The Compaq Armada 1700 for retro gaming

Just posting this topic , because i also have an old Compaq Armada 1700, that i use to read books and to play old games on.

Last week, i broke the power port of an CF-m34. It seems that the power port is an achiless heel for many toughbooks.

Not for the compaq Armada 1700/1750. They use the 3 pin mickey mouse plug. More durable.

Yesterday, i put my Toughbook CF-27, next to the Armada 1700.

they are almost the same in size and height/dimensions.

Are there other users of this toughbook forum, who use/used an Armada 1700/1750 ?

Do you like the Armada ?

I like them. They are not as durable as my toughbooks, and when i would stand on an 1700/1750 with my 95 kilos of body weight, i am pretty sure, that i would break the screen.

I stood on an cf-m34 and a cF-27, and they didnt break.

 

I retired my Armada 1700 a couple of years ago. I was using it at work to run my ancient Logitech scanner, but since the scanner died the 1700 has been sitting in my closet. By coincidence I just cleaned up the hdd on it this past weekend and was thinking of trying some of my old games on it, if I can find the game CDs that is.

Sizewise, the 1700 is a beast, but in terms of toughness it was just a standard laptop. Step on it and I'm sure something will break!

 

Indeed. Bizar and strange , i bought several toughbooks , because i like their ruggedness.. but i dont travel a lot. Mostly i use them at home. Reading books or playing games on my bed, or on the kitchen table. Funny or not ?

The Armada 1700 is cheap to buy. On the Dutch marktplaats they sell for 10-50 euros or so. Anyhow, thanks, jimbo83, for your reply.

Did you know that the 1700 has a simple 2D videocard, and the 1750 (that looks the same) has an ATI 3d card (8MB).

i modded an 1750 with an upgrade from the original 366Mhz pentium II cpu to a 500Mhz pentium III cpu. you have to use some software at windows xp bootup, to trick the 1750, but it works. And of course the extra SSE of the 500Mhz, gives the 1750 the extra punch of power.

 

I also use an old Compaq Armada 1592. 233Mhz, 96 mb ram, 20 gig hd. I love to install software on it, to make the most of it. Made an MS-DOS install, with a nice menu system.

One thing i still think is cool. My Compaq Armad 1592 boots in 10 secs. I can play a game, and shut it off, by pushing the power button. MS-DOS is cool. My dual Core AMD Athlon 7850 black edition 2,8ghz. takes 1 minute to shut down, and 2 minutes to start. Yeah, Windows XP is amazing... slow.

Also playing all old Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games is fun. (Kinjgs Quest, Monkey Island,etc)... Doom, Warcraft 2, SimCity, is fun.

I also can use the internet with ms-dos, have a dos MP3 player, i can watch movies on it, thanks to an ms-dos utility. Wordprocessing with Word 6.0

Also anti-virus by FPROT and mc-kaffee updated to 2006.

as you might notice, i still use ms-dos for fun.

Linux i didnt try.

 

I also installed many many games on the Toughbook CF-m34, Cf-27,cf-28 to test them.

If you are interested, i can send you a list of games that work on those machines with win xp sp1/2. You might be amazed that some games you didnt think, might work... actually work very well.