Notebook recieves serious Meaker love.

No need to call the laptop protection services, I am only taking back panels off! Honest!

I was donated an old C series Fujitsu-Siemens lifebook. Here are the old specs:

700mhz Celeron
64mb of ram
4mb ATI rage dedicated GFX
24x CD-ROM
6GB 4200RPM HDD

The new Meaker supercharged specs

866mhz Pentium 3
320mb of ram
4mb ATI rage dedicated GFX <3
4x DVD-ROM
80GB 7200RPM Hitachi travelstar (7k100)
Soundblaster audigy2 ZS notebook (lets see if the older PCMCIA chip can handle it)

Construction finishes Monday The CPU and DVD rom drive are in and working.

 

Maybe you should host a show Meaker - "Pimp my laptop".

That's quite an upgrade!

 

Sweet, nice to see an older machine get 'pimped'. How much did all that cost though?

 

£75 ^-^ a large chunk of that is the HDD.

 

sounds like a new show!

 

£75!!! That's awesome! What are you going to use it for?

 

DVD movies, video files (now it will have the 80GB HDD), some classic homeworld 1 and other retro gaming. I have a wireless USB adaptor too.

 

I hope you've tested DVDs on it already, I found my old IBM X20 with the same graphics to be a bit poor, but that had a PIII 600MHz and half the system ram.

 

Well its a test, if it does not work I will just sell the parts.

 

Good job, Meaker.

 

Hey guys, it's a bit late and not quite ready yet but I am posting on it now, I bough CL3 SDRAM but it needs CL2 (even though the performance difference is 0.01% since the intergrated stuff is CL2 and it wont slacken the timings.

Anyway the super fast hard drive makes it JUST usable, look forward to getting the new ram (from crucial this time since CL2 stuff is rare now).

Audigy card is working at full feature set

 

Hey guys it's complete, shame I cant change the multiplier up to 8.5 so I effectivly have a 700mhz PIII.

Any benchmarks you want me to run? =)

 

*looks at mini PCI slot with 56k modem in it*

*orders 2200BG Intel wireless card + internal aerial*

*cries*

 

Doh, I only just thought about updating the DVD drive firmware, now it is capable of reading the DVD-RW discs from my desktop, year 2000 to 2003 creation date lol, I always said I was dragging this 2000 laptop to 2003.

 

Honestly I'm glad to see someone here who's not obsessed with the very latest tech! PIIIs can still do basic stuff ok. I hope your Fujitsu gives you much enjoyment over the next few.... months?


Let's hear it for 3 year old laptops ^^

 

3 years? Make that 7 years! ^-^ How time flies, but you are right, it plays videos, music and DVDs just fine. All that a modern laptop has over this one is more portability and battery life (the intergrated GFX ones).

Then again that's what happens when I get hold of hardware >

Its a really nice machine, that's why I am putting the effort into it. Oh and btw pics should be coming on the internal wireless work, I know the lack of pics has been bad but I should be able to borrow a camera.

I wonder how much it would be worth when I add the internal wireless.... *shrugs* I wont sell it but just out of interest.

 

The PIII IBM I sold recently was 6/7 years old. It was fun but having two more powerful laptops I had no use for it.

In england your fujitsu would be worth maybe £100-150. Hard to tell with all the pimpin' extras!

 

The biggest difference was the ram, closely followed by the modern hard drive. It makes everything so much more responsive. The soundcard (and im really impressed that the PCMCIA controller handles it so well, many modern ones struggled) takes the edge off from video files from the CPU while the internal wireless will circumvent the generally slow ports. DVD-ROM is gravy and allows DVD movie playback and data transfere to the laptop by DVD-RW.

 

Could not get hold of a camera to show pics but I managed to get the wireless card in the mini PCI slot (easy part). Looks like you cant easily open the monitor housing (the sides would not come away while the top and bottom would) so I have placed the wireless aerials above the keyboard to the sides of the little LCD display under the surounding cover, I then routed the cables down to the right hole round the bios (through the metal plate), round the back of the motherboard to the side with the security lock and down a little gap there. It then goes to the grill for the CPU heatsink and quickly turns in to the compartment with the wireless card.

EDIT: NOT recommended for the feignt of heart! It required massive dissassembly of the case.

 

When I read "Notebook recieves serious Meaker love.", I thought you did something else with that notebook...

But awesome pimping. Seriously cool.

 

Well I sold it, £230 or $460 ^-^.

 

False alarm, pathetic nigerian scammer lol.

 

ho ho that is awesome

i have an old desktop PIII 733mhz with 512MB PC133 ram and ATI Rage(but not 3d, linux doesn't have any easy install drivers),Trident 2D video (yes, dual head monitors on a PIII, its so stupid, the CPU doesn't even have enough power to redraw the screens for video when both screens are on) intergrated sound, usb wireless, 10GB HDD, and CD drive.
i run opensuse on it and do work with it.

but you did yours on a laptop, very impressive.

rep++ for u

 

Keep up the good work! Can you test on Vista?

 

hehehehahahahahhehehehe.... no.

sorry but apart from not having a legal copy its really pointless with 320mb of ram even turning everything off.

 

Your new rig sounds sweet, it's close to my 7 year old dell listed in my sig. PIII was a fantastic processor, it made Pentium 4 look like crap in comparison.

It was sitting, broken, in a bag for a couple of years till I replaced the CCFL in the screen and replaced the Hard Drive.

After messing with the screen (which took 2 days and 2 soldering iron burns) it's good as new!

 

This screen wont even open Anyways, maybe I'll use the money this christmas and buy a new machine