrom or cdrw .. even if it doesn't have the same color plastic,
just as long as it works.
No, USB boot isn't an option on this one. Still, booting via network will
work, but I still insist that I have a built in CD :)
I MUST HAVE CD!
On Wednesday 15 November 2006 15:04, Patrick Moon wrote:
Does it support usb booting? Or even floppy booting (I'm guessing it
does)? If yes to either you could always do network installs. We used
to do network installs of suse here at the office...
Also if it does support usb booting what about an external dvd
enclosure... that way you could share your dvd burner/drive with
multiple computers...
Cheers,
Patrick
P.S. I use a POS laptop with a borked monitor for my home "server"...
nice and quite and the battery means it'll stay up for hours!
On Mon, 2006-11-13 at 18:33 -0800, Jaye Inabnit, ke6sls wrote:
Hi gang:
Tough question here. The old 600MHz gateway with 196mb of ram now seems
to be suffering cdrom failure. It can only take 256mb of ram, runs as
slow as a celery chip can, but it works reasonably well with blackbox.
Should I try to max out ram and replace the cdrom or put it in the
garbage can this Wednesday?
Heck, can I even get a CDrom drive for it?
advice welcome.
Thanks
Jaye, ke6sls
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