upgrading old laptops compaq armada 1130t, 430c

[imiten]

Hello,

I have old laptops. two of them are compaq armada 1130t and one is 430c. I was wanting to get them up and running atleast as to be part of home lan. They dont have hdd, cd drive, network adapter.

hdd: I dont know how to go about looking for right hdd as compaq seems to have no docs manual on it any more atleast on its website. If one knows what exact to ask or look for when buying hdd please advise. I mean I have no clue of different types of connectors they use. I tried compaq armada e500 hdd and its connector would not work for 1130t.

If one knows link to manual it would be helpful.

Also need old cd drive external I guess. which one can I use? any company drive would it work?

similarly I have tree degital laptops model# TS31C and shall look into getting them functional with hdd, cd, network adapter later.

Thanks.

Miten.

[imiten]

Hello,

1130t laptop had:
toshiba B36017111FKN3BA (2127MB)
Fujitsu M#M2714tam (1.08GB)

I guess I should find compatible hdd and not those old one. Newer and more capacity ones should be better and may be easily available and also cheaper.

Thanks.

Miten.

[Inka]

Hi,

Most laptops, it seems, have either fujitsu or IBM (Hitachi) hdd in them. They are interchangeable in my experience. You should be safe with pretty much any hdd. The only proviso would be the BIOS. It may have a max size that it can handle.

As for the CD rom. Do you have a USB port? If so you could get an external unit. It wouldnt be any good for installing the operating system tho. You will need to make floppies to accomplish that :rolleyes: However, if you are going to network it into your home lan - would it be sufficient to have a shared cd device on another pc?

Inka.

[imiten]

I found user guide and quick ref manuals off compaq site. I see that computer can be upgraded with ram to 48MB EDO atmost. Also HDD seems to be saying that its either 810MB or 1.08GB. are they serious that it cannot be more? any reason why? bios? cannot upgrade bios?

Also serial external CD drive could be attached. so I guess I can install s/w from it? but hey some one said cannot install os from it and need to use boot disks. ok will have to take that route then.

Also it can support two type 2 pcmcia so probably can get lan/modem type 2 card.

looks like now some vendor needs to be able to get this off ebay.

Thanks.

[Inka]

Grats on finding the manuals.

Serial external CD? Well I stand corrected - have never heard of such a gadget. Dont think I would want one either as it would be very very slow?