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keeping a Toughbook going
I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G HD. I love it.
The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best I've ever experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer, i.e. calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty of power. The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came with. XP won't fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs reinstalling. I have an old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't have the original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting to reinstall 98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is problematic and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed properly. Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a geek to want to start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible with a browser i.e. Firefox. |
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:57:39 -0500, "Dave Gower"
wrote: I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G HD. I presume the "700mz" doesn't mean 700MHz due to the age. I love it. The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best I've ever experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer, i.e. calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty of power. The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came with. Time to put a bigger HDD in it? That's not a bad idea for reliability reasons even if you mange to get 2GB of space to suffice. Even so, Win98/98se IS the best OS for a system that old... XP would be horribly slow. Win98Lite would be a very nice match XP won't fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs reinstalling. I have an old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't have the original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting to reinstall 98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is problematic and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed properly. Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a geek to want to start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible with a browser i.e. Firefox. If you're having trouble with drivers for Win98, it might be even more difficult if not impossible to source drivers for XP or ??? I wouldn't try updating the OS. Win98 is where you want to be on that laptop. If it's problematic, focus on why. If a clean install clears up problems, good. If it doesn't, likely you have a problem that *any* OS won't solve, like buggy application or hardware is getting older, flaky. These are vague generalities since you don't mention specific problems. IMO, you ought to pull the drive out and copy off all files onto a desktop system. Notebook IDE adapters are cheap and easy to find if you don't have one. Once you have all the files copied off, you then know you have the drivers... just a matter of weeding through the files to isolate them, if they weren't already together in a folder. To give you an example of one why to try salvaging drivers, I'm currently looking at another monitor here with a win98 box hooked up. In Device Manager, you can choose a piece of hardware, for example sound, right-click on it. In the Properties, Driver Details button, you'll see a list of files. Some of them may be files from the OS, but you could simply copy all those to a folder. Maybe that's all the files you need, or maybe not. When it comes time to reinstall the driver, and you browse to that driver folder, if any files are missing it'll prompt for them. Although they might not be in that folder YET, you have made a backup of the notebook HDD to the desktop, so you can simply copy any remaining files over and have the complete driver. Repeat the process for any other devices not natively supported by the OS. Not knowing the specifics of the Panasonic Toughbook, I can't enumerate those devices, but the typical things like video, audio, lan, modem, while chipset drivers shouldn't be too hard (nor large) to download online. |
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"Dave Gower" wrote:
I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G HD. I love it. The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best I've ever experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer, i.e. calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty of power. The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came with. XP won't fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs reinstalling. I have an old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't have the original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting to reinstall 98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is problematic and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed properly. Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a geek to want to start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible with a browser i.e. Firefox. The toughbook was a fine series of laptops, born out of the old Grid Computers that went into space. Detailed specs for your model would be helpful, but based on the age of the machine I would suggest sticking with Win98. Older laptops were often designed to work with one operating system and were unsupported if the user changed up. "http://tcc.toughbook.com/" exist with numerous downloads for toughbook, and an email link if your model is not listed. I would suggest a new HDD as a drive that long in the tooth, will not have smartdrive to tell you its going to fail. In looking at hard drives keep in mind you will probably need to update the BIOS and may be restricted on size. Good Luck. -- Posted using the http://www.hardwareforumz.com interface, at author's request Articles individually checked for conformance to usenet standards Topic URL: http://www.hardwareforumz.com/Genera...pict45970.html Visit Topic URL to contact author (reg. req'd). Report abuse: http://www.hardwareforumz.com/eform.php?p=222212 |
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