Configuration Q's on an overhauled CF-72

I had the opportunity to buy a CF-72 that was pulled from a cop car. It was cheap and in great physical shape so I decided to pull the trigger (no pun intended). So after some (a lot) learning about upgrading, motherboards, chipsets, blah blah; I'm ready to buy all the components that I'd like to add or replace and now I have some questions.

1. According to this, DDR 200 (pc1600) is recommended. Is that because it's a 100MHz bus? And if so, do I have anything at all to gain or lose from going with say, DDR 333 (pc2700)? Will the bus limit its speed to that of DDR 200? Or would matching the matching the memory frequency to the memory bus (e.g. 100MHz DDR 200 with a 100MHz memory bus versus 166MHz DDR 333 with a 100MHz memory bus) be more benefitial?

2. The laptop originally came with this HDD. ATA-6 should be backwards compatible with ATA-5 right? But I read here that a Seagate 80gb ATA-6 HDD didn't work, possibly because of a BIOS issue. So I don't know if I should risk getting this HDD. It SHOULD work... right?

3. It doesn't have wireless but it has an open mini PCI slot so I'm looking for a mini PCI wifi adapter but I can't find a good source for mini PCI to save my life. Mainly just a bunch of PCI express. Any good source for MINI PCI wifi adapters?

That's pretty much it for now Thanks in advance for all the help!

 

1- pc2700 is fine , its easier to find than pc-2100
2- haven't tried large drives in my cf-72 , but if your not sure just buy a used drive thats 60gb or 80gb look for a 5400rpm model , you won't fill it up anyways
3- intel 2200bg is the most common



Alex

 

Hello and welcome to the forum... I don't specialize in the 72 but I'll take a stab. Get the cheapest RAM you can get... It is limited by the bus speed so going up to PC2700 won't help... But it may be backward compatible... We'd need your exact model number to see which CF-72 that you have to be sure what exactly you need for RAM.

As far as HDD... You should be able to plug in any IDE hard drive that you want. I typically install 160GB Samsung Units... Hitachi 7200 rpm drives are great if you can find them... And they really speed things up but they are not manufactured anymore and they are expensive when you can find them.

Get this wifi card if you can... Great price... Works great... Tastes great... Less filling...

http://microcom.us/nmp8602pluss.html?gclid=COuMhtDc_o8CFRuhFQodwgFJtw

As for wifi antenas... You are only limited by your imagination, wallet and skillset... I'm sure others will chime in soon.

Please feel free to poke around and search... There is a lot of cool stuff even in the CF-28 and CF-29 areas that will work for you.

Rick

 

Hey! Welcome to the forums!

1) Don't put PC1600 in it, not only is it impossible to find, but if you did find it it would cost a crap load. Just put PC2100 (266mhz) in it.

2) The 80GB ATA-6 hard drive should work fine. If you put anything larger than 137GB you might have an issue where you would have program 18bit instead of 16bit to overcome the 137GB hard drive limitation.

3) The best source of miniPCI adapters would be ebay. protoncomputers1 is a great seller that is trusted (I used to work for them actually): http://cgi.ebay.com/Medion-MIM2040-...yZ101281QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Just make sure that you have the wireless antenna in the laptop, otherwise forget putting in an internal miniPCI wifi (you could but you would have to strip the machine and put antennas in, which is a PAIN

 

I stumbled on this a while ago and this seems a good place to post it.

http://www.computerhope.com/help/ide.htm

I was looking for a 1.8" ata drive for a CF-07 and my hard drive supplier had them listed with more information than you usually see. As far as I can tell any drive with a standard newer than your computer will be backwards compatible.
CAP

 

Wow, you guys are awesome. I've decided on a 120gb 5400rpm ATA-6 HDD. And I'll get the wireless adapter from e-bay. Along with DDR 333 ram from Crucial (it had good reviews). Ok, so I have another question. On this page, it speaks of a couple of unused slots by the HDD that might be used for an SD card reader. How do I find an internal card reader that will fit the CF-72 case, and have the right connector?