Iridium D400P laptop (and generally old and obscure computers)

[shinygoldcar]

I have 3 old unwanted laptops that I have collected from people to upgrade as much as possible and use for a computer class. That's the background.

One such laptop is an Iridium D400P. I want to find out the maximum RAM it supports (I can see from opening it up that it has 256MB DDR). My usual method is to google it, and often I get a hit with either cnet or crucial.com or something similar saying how much memory it can take. But for Iridium D400P nothing of that sort shows up, a few spare part sales, but that's it.

DDR and DDR2 memory is now very cheap. Should I just buy a few 1GB/512MB/256MB cards and just try plugging them in and seeing whether the laptop acknowledges them, and the highest RAM amount I can get it to show is max RAM? Or would I be in danger of frying something? Or would the OS do something weird like say the RAM is there, but just not be able to use it?

The other question is what to do generally when an old and/or obscure computer has no hits? Is there a good source of info somewhere hard to find? After this memory episode, if I wipe and reinstall Windows XP, then I'm going to need drivers, which could potentially be a whole new world of pain.

[Slarti]

http://tim.id.au/laptops/noname/clevo%2 ... 0d410s.pdf

That appears to be a link to a manual for it.

Would that help?


Slarti

[shinygoldcar]

That's incredible! Thanks very much! That's one very comprehensive manual!

Did Iridium used to be Clevo or vice versa? And I guess that D400S is similar enough to D400P? Certainly the layouts and covers and where the memory is exactly the same, except there appears to be a fan attached to the cover in the manual that is absent from the one I have here.

[GeoffF100]

Maximum appears to be 512MB of RAM. That is not enough even to run Linux nowadays if you want to use a web browser. I wish they still had manuals like that!

[Slarti]

That's incredible! Thanks very much! That's one very comprehensive manual!

Did Iridium used to be Clevo or vice versa? And I guess that D400S is similar enough to D400P? Certainly the layouts and covers and where the memory is exactly the same, except there appears to be a fan attached to the cover in the manual that is absent from the one I have here.

No direct knowledge, just did a search with DuckDuckGo and that was the top result


Slarti

[mc2fool]

Maximum appears to be 512MB of RAM. That is not enough even to run Linux nowadays if you want to use a web browser. I wish they still had manuals like that!

Maximum is 1024MB according to the manual Slarti linked to, above. Or do you have another source?

[GeoffF100]

Maximum is 1024MB according to the manual Slarti linked to, above. Or do you have another source?

Sorry, I had not noticed that it has two memory slots. 1GB is enough to run Lubuntu and Firefox. The processor is a Pentium 4, which is the minimum for running Lubuntu. Performance will not be great though.

[shinygoldcar]

No direct knowledge, just did a search with DuckDuckGo and that was the top result

Just tried DuckDuckGo myself. I have to say that's very clever!
So, neither "Iridium" nor "D400P" appear in that link anywhere, yet it is still the best hit I've seen.

So what have I learned today? That DuckDuckGo is not just great for privacy, it can sometimes give better results than Google too!

[shinygoldcar]

The person teaching the class has asked for Windows. Otherwise the first thing I would have done is install Lubuntu.

Windows XP is giving me a world of pain. I haven't done anything with the Iridium yet, but the other XP laptop has successfully installed XP and some drivers, but other drivers are not working, wifi won't work without a service pack 1 hotfix (which is no longer available), and it won't activate. Lubuntu is so much better: no drivers needed for anything in my experience. But unfortunately Linux is not an option in this case.

[Slarti]

No direct knowledge, just did a search with DuckDuckGo and that was the top result

Just tried DuckDuckGo myself. I have to say that's very clever!
So, neither "Iridium" nor "D400P" appear in that link anywhere, yet it is still the best hit I've seen.

So what have I learned today? That DuckDuckGo is not just great for privacy, it can sometimes give better results than Google too!

Usually better than Google because there are no paid for promotions at the top of the list


Slarti

[Infrasonic]

I use DDG in FF Focus on Android (very good ad blocker/anonymous browser option that's replaced Ghostery for me after its last crippling update...) and in FF on Linux Mint.
DDG's got a lot better with its search over the years, I remember the first few times I tried it it was awful!