On recycling old laptopsForum: User Feedback Topic: On recycling old laptops started by: THEBINARYMAN Posted by THEBINARYMAN on July 19 2004,14:56
You know, the one problem with old laptops is that once the hardrive is dead, it can be a pain in the ASCII to replace, not to mention a bit too costly for what it's worth.But I figured out a neat way to give them a second life. And yes, DSL is part of the solution. Consider the following... Now that it's common knowledge that DSL can be slapped on a flash card, we can easily slap it in an IDE slot via an adapter. But did you know that they made 44-pin adapters for laptops as well? So the potential is indeed there. As an example, I submit this URL. < http://adis.ca/store/products/cfdisk.2d-b-500x375.jpg > And doing it this way has ALOT of advantages. For one, your battery will last slightly longer, due to reduced power consumption. Especially on boot-up. Anybody who owns a laptop knows what I am talking about. On boot-up there is a huge power-drain to get the HDD going. And don't get me started on the CD-ROM... But with a flash-card, lol that is unecessary. And the price is relatively cheap compared to getting a HDD. The adapter itself is 20$ US. Add 50-70$ on the flashcard you want to use (I'd go with a 256mb for all intents and purposes) and you can probably get a 166 mhz laptop for 50$. End result? You'd get a poor man's embedded thin client for a guestimate of 150$-200$. Now if you compare to all the fuss of getting a HDD that's compatible with said laptop (Compaq can be notoriously proprietary). You can be coughing up more money and get nine times out of ten USED hardware, which will ultimately fail on you. Load DSL and you even got a thin client that gives you more than what you ever needed. Perfect for those who want a no no-sense portable unit. So far, I had a hard time recycling Laptops because of HDD failures and expensive replacements. Now, we got something that can do it. And the best part? Some of the older laptops had much sturdier casings... TBM Posted by clivesay on July 19 2004,15:13
TBM -This is very interesting. I have a couple real dinosaur laptops I might need to try this on. The flash card option has been interesting to me since I saw "John's toy". Thank you for sharing. Chris Posted by THEBINARYMAN on July 19 2004,15:41
No problem.And I just now realized that they are selling here some 2.5 compact flash cards and IDE adapters. **DOH** So if we RE-calculated the cost it's 19.95$ for the adapter + 55$ for getting DSL on a CF. (note: I didn't calculate tax and shipping and handling since it varies from state/province). 75$ for recycling an old laptop, that's not so bad. In fact it's quite good!! Solves the problem in one clean shot of "how am I going to load the OS on there if I don't have a CD-ROM/Floppy?" You don't need either.... TBM Posted by ke4nt1 on July 19 2004,15:53
Looks like TBM posted while I was typing this...Just to let folks know that the DSL Mini-ITX Store sells both the 44 pin CF adapters and the "DSL-on-a-CF" cards for very reasonable prices. The link is on the home page.. or try this.. < DSL Mini-ITX Store > 73 de Kent ke4nt Posted by THEBINARYMAN on July 19 2004,16:43
What can I say? Great minds think alike!! LOLAnd hey, if I was able to do this independantly, it only proves that it DOES WORK! So there you go folks. Now you have the means to have fun with this. It's a solution well forth thinking over. Perfect for the financially challenged road warrior... TBM Posted by roberts on July 19 2004,17:21
Hey that's me. I run two notebooks on CF and two old deskops. That is why I put together and keep enhancing Frugal. That's what I use to install to CF with all the custom options I want. And running DSL on CF via IDE is so much faster than USB. Hard drives are great for storing DATA. Posted by deleric on July 19 2004,22:21
i've bought myself an old laptop too 200mhz, 32mbram.DSL works great! and very fast!!!! Posted by SaidinUnleashed on July 21 2004,23:11
hmm i might have to try this on that old p1-100mhz with no cdrom.instead of having to swap out the hdd into another laptop every time i need to upgrade/install something. Posted by Martin on July 26 2004,21:23
Nice idea, but remember: CF cards have a finite number of read/write. I am don't remember how many it is, I suggest you Google it.
Posted by TyphoonMentat on July 27 2004,09:21
About 10,000, I believe. That's why you should *never* put a swap partition on a CF card, or it'll be dead within the hour.
Posted by roberts on July 27 2004,15:30
Same is true for USB devices, I have seen USB devices die fairly quickly. That is why we use frugal and run a read-only compressed image off these devices. Reading is not a problem. Then they act like a very fast cdrom. With frugal, you get many customizations, with myDSL, you also get an easy way for custom internet appliances without user intervention, including such things as predefined printers, desktop icons, default web pages, etc, etc.
Posted by AwPhuch on July 27 2004,19:22
Why do they burn out on writes??Arent they solid state devices? Brian AwPhuch Posted by TyphoonMentat on July 27 2004,19:26
Take a look at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory > - it's to do with the way data is written; I believe old data isn't completely overwritten or something to that effect.
Posted by laughing_gas on July 29 2004,21:54
Any non-profits out there refurbishing used laptops with Linux?
Posted by clivesay on July 30 2004,00:28
I will be very soon!!Chris Posted by THEBINARYMAN on July 30 2004,13:58
Hold it....If the USB/CFC data is written so that the data is not quite over-written, isn't it a way to circumvent that by using a shell script to cause an overwrite, Not quite unlike some HDD wiping software use a string of "0's" to overwrite data? Or is that asking too much out of the hardware? Just a thought... TBM |