Dilwyn, The Toshiba Tecra 780DVD is a PII 266Mhz Laptop is well within the minimum specification for Windows XP. The main problem is the BIOS onlyu supporting 8.4Gn hard drives. I doubt whether there is a BIOS update to cope with highwe capacity hard drives.
If you look really hard there is always PII laptops with hard drives that are faulty or not fast enough for Windows XP or Vista, that are being scrapped. Which is a pity, as Linux can be run very smoothly on a PII laptop, but then that means no QPC2... Derek -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dilwyn Jones Sent: 02 January 2008 00:27 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] 2.5 inch HD The existing one is either 6GB or 8GB (forget which). Derek has offered a similar size one for £10 which is probably good enough for such an old laptop. It used to have Windows 98SE on it, we were trying to replace that with Windows XP when the drive gave up the ghost. We've tried several times to FORMAT it, but it stops at the same place every time at the 13% mark in the FORMAT with a horrible noise. It won't boot up now of course, so we resort to the Win 98 startup disk to FDISK and FORMAT it, hoping to be able to convert it to NTFS for Win XP if and when we get it to format! The hard disk was itself a second hand replacement for a smaller hard disk which was in it when we bought it. I've since given away that small hard disk. Thanks for offering - I'll try Derek's offer first and appeal again if that is unsuccessful. My son is 12 now and VERY into his computers (as you might expect of a son of mine!). This Christmas, he got a little £60 Aiptek digital video camera, spent most of Christmas day recording his mum, dad, grandparents etc and made a very good half hour video of it all (with Windows Movie Maker, which was a traumatic learning experience until we realised we had to set Windows Virtual Memory to a massive 1GB to edit a video at a snail's pace on a 1.4GHz Pentium, which makes me very glad of what we are able to achieve at a few MHz on a QL sometimes) which is now on DVD doing the rounds of the family! Quite a learning curve, involving digital video editing, DVD creation software, SD card usage, USB file transfer, bluetooth links between phones and computers to import stills taken on 2 separate mobiles etc. A bit hairy at times, but we've both learned so much in just over a week that we are very happy about our achievement even if it was a bumpy ride! Bluetooth was an interesting experience and quite a challenge. My son had got a new Nokia phone late last year and I swapped him something for his old Motorola V3 phone which in an even worse condition than my ancient Nokia. Both phones (allegedly) have Bluetooth. We bought a USB 'Dongle' for his PC (just £2.50 from Ebuyer) so he could transfer his photos to his computer. That worked quite well from phone to PC, but the PC won't play the MP3's he's downloaded from his phone (don't know if it is a new file format problem, or if the MP3's are flagged only to work on the system they are downloaded as an anti-piracy or something). Then we realised the PC wouldn't send to the phone, but the phone had an obscure security setting which prevented that, but even after finding that we're still struggling to send to the phone. Next, we tried phone to phone. That was a hassle, it was only today we (well, my son actually) eventually found some little used feature on one of the phones which had prevented successful 'pairing' of the two phones - we were soon able to transfer files from one phone to the other very easily as long as we weren't far apart - I guess Bluetooth is only meant to work up to a few metres apart. Even more successful was connecting my phone to my PC and setting my Freeola dial-up to point to the USB-phone link as a modem. Dial out, and the phone magically springs to life, connects to Freeola and a little later I was downloading email and browsing via the mobile, then I realised it was 25p per minute. Oops, back to BT I think. But it works - I should be able to use this as a modem while away from home, possibly at Quanta workshops, and if the QPC or QemuLator TCP/IP can work with it, I'll be able to get some degree of internet access and emails from QPC via mobile phone, though I haven't got that far yet. I also want to get a USB Bluetooth dongle like my son's to see what I can achieve with that. While all this PC fiddling (and I call the PC "fiddly" as opposed to QL "tinkering") may seem irrelevant, the fact that this appears to the PC just as any other modem, it means that I can set my sights on finishing the QPC email program I started writing last year and wouldn't that be great - mobile email access from QPC running on a laptop! My pet project for 2008 perhaps :-) -- Dilwyn Jones ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Chagouri-Brindle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 4:14 PM Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] 2.5 inch HD > > > Dilwyn Jones wrote: >> Does anyone have a cheap second hand 2.5 inch IDE hard drive of a >> few >> GB capacity to sell? >> >> The hard drive on my son's Toshiba Tecra 780 laptop has failed. We >> lost Windows, so set about reinstalling only to find it refused. An >> attempt to reformat failed after 13% (drive made awful noise). >> >> Don't want to spend 40-50 pounds on a new drive as the rather old >> laptop isn't really worth much more than that. >> >> > What kind of size are you looking for? I might have one, I'll have > a > rummage. > _______________________________________________ > QL-Users Mailing List > http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.12/1202 - Release Date: > 29/12/2007 13:27 > > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm -- This email has been verified as Virus free. Virus Protection and more available at http://www.plus.net -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1205 - Release Date: 12/31/2007 15:32 _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
