retrogeeks needed

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:25 pm

anyone know if a pentium-120 laptop will take 32 bit pcmcia cards, or if there's an easy way to find out? (manf's website is bobbins, google search is a bit ropey, etc)

and will putting a newer hard disc in make things load any quicker than it's current 800mb jobbie? the capacity's fine, the speed aint!

cheers

/living in a VGA-rez dreamland

Steve_O · Post by **Steve_O** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:34 pm

You sure the hard drive isn't just overly fragmented or full??

Reformatting should sort it out otherwise, which you'll kind of be doing if you swap with another anyway (if looked at from a zen perspective

)

Anyway, i'm sure i've offended you with my patronising suggestions!!

*Is the power lead plugged in??

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:39 pm

*slap*

no not to worry, perfectly decent suggestions if you dont know my skill level (the upper end of "intermediate", though knowledge has some big holes - eg pre-2000 laptops)

its fully defragged and EVERYTHING best as i could. its just a really old 800mb disc. i've got a 2gb, maybe a 4gb round here somewhere..

it aint even that bad in normal use, as the laptop in question is running windows 3.1* and office v4 (ie, pretty lean stuff) - its just on loading/saving a big file, or lots of small ones, you get to feel the slowness and really awful access time. and that does include a big "sequential" file i.e. one thats not fragmented, such as the power-off-suspend memory dump file (its only 17.5mb including video ram, cache etc, but takes ages - cant be more than 1mb/sec). as i forsee lots of loading/saving/suspending in its future, putting something newer in would be a benefit.

IF its going to get faster --- the disc appears to be fixed in place in a metal caddy/heatsink (fan-less machine!) with about twenty little screws! If the motherboard hardwares the limiter, then no point!

any clues on the "PC card" stuff?

*with Calmira replacement interface, natch. I aint a total gooseberry.

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:46 pm

In a word: Nope.

You won't find anything pre- PIII / Athlon which takes 32 bit pcmcia, I'm afraid..

And yes, a faster HDD would speed things up if it's got a seriously ancient jobbie (which it will have

), providing everything else in the system isn't limiting it to hugely..

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:51 pm

poop, i was hoping to put a usb card or wireless net card in (it already runs fine with the wired card i had spare!) .... not gonna have a snowballs chance of tracking one of them down in 16bit form easily i bet!

....wonder if it would take an 8 gigger...

(usb/wireless in conjunction with win98 and a 64mb ram upgrade of course)

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:53 pm

I'm afraid your chances of finding a 16 bit wireless card are to the order of 10^-99999999.
Trust me, I've tried

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 5:30 pm

mebbe one of those "access point" things that you can plug into with an ethernet cable.

just find a battery powered one (or get to maplins and make a battery pack that plugs in it's AC adaptor socket), velcro it on the back of the screen and use a really short cable.

surely there should be some 16 bit USB cards about though... as by the sound of it most laptops with 32 bit sockets would have USB built-in anyway? (i'm ok for now, as the printers/scanners i want to use are either parallel or network capable -- just thinking to the future. oh, and for pen-drives, far more effecient than saving things to/loading from HD

)