Ive an Amada 1750(? Id have to go look in the truck) as my normal work laptop..been clunking along fine for years. 250mhz..with 32 megs on board and a 8gig hard drive does everything I need it to do..make new system disks for dos based machines..program plcs via serial port..etc etc.
I thought having a Linux laptop might be fun.
Ive always been afraid to tear into a laptop..like taking apart a watch.
The Amada simply pops the keyboard to get to Stuff..and the drive is acessable through a trap door in the bottom. This Presario..thats nealy a sealed unit.
Gunner
Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"
Be warned that the laptops tend to have strange hardware, and many of the free unix variants have trouble writing drivers for it (because they have *great* trouble getting enough documentation to make the driver writing a reasonable task.
One work-around (which OpenBSD refuses to play with) are the so-called "Blobs". Blocks of code from the vendor which the writers of the OS have to write a wrapper around to make it behave like unix wants.
The big problem with this for OpenBSD is that this means that you can't scan the source for security holes -- and a recent hole was found in a Nvidia driver for linux and some of the other BSD flavors.
The other problem for OpenBSD is the NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) which the manufacturers wish to put on any information -- and even on the blobs themselves -- making it so you can't ship source code for the driver -- which is contrary to the linux way of doing things, but several variants have done that anyway. Try looking for complete source for an Nvidia driver (as well as for several of the wireless cards).
You just need smaller tools -- and a bit of care.
Bear in mind that it is a free computer anyway. :-)
Small screwdrivers, including a set of the tiny Torx ones, will probably do it. Oh yes -- and keep the cats elsewhere while you have it apart. Those tiny parts are so easily batable into a black hole somewhere.
And -- of course -- get an anti-static wrist strap when the humidity is low.
And that's my point. A lot of people trash HP/Compaq because of the presarios and pavilions but don't realize they make decent machines too so you can't just trash the whole brand based on the one model.
Again, business vs home lines, the business grade laptops get more standard hardware so Linux runs just fine. I currently have a Dell Latitude that I've been running Linux for years now.
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