Dell C600 chassis "experiment"

I have this old Dell Latitude laptop (PIII 800 MHz, 512 MB RAM), and I was thinking about popping in a PATA SSD drive.

Anyone think this laptop is worth the eighty bucks?

Do you think it would perform well running XP, coupled with AVG?

:confused

 

If you don't mind staying with SP2 (or paying $$ for RAM to run SP3 efficiently), and the PATA SSD is cheap or free, I think you'll have a very nice laptop to lug around

If it's one of the models I'm thinking of, it's from a pretty good line of Dells, tons of parts should still be available, including 2-3 diff. graphics cards, docking stations that allow 2xPCI cards (FX5200-ish gfx, firewire/USB2) + 2nd hdd or CD/DVD plus Baywolf's site is still online (last time I checked) for lots of tips.

 

It just seems like a "fun" thing to do, seeing as how Dell swore up and down that this little laptop could NEVER run XP, and it runs SP2 just fine.

It might be fun to send them a pic, and the system specs.

Only thing I would wonder is if the current hardware would "choke" the SSD a bit, but I kind of doubt it.

This would definitely be a solid, cheap method to "wake up" older laptops that were being choked by a regular platter HDD for under $100. Especially when a "new" laptop can be about four times the price of an SSD drive. If it works with this one, it would definitely work better on P4s, or AMD mobile CPUs with more RAM.

 

The biggest problem I can see using an SSD with XP is the swapfile - SSD's will live much longer with fewer writes. But the Dell Dock II with a hard drive for the swapfile works nicely around that for base use, last one I bought, about 4 years ago, was around $30 I think (that was with a 90W PSU). As it has the potential to add a 256MB PCI gfx card + USB 2 and a hard drive, it's worth considering.

 

What else you can do is add a USB flash drive, and set it up to cache.

That way you wouldn't need to page to the SSD.

 

But you'd really need USB 2 for that - Dell Dock II - or it would be pretty slow, negating the use of the faster SSD.

 

Actually, I've had it work rather well with an old IBM Thinkpad with less hardware capability, on USB 1.0 many moons ago.

However, it didn't have an SSD drive.

The Dell Dock would certainly negate portability.

Maybe I won't throw my hat into the ring on this one...

 

PCMCIA USB 2 adapter ... ?

 

Actually, yeah, there are two slots in this baby, and originally it was designed to house the Wi-Fi card.

I knew if I put this out there, someone would think of something I didn't!



F****N' BRILLIANT!!!!!!

Have you ever had one of those "I'm an a$$." moments?

VERY inexpensive solution.

 

There might be 2 slots but most cards are too 'lumpy' externally to allow simultaneous use of both.

Check that the PCMCIA/Cardbus USB card has a 5V connector, you may need to use it - I have a cable that allows you to use a free USB port to add a 5v supply to mine (it was given to me, never noticed them for sale anywhere).

You may be able to add Wireless mini-PCI if your C600 has that slot. I used a Dell card from a later model in my Inspiron 4100 (same as the C610), had to hack the drivers to force it to work, Dell's over-restrictive BIOS saw it as an 'unknown device' but it worked fine.

 

So, it's looking like about $120 USD in parts between the drive, the card, and the USB 2.0 WiFi adapter.

Something to ponder, indeed...

 

Go internal with wireless, if you can, USB slots are at a premium on this range.

Tons of spares readily available, often for free; Inspiron 4000 - 4150, 8000 - 8200, Latitude C600, C610, even the M40, M50's are all based on the same chassis or contain many interchangeable parts. Many others of that era also use the same drive sleds, batteries, PSU's, LCD's etc.

 

Will look into it.

I actually have my eye on this laptop, but money is also at a premium these days...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6577340&sku=M975-170063