At my friend's house I noticed an old laptop laying around. He said his old roommate had left it because it didn't work, showing me a small crack where the AC/DC power adapter plugs into the back. But really it's just a small crack in the plastic surrounding the plug... the plug still plugs in fairly snugly. Doesn't really seem like a crack that would appear from dropping the laptop (like if it was dropped, it wouldn't fall on just that part and not crack a corner or something).
So I plugged in the power adapter to it, but hitting the power button does absolutely nothing. Maybe the battery is completely dead (I didn't leave it plugged in to charge) so even plugged into a socket, it would need some battery charge to start? There doesn't appear to be any LEDs on the power adapter or the battery indicating if it is at least receiving power. I was thinking about getting the laptop and bringing it to a school lab so I could use a DMM to try and determine if the power adapter and/or battery worked.
It's a quite old Toshiba laptop: Celeron 1.2ghz, and I think 64mb ram, unsure of hard drive, but probably only 20-40GB max, DVD-ROM, not sure what else.
1) How much would a charger and battery cost for this? Providing I could even find such old items on Ebay, would they be reasonable? Or just forget it? I don't remember the model of the laptop of battery, but it looks like this one
which is cheap enough if I could determine the battery was the problem. Other similar batteries that might be it are going for under $20 shipped mostly, but some say "no warranty, battery may very well be DOA". WTF? Why woudl I want a DOA battery?
2) If it does still work, or could be fixed with say $30, would this machine even be useful to put money into? I assume I could get it for free from my friend, but I'd have to pay to get it working. I can't believe the damn thing has only 64mb of RAM. 1.2ghz is just fine... and even 10GB would be enough hard drive for me. But this RAM... means XP is totally out of the question (I would at least attempt to try a stripped-down XP if it had 128mb, because my work laptop had the same CPU but 256mb and was fine for basic usage). But even the new linux distros use at least as much as XP. I think even something like Xubuntu would not be possible with 64 mb RAM (I hope I mis-read something and it has at least 128mb, but doubtful). The computer was shipped with ME on it, so I'd imagine if it worked that 98se would be doable? Or maybe somethuing like damn-small linux? I would use it for basic tasks (has a nice Dlink .g wireless card in it, probably is worth as much as the machine!) and some programming.
Opinions?
So I plugged in the power adapter to it, but hitting the power button does absolutely nothing. Maybe the battery is completely dead (I didn't leave it plugged in to charge) so even plugged into a socket, it would need some battery charge to start? There doesn't appear to be any LEDs on the power adapter or the battery indicating if it is at least receiving power. I was thinking about getting the laptop and bringing it to a school lab so I could use a DMM to try and determine if the power adapter and/or battery worked.
It's a quite old Toshiba laptop: Celeron 1.2ghz, and I think 64mb ram, unsure of hard drive, but probably only 20-40GB max, DVD-ROM, not sure what else.
1) How much would a charger and battery cost for this? Providing I could even find such old items on Ebay, would they be reasonable? Or just forget it? I don't remember the model of the laptop of battery, but it looks like this one
which is cheap enough if I could determine the battery was the problem. Other similar batteries that might be it are going for under $20 shipped mostly, but some say "no warranty, battery may very well be DOA". WTF? Why woudl I want a DOA battery?
2) If it does still work, or could be fixed with say $30, would this machine even be useful to put money into? I assume I could get it for free from my friend, but I'd have to pay to get it working. I can't believe the damn thing has only 64mb of RAM. 1.2ghz is just fine... and even 10GB would be enough hard drive for me. But this RAM... means XP is totally out of the question (I would at least attempt to try a stripped-down XP if it had 128mb, because my work laptop had the same CPU but 256mb and was fine for basic usage). But even the new linux distros use at least as much as XP. I think even something like Xubuntu would not be possible with 64 mb RAM (I hope I mis-read something and it has at least 128mb, but doubtful). The computer was shipped with ME on it, so I'd imagine if it worked that 98se would be doable? Or maybe somethuing like damn-small linux? I would use it for basic tasks (has a nice Dlink .g wireless card in it, probably is worth as much as the machine!) and some programming.
Opinions?
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