Dell Latitude D610 Uses

[bzand]

I currently have a Dell Latitude D610. It is the one with the GHz processor. It is maxed out at 2gb ram. It has an 80gb hard drive(From what i see 80 may be the max).I would like to know what the real limit is? The original charger broke years ago and it now operates off an acer adapter. The battery is original but It hasn't worked forever. Im not sure if its shot or that the 3rd party charger wont charge it(Dell is notorious for that I hear). The Bios doesn't recognize it either. Id like to know if that is the adapters fault or not. The Bios is updated to A09. If i flash an intel bios would it bring any major advantages like bigger hard drive limit or support more ram? Finally, Whats a good OS for the Pc? It currently has Windows XP professional Sp3. I have tried Vista on it and it ran fine but I never bought a license because of Vistas problems. I do have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on a 20gb hard drive made for a inspiron 2600(The computers shot) that I use in the D610. That works great but I would like to have windows on the main disk.

 

[Saberus]

An old D series?

The battery is probably shot or pretty close to it, 3rd party charger or not.

80GB might have been the largest available when it was released, but anything under a terabyte might work, if you can find it in the correct connector (I think this thing's old enough to be PATA)

Flashing the BIOS with a non-Dell version could brick the thing, and the 2GB limit on the memory is probably a limitation on the chipset that can't be addressed with firmware.

For an OS, you should stick with XP SP3, since you want to have Windows. Anything else is going to be a bit too much for it to run well. A lightweight Linux distro might be a good alternate if you want something that's still being supported, if you want to branch out.

Personally, the only use I would have for a laptop this old is as a doorstop.

 

[bzand]

personally, the only use I would have for a laptop this old is as a doorstop.

that's the 2600's job! Yes the battery is probaly crapped out. I didn't think the bios would help ram. Seriously that big a harddrive? I though there were limits on what the bios could support. Yes it is pata. The last D series model with it. So if I get a pata to sata adapter and a sata drive it should work?(only problem is it needs to fit in slot) I do thinkbthe cdrom connects via a sata port because you can add a second hardtive instead of cdrom but I'm not sure. I am familiar with linux so that wouldn't be a problem andy recomended distros?

 

[Saberus]

Fitting in the slot is a trick, but SATA to PATA converters don't usually come in the 44-pin config that laptops use, and in general tend to have a shaky level of reliability. If there is any size limitation on the PATA controller, it would be 137GB, but that was obsolete before this laptop was made. Finding a PATA laptop drive above 160GB is going to be a real chore (and the only 160's I find are refurbs.)

As far as Linux distro, Ubuntu has a good deal of support so it's good to hang onto, and if you want to toy around with a server level OS, CentOS is good (It's essentially RHEL with the branding stripped out).

 

[bzand]

Yea i figured its hopless i can live with the 80gb hardrive and just use a flashdrive. Thankfully it has four usb ports. They do make sata adapters for this model i found out but theu take away the cdrom which i need. I am an operating system geek and have tried out all diffrent ones so they arent strange to me. Ubuntu is okay in my opinion but I perfer a more windows like interface my fav distros are Chatlet Os(ubuntu based) zorin, linux mint, and puppy. Im not a huge fan of the gnome desktop. I really just cant decide on what distro. I dont really need a server just a nice gui