Got a Latitude D610!

[sedrosken]

From my grandma, who gave it to me because it was really slow. That and the fact that it was ~10 years old told her she needed to buy a new one.

Apparently this model is notorious for having issues. The motherboard will occasionally get small cracks in it and cause severe instability. Which makes having a working one even more unusual, especially given the fact that my grandma isn't too gentle with technology. And it shows: the latch is busted, the thing is filthy (I'm cleaning it as I type this), and I'm afraid to open or close it too quickly or harshly as the hinges are starting to go.

But it can have its uses... (evil laugh) It's a PIII-based Pentium M, and one of the higher clocked ones at that. Because it only has 1GB RAM and I can't seem to find more, I'm just going to use it as-is, with Ubuntu 14.04 and LXDE. Don't ask me why I still have a CPU monitor on the taskbar, looking at it will probably do nothing but depress me as when I'm doing just about anything it maxes out. It handles really smoothly though, quite impressive for such an old machine.

Surprisingly, it has an ancestor of the wireless chipset found in my main laptop: the Broadcom 4306, where my main has a 4312. Also, the res on its screen is friggin' ridiculous: 1400x1050. On a (probably less than) 15 inch laptop screen. y u do dis dell.jpg. That said, it's not unreadable at normal distances. It just goes to show that had they actually tried to up the resolution ante when it actually mattered, we'd all already be on 4k displays. In fact, we'd probably have moved on from 4k to something even higher definition.

 

[Chewy509]

Also, the res on its screen is friggin' ridiculous: 1400x1050. On a (probably less than) 15 inch laptop screen..

FYI, Most business class laptops (like the D610) from that era had similar or higher resolutions. Approx 5-6yrs ago, the race to drop prices resulted in lower res screens for both desktop monitors and laptop monitors. Case in point, my two 20" TFTs are now 8+yr old and are 1680x1050 in res... It's only been the last 12-18 months that getting a 20" monitor at a higher res was becoming common place. (And that's mainly because of the number of small TVs in the 20-23" size that are 1080p displays, not because of monitors driving the adoption).

Most of the others will be able to give other examples, but resolutions available on laptops and desktop stagnated or reversed for the last 5+ years...

 

[Clocker]

Let me know if you could use this RAM and I will see if I can find it.

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/10167-Free-laptop-memory-amp-cpu

 

[Mercutio]

reversed

1366x768 is basically the mark of laptop (or desktop monitor, I guess) shitty-ness, but it's incredibly common now as a low-cost display option. I tell people to look for 900 vertical pixels at a minimum, because the thing you don't want is to have some legacy application with a window that can't be re-sized to less than 800 pixels, and that's something I've seen a lot. I think a lot of software was written targeting the formerly standard and entirely usable 1280x1024 screen resolution.

Anyway, if you have one of the oddball sizes, just remember that you can always increase the DPI of your fonts or switch to one of the larger icons, but there's no cure for the hell of needing pixels you don't have.

 

[sedrosken]

FYI, Most business class laptops (like the D610) from that era had similar or higher resolutions. Approx 5-6yrs ago, the race to drop prices resulted in lower res screens for both desktop monitors and laptop monitors. Case in point, my two 20" TFTs are now 8+yr old and are 1680x1050 in res... It's only been the last 12-18 months that getting a 20" monitor at a higher res was becoming common place. (And that's mainly because of the number of small TVs in the 20-23" size that are 1080p displays, not because of monitors driving the adoption).

Most of the others will be able to give other examples, but resolutions available on laptops and desktop stagnated or reversed for the last 5+ years...

Wow. That is such bullcrap.

BTW, I figured out that it doesn't have DDR-266 RAM like I thought it did, rather it has DDR2-533. I was shocked. Also, I saw the nForce2 name scrolling past during bootup, but it doesn't have that. It has an Intel 915G/GM, which steals some system RAM, making it look like I have slightly less than 1 GB total (993MB shows up in LXTask). I confirmed from within the BIOS. What is the speed on the RAM? I might be interested. Might be able to bump this up to 2 GB, which is its max. Also, the hard drive uses some kind of edge connector for EIDE. Wonderful, now I have to hunt for a specific interface should I ever need a new HDD for it... Or maybe not, I might need to take a closer look: it probably uses some adapter in between the HDD and the edge connector.

 

[sedrosken]

So yes, it does use a special adapter that is hellishly difficult to get off for the HDD.

And yes, it only has 1 memory slot readily accessible -- populated with one 512MB stick, which tells me that either the rest of the RAM is soldered on (which doesn't make any sense to me) or is in another slot, probably under the keyboard or something. Not that I can afford to upgrade any aspect of it. When I do all that, I'll have to replace the hinges as well - they still work, and still lock the screen in one place theoretically, but in practice the screen has a fair bit of swinging room without moving the locking part of the hinge. I may just have to tighten them up, and I'm praying that's the case, but I'm not too sure.

 

[sedrosken]

Sorry if it seems like I'm spamming, and in a way I guess I am, but I am reporting my findings as I find them.

I took the hinge cover off and tightened the hinges. Still isn't perfect but it is miles better than what it was.

At the same time I was confronted with the screws for holding the keyboard down. I figured, why not, and took it off.

Yes, the second RAM slot is on the underside of the keyboard.

Another interesting thing about this laptop is its IR port. I have this thing called a QuickPad (a kind of e-typewriter that can transmit to a real computer with an IR port) that I can finally use to full effect. As to whether it needs special software or not, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't even tell you whether the IR port works at all or if it will work under Linux. But I am betting that it probably will.

 

[Mercutio]

The RAM isn't soldered on. It's in an internal socket that IIRC is under the keyboard where it's a PITA to get to, but not inaccessible.
And if you have a Latitude from that era with Intel video, count yourself lucky. The versions that had the nVidia graphics were born to die because of a manufacturing problem.

 

[sedrosken]

Yeah, I got really lucky with this one. Not a P4, Intel Graphics, SXGA model... DDR2 RAM...

And it still works great to boot. I want to give it 2 GB RAM and at least an 80GB hard drive. I found the RAM on Amazon for $17, and the hard drive is a bit steeper at $40 so I'll hold off on the HDD and get the RAM ASAP.

 

[Clocker]

The RAM I linked to above is FREE to you if you want it. Just let me know. DDR2-533 IIRC. I believe that is what the Lenovo R61 took.

Clocker

 

[sedrosken]

That would be awesome! I'll have to have a serious discussion with my dad about it though, last time it ended with "I don't send money to strangers."

 

[Clocker]

That would be awesome! I'll have to have a serious discussion with my dad about it though, last time it ended with "I don't send money to strangers."

I'm in SE Michigan so shipping for two memory chips will only be a few bucks. Heck, I can send before you pay if you want, I don't really care and then we will know the exact shipping cost.

I'll just need to find the time to look for them. Heading out on vacation so it'll have to be in the 2nd week of July. Might get lucky and find them tonight before we leave.

Edit: don't worry about the shipping cost. if I can find them I'll ship them to you free of charge.

 

[sedrosken]

Wow, thanks! Very generous of you. My birthday lies in the 2nd week of July, the 18th to be exact.

I'll be leaving for Illinois to spend a couple weeks with my uncle in mid-August.

It doesn't matter if you use higher speed RAM than the system is rated for unless you mix RAM speeds. The system will run the RAM at the system's max rated RAM speed, IIRC.