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Toshiba 4010CDT on steroids :)

Dr_V

Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
Messages
10
Location
Bucharest, Romania
I've recently acquired this old laptop that was already upgraded from its orriginal configuration and I'm upgrading it further. Just for fun, I fell in love with this little machine :)

Considering the its age, this laptop's performances are absolutely amazing! It runs Win2000 with resonable speed and Office applications very smoothly. I can even see a movie if it's not HD... :D

The current (upgraded) configuration is: 266Mhz Klammath (the CPU is built-in, can't be changed), 160Mb RAM, 40Gb HDD, 24x CD-Rom, FDD, video 2Mb (onboard, no chance to upgrade it), 100/1000Mbps PCMCA wireless LAN card, 4 ports external USB hub (because the laptop has only one USB port). The battery is brand new (factory refurbished), holds for almost 2 hours in full use (up to 3 hours in idle)!

The next move is a combo-drive or DVD-RW (I'm searching for a compatible model, it's not really hard to find).

I'm also searching for a compatible 3.5" card reader & USB combo to install in the FDD bay and an external touchpad or inverted mouse (the normal mouse needs a flat surface to work, it's unconfortable sometimes).

My only problem is the RAM. I can't go over 160Mb (32 internal +2x64) even with the latest BIOS update I could find :( I'd like to install WinXP and below 256Mb will run too slow. Does anyone have some ideas how can I trick the BIOS to see 2x128Mb on the SODIMM bays?
 
I did nearly the same thing on a 460CDT with Win2K. I had the ram issue as well, and never could get past it. Toshiba never updated the bios for the thing like that, so I dumped windows altogether and went with Linux. It's packed up so I can't get to it right this moment to tell the exact specs.

Mine did NOT run nicely at all, I think I had 96mb of ram or something. I couldn't even think about playing a movie, either.

Never did mess with XP on that one. Fun project though, I still use it from time to time.
 
I have a 460CDT like Nathan. Those are 133MHz and mine only has 64MB ram. I don't run MicroSoft (except DOS) so I have very little personal experience, but I believe that some people have run XP on as little as 16 MB (IIRC) . I guess they had to do some serious tweaking. It also sounds like you are looking for real functionality and not just playing around. My machine was made for Win95 and I'm guessing your's was made for '98 so those would, of course, work well.

Mine runs DSL (Damd Small Linux) really nicely and has been a good network testing and browsing machine, but I haven't used it in a while. In fact, (in your honour) I just fired it up to see and .... (ahem) ... I forgot the password. :p Oh well, that just means it will be running something else soon. lol

If you are interested in running Linux, there are many good choices but if you want it to look a bit like XP then may I suggest Vector Linux. I have a machine with an AMD333 and 128MB of ram which runs VL5.1 Standard really nicely. Quite impressive for a modern looking OS really. Your machine could possibly do better because it has a bit more ram and that is much more important than CPU speed when you're running Linux

Good luck with your project. :)
 
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