[rescue] Need somethings for an old Dell Laptop

[Robert Novak]

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 10:45 AM, William Barnett-Lewis
<wlewisiii at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bit of a longshot, but I got gifted with an old Dell Latitude C640
> laptop. It's not too old and slow so I'm setting it up with FreeBSD &
> olvwm. It's funny running Opera with the open look widgts.
>
> However the main battery & the backup battery are both are dead & it
> has only 256 mb ram out it's max of 1gb.

I'm a big fan of this form factor, although I love the C840/I8200 even
more (1600x1200 LCD 10 years or so ago). But they use the same modular
bay items including batteries.

By the way, I have not tried this with a C640, but the C840 (same
845MP chipset and similar processors) works with 2GB of RAM. It's not
supported or documented by Dell, but I have at least one C840 running
with two DDR2700 1GB sodimms here. It takes longer to boot of course,
but it can give a bit more life and headroom to your machine if it
works.

(I wrote about my memory adventures at
http://rsts11.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/rsts11-laptop-memory-above-and-beyond/
if you'd like to take a look.)

> Anyone have any batteries for this? I can probably buy a new one but
> since my budget is such that I'm bringing this up instead of buying a
> newer one, well, if I can find one so much the better ;)

I've found the batteries cheaply (aftermarket/non-Dell) on Amazon or
eBay for around $20-25 shipped, i.e.
http://www.amazon.com/Laptop-Notebook-Battery-4k085-Latitude/dp/B001QWVQPE/
, and occasionally a local guy in SFBA sells them.

I believe the 4460/4480 mAh that I linked to is originally designed
for the C8xx series, but I have used them in C6xx before. There are
smaller batteries out there that were the original design for C6xx.

Also note that you can get PATA drive trays for your C640. Last time I
bought them I got a few for $5 each, good way to expand or back up
your machine. :)

> The ram is PC2100 DDR266 512MB SODIMM. The machine can take two of them.

I may have some 512s, can dig for them. I've found the 1GB PC2700 or
PC3200 sodimms locally for $35 .

Just found this from a vendor I've bought from before. 2gb that should
work in your machine for under $50:
http://www.amazon.com/KOMPUTERBAY-SODIMM-333Mhz-DDR333-PC2700/dp/B003CHANJG/

There's an option on that page for $15 512MB if you want to be conservative.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to amazon or komputerbay other than
as a customer. My blog post above does have Amazon affiliate links but
you can search around them if you like. :)

Rob