[ltp] Re: 560 recommendations? [Actually, a 240 now!]

[Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV]

On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 01:13 +0100, Richard Neill wrote:

> Thanks for your suggestions, everyone. In the end, I bought a 240 for 
> £80. hopefully, this will work :-).
> Spec: 10.4" LCD, 6GB, PII,300, 192MB RAM, 1.5kg

I think that's probably a Celeron at 300 MHz.  If it is, you can upgrade
the RAM to 320M - highly recommended.  192MB is *tolerable*, but 320MB
will make that 240 seem like a new machine.  The only drawback I've
noticed on my 366 MHz 240 is that you *must* use software suspend if you
put in 320MB ... the BIOS suspend won't work with more than 192MB
installed.

For more fun, add a 5400 RPM hard drive (I have a 40GB 5400 RPM Hitachi
Travelstar in mine), and the machine will be surprisingly quick.  The
speed of the original drive in the 240 is pretty dismal, and 40GB drives
are rather cheap these days.

Everything in the 240 has decent Linux drivers, and it should be pretty
easy to configure once you get Linux installed.

> I did also consider the 570, and an X20, but could find neither on ebay 
> for sane prices. However, I do appear to be winning the bidding for a 
> 560 at £9.99 :-)

The 570 would have gotten you one more PCMCIA slot and more
screen/speed, but it's larger.  It's also a bit frail for a Thinkpad.

> The challenges:

> 1)Install Linux without *any* bootable device (no floppy; no CDROM; no 
> internal ethernet; can't etherboot via PCMCIA; I rather doubt that the 
> USB port will allow booting on a year 2000 era machine.)

Never tried it.  My solution was to put the hard drive into a laptop
with a CD-ROM drive, then install from there (installed FC3) and swap
the drive back into the 240.  You can also pick up an external floppy
drive for a 240 cheap (most of the older Thinkpads use the same drive -
can be used on 770s, 240s, 570s, etc.).  Then you could start an
installation from floppy disk, and use an external USB CD to do the
actual install (how I insrtalled FC1 on my 240).

> 2)Getting it online with WiFi etc.
>   i)Does anyone know whether the 240 PCMCIA slot is the old-fashioned 
> 16bit cardbus or the newer variety?

It's compatible with cardbus cards, if that's what you're asking.  I use
my 240 with a Netgear WG-511 for my home wireless network.

>   ii)Is it even possible to buy a single PCMCIA card with both WiFi and 
> 10/100 ethernet?

The 240 has a USB (1.0) port.  How about a USB1.0/Ethernet adapter?
They're very small (like the 240 :) ) and most are supported in Linux.
That should get you connectivity *and* let you read flash cards / use
another PCMCIA device at the same time.

-- 
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*  Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV <charletiv@gmail.com>
*  ( Formerly tomalek@mindspring.com )
*  Chemistry instructor / Mad scientist / Linux enthusiast
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*  Web: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/ (moving soon!)
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