Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 16:43:10 +0100
From: Iain Cairns [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: L100 / Partitioning / Overlay / Win98 Install / Overclock /
12.5mm HD (!!!)
Hi everyone
SORRY this is all in one LONG post but I thought I'd never get round to
writing this stuff otherwise! If anyone replies, please quote paragraphs
SELECTIVELY or the daily digest is gonna read like War Peace(!).
By the way, thanks to all posters to this list and to Dan/Mike for hosting
it. I've found it a fantastic source of info for setting up my second-hand
L100. Also particular thanks to David Chien's Adorable Libretto site,
amherst.co.uk's Lib site and Dr Xin's fixup.net (Dr Xin cracks me up - Why
Sony skimp on components? Bad Sony!... I'm going to buy a dog and call it
Sony, just so I can shout Bad Sony!).
Just for everyone's info, I thought I'd share my experiences of settting up
a blank (no OS installed) Libby over recent months. Until now, I've been a
Mac person but the Lib has forced me to get intimate with Windows and PC
stuff!
Firstly, I have been successfully using an IBM Travelstar 48gig 12.5mm-high
drive (model 48GH) in my L100. Has anyone got a bigger one? (Nudge nudge,
wink wink...)
Bought the L100 second hand on ebay UK with a standard 2gig HD but wanted to
upgrade to the biggest capacity laptop drive I could find at the time,
because I wanted to use my Libby as a mobile MP3 jukebox (among other
things), and didn't want to run out of HD space any time soon.
Of course, foolishly I hadn't properly researched into the subject and
didn't fully realise that (A) the IBM HD was 12.5mm high, and (B) you can't
put a 12.5mm high HD in a Libby.
However, luckily for me, it turns out YOU CAN! You just need to take out a
mysterious credit card-sized slab of metal under the plastic film over the
HD space. This is probably a vitally important slab (for heat dissipation or
blocking radio inteference maybe?), but the Libby has worked okay without
it, so I'm assuming it's the Toshiba equivalent of a human appendix. Even
without the slab it's a tight squeeze, but the case will just about screw
shut again with the HD in place.
This means that L100/110 owners can in theory also use the newer IBM 60GB
Travelstar HD which is also 12.5mm high. Of course, since Christmas, bigger
9.5mm HDs have arrived which make it easier to 'go large'.
*NOTE*: Anyone doing this should be aware of possible damage to your onboard
memory chips, you must keep the cushioning pads in place which stop the HD
scraping/pressing on the motherboard - see fixup.net for details.
Re the ongoing partitioning debate, I set up the new 48gig HD, based on info
I gleaned from this list (details may be fuzzy as it was a few months ago):
- Updated the L100's BIOS to latest version (v8.10).
- Installed IBM Ontrack Disk Manager overlay program - v9.5.5? Suppose I
could have used EZbios but went with IBM to match the HD.
- Formatted C partition in FAT32 using a Win98 startup floppy to maximum
8meg-ish size offered. (Partition Magic now tells me this C partition goes
from physical sector 63 to 16,354,169 for a total of 7985.4 MB.)
- Installed Win98SE with great difficulty - I only have a USB external CD
(won't work in DOS?) and didn't have easy access to a desktop PC for popping
the laptop HD in with an adapter (I work in a Mac-based office). Eventually
did it by installing DOS IP drivers and FTP program (I have a Xircom PC card
combo LAN/modem), and logging onto a Mac FTP server to copy the Win98 CD
files over onto the Lib's HD, then installing from the HD.
- Then had to partition the remainder of the HD to avoid hibernation
overwrite disasters. (I only needed another big FAT32 space, no Linux/NTFS
stuff.) Using Partition Magic, created an extended primary partition in the
remaining space (37,793.5 MB). Then created a logical D partition within
this of approx size 37,692 MB, which left an unallocated space of approx 101
MB at the end of the extended partition.
- Then used PM to drag the D partition to the END of the extended partition,
meaning the unallocated 101 MB - my hibernation area - was now at the
BEGINNING (sectors 16,354,233 to 16,563,014), ie just after the 7985.4 MB C
partition recognised by the BIOS. (101MB hibernation space may be excessive
as I only have 64 MB RAM, but best not to take chances, eh?) The 37gig D
partition is now sector 16,563,078 and upwards.
- In Windows power settings, hibernation is turned OFF - I understand this
is different to *BIOS hibernation*. (This BIOS hibernation now kicks in when
the battery gets to a certain low level, and you get the nice graphic of the
Libby doing a brain dump to the HD.)
- Installed a few Lib drivers from the web, e.g. the widescreen video
driver, and I think maybe a one to control the Lib mouse-thingy. However, I
have refrained from putting too many of these extra Toshiba drivers on to my
Lib, unless something obviously is not working - if it ain't broke then
don't fix it. :) I have
