Dell Latitude P-133 dudes.
January 8, 2009 1:04 AM   Subscribe

Revival of Really Old Laptop - For a Good Cause! Now it's finding its way to a writer who needs it just for light word processing work via WIN98SE. And the problems preventing that from happening are: Sirens going off upon boot up. One boot up still works after going in to set up and adjusting the Boot Up from *floppy* to Hard Drive. Then when attempting to reboot - sirens again and no Hard Drive detected. Fun. Virus? Dead HD?

Spects -

Dell Latitude P-133
P133, 48MB RAM, 1.3 GB HDD, CD-ROM


Now it's finding its way to a writer who needs it just for light word processing work via WIN98SE. And the problems preventing that from happening are: Sirens going off upon boot up. One boot up still works after going in to set up and adjusting the Boot Up from *floppy* to Hard Drive. Then when attempting to reboot - sirens again and no Hard Drive detected. Fun. Virus? Dead HD?
Anything else that would prevent the HD from firing up and render it flaccid?
Are there are any kind of diagnostic programs that I can run from the floppy that will tell me exactly what is going on? Must work from RAM.

I like recycling things - and for the purpose the writer has for this machine - it's very cool. I'd like to put some time and effort into this and maybe splurge for a working HD (if that's the problem) on ebay or such. No biggie. How much of a big deal though is it to install a HD in one of these old machines? I wasn't able to access the inside workings by removing the screws in the back - I'm sure there are some kind of directions online on how to accomplish this. I couldn't find it though on google fu. Any help there is also appreciated.


Cheers.
posted by watercarrier to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)
 
I like recycling things too. But this might best be recycled to the nearest recycling centre and I speak as someone who reluctantly said goodbye to a ten year old PIII 600MHz laptop with 384MB recently which originally ran windows 98.

I say this simply because your writer should value his time too - and the amount of discretionary effort and energy spent dealing with and using something this old will just be too high. Better to spend $100on eBay that will run either XP or Ubuntu and spend all that extra time writing.
posted by rhymer at 1:23 AM on January 8, 2009 [1 favorite]


Ditto what rhymer said. Particularly, I suspect the only easy way to back up data from that laptop will be by floppy disk. (Does it have a USB port? A working modem so that your friend can upload their files somewhere? Will the friend even have a dialup internet account?) That's really not a good situation to be in, especially if you're writing on it. I speak from experience - I used a laptop with similar specs for a while, until it started going crazy on me and the floppy drive broke and the screen stopped working at the same time. That was a pain in the ass, and it's not a situation you want to be in if you're using a laptop to write.
posted by needs more cowbell at 1:40 AM on January 8, 2009


When in the boot cycle does this happen and can you just pop into BIOS? I'm not sure about Dell, but HP like to hamstring your OS is certain annoying ways back in the day.

If they're just wanting to grind out plain vanilla text, there are linux distros and text editors which will easily fit and run off a USB drive and CD, so you could just yank the hard drive altogether.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 1:50 AM on January 8, 2009


Yeah, I'm all for reuse-recycle (my sister just parted ways with the PPro 200 desktop that was my first PC) but let this one go and see what you can get for $50-100 on eBay or Craigslist. It's going to be the equivalent of a vintage car that you drive twice a year, then spend the rest of the time repairing.

If it's a bad HD, then the replacement capacity is probably heavily limited by the BIOS, so you'lll have to seek out old parts with little to no guarantee, and there's just a world of pain in keeping it running with just a floppy for backup. If it's not a bad HD, it will be sooner rather than later. It doesn't even give much room even for a tiny Linux distro, as this thread suggests.
posted by holgate at 2:11 AM on January 8, 2009


Does your writer friend have access to a library? His time would be better spent using the free terminals there, and saving all of his work online using a free service such a Google Docs.

He will likely be more productive (and his data much safer) using a reliable computer a few hours a week, than futzing around with that antique.

Hell, a manual typewriter would work better...
posted by wfrgms at 2:54 AM on January 8, 2009


So, you:

a) boot up - error, no hard disk
b) enter the BIOS, set to boot from hard disk
c) boot up - works correctly, and able to access the hard disk
d) reboot, doesn't work, go back to (a)

If that's correct, then it sounds to me like the BIOS battery has run out, so it's no longer remembering your hard disk settings. If you open the case up, then there may very well be a watch-style cell battery somewhere on the motherboard - if you replace this, then it may start working again. It may be easy or hard to do this - some laptops you can get to the motherboard just by opening some keyboard catches and lifting the keyboard out, some require lots of unscrewing of oddly sized screws.
posted by siskin at 4:30 AM on January 8, 2009


Siskin is probably right- cmos battery. I can't remember exactly where it is on those, it might be under the keyboard or under one of the access covers on the bottom. Probably looks like this.
posted by gjc at 6:05 AM on January 8, 2009


No HD detected isnt usually a cmos issue. It should detect it on boot. It may forget the settings but it should at least be able to do a bus scan and see that drive. Or am I misreading your question. It sounds like you are saying that the only valid boot option is boot from floppy and the HD is missing. Can you boot from CD? If you need to reinstall Win98 you will need that CD working.

Im guessing the drive is bad. A replacement drive for that new is more than what a better PC at goodwill will cost you.The cheapest 2.5" IDE drive at newegg is 50 dollars. For a little more than that you can get a P3 or even a P4 machine at goodwill, craigslist, clearance, etc. Heck, dumpster diving usually produces better machines. I guess you can try for a used drive somewhere, but in my experience, all used drives are trouble.

Even if you fix it, then what? It has no ethernet or USB, right? How will your friend use it or safely save and backup files? Dial-up modem? Floppies? No one should be using floppies anymore. They're the worst medium to save anything on.

Are there are any kind of diagnostic programs that I can run from the floppy that will tell me exactly what is going on?

Diagnostics that fit on floppies are kind of difficult to use by modern standards. There's a few at bootdisk.com. You can boot into DOS and see if the drive appears.

Franky, youre going to have to open this thing anyway, just pop the drive out and attach it to a desktop PC or another older laptop. Use something like ubcd or just the built in windows utilities (scandisk) or third-party like HDtune.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:08 AM on January 8, 2009


Also, if you were looking into replacing the hard drive you would have to deal with the issue of the BIOS most likely not being able to recognize hard drives above a certain size. Judging by the age of the machine, it probably won't be able to see anything larger than 2GB -- which might be difficult to find. If there's a computer repair shop local to you, you might be able to pick up a drive of that size for pretty cheap.

I vote for scrapping it. If this other person is just using it for word processing, he/she'd do just fine with something not much newer - say like a Pentium 3 600MHz machine -- which you could probably also find either online or at a local computer shop. These, too, go for relatively little cost.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 11:35 AM on January 8, 2009


No HD detected isnt usually a cmos issue. It should detect it on boot.

Older bios did not do this. You have to go into the BIOS setup and detect it, save the settings, and reboot.

and

Diagnostics that fit on floppies are kind of difficult to use by modern standards.

They have them at all the hard drive manufacturers' sites. Or Dell has their hard drive confidence test, which is about 300k. It's hard to find on their site anymore, however.
posted by gjc at 8:21 PM on January 8, 2009


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