The Old Laptop
For this part of the larger project, we will be working on an old laptop.
We dug it out of a pile of discarded computer parts, like everything else. It
doesn't work.The power light blinks when powered on. Then, nothing,. it just sits
there. We'll start by tearing it down and giving it a good cleaning. After
cleaning, we tested all the parts one by one. You can see a list of the hardware
specifications. We've included the command/s with each spec to get the info
from the command line (bash). Each links to more details about it, as well as more
examples/ similar commands.
Before
After
System Specs
Latitude E5510
Intel i5 CPU M 560 @ 2.67GHz lscpu
Intel AC 7260 lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 "network"
8GB (2x 4GB) Kingston DDR3 (1067 MT/s) sudo dmidecode --type 17
DVD-RAM Writer DVD+-RW GT32N sudo lshw -class disk
32 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit as a hard drive sudo lshw -class disk
32 GB PNY Micro SD Transfer Media sudo lshw -class disk
4 GB PNY USB 2.0 FD Installation/Transfer Media sudo lshw -class disklsusb
Dell Optical Mouse lsusb
Onn Power Brick upower -i $upower -e | grep -E 'line_power|AC'
(click the Commands/Code Samples for more information/tutorials on their use.)
The ram was missing when we started. The hard drive and network
card were both doa. The battery was shorted internally. It's the reason it
wouldn't post. So, we left it out(keeping it plugged in won't matter for
this setup. Next we added 8Gb of ram, the max for this old toy. We also
added a new wifi card. It's 3x faster and supports bluetooth as a bonus.
We'll use a 32GB thumb drive as a hard drive, a 32GB micro sd card for
storage, and a 4GB drive for our install media/recovery drive.
The 'Fix'
Using a thumb drive to function as a hard drive will inflict a
speed penalty for sure. It's only at boot and when opening or saving..
you know ...all disk access is slow. However, it isn't too bad and
this machine's intended purpose won't have it rebooting or opening
and/or saving files to/from disk. We plan to boot and stay on for
weeks.
Aside from running the software to share mouse and keyboard,
the intent is to run everything on this machine in a web browser.
This will give us a setup that will take an extra couple of seconds
to load. However, it should feel quick and responsive once it does.
All 'junk parts', but, we have a machine that powers on. ... It has
the potential to do it's job and not be noticed, thats all we can ask.
It's time for an operating system on this one. So, we'll sit it to the
side for minute. When we get The Old Desktop
to the same point, we'll install Fedora on both of them.
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