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marsbt
n00b
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 53
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 Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2004 5:27 am Post subject: Advice on buying PCMCIA card for laptop |
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Hi,
I recently installed Gentoo Linux on my friend's laptop (Compaq Armada 500). It has been performing quite well.
The situation is: the laptop has a floppy disk drive which doesn't work. Its reading head is out of aligment. And the cd drive is a CD-ROM only. The usb port is damaged.
So the options to transfer data to/from the laptop are:
buy new floppy disk drive get PCMCIA card to be attached to a USB hub
The first two options are expensive if Compaq still sells items. I found that the floppy disk drive is available on ebay, but that would restrict me to a 1.44MB capacity. Couldn't find much info about CD-R/RW.
The best solution that I can think of: USB key. That can be established by either reparing the USB port. Which implies that I will have to find the port from a shop and then remove damaged one, and solder the new one. This seems to be a delicate job. I'm willing to do this but the problem is that its hard to find that port.
The easiest solution a computer shop salesman gave me was a PCMCIA card with usb hub.
I don't have any experience in setting up PCMCIA cards for laptops. Could someone comment on the above choices, and also about PCMCIA card+USB hub choice? It would definitely help me make an informed decision.
Thanks all. |
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Archangel1
Veteran
Joined: 21 Apr 2004
Posts: 1212
Location: Work
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| Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2004 6:10 am Post subject: |
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| What's the situation for networking? No NIC to be found? |
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marsbt
n00b
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 53
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| Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2004 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| Archangel1 wrote: | | What's the situation for networking? No NIC to be found? |
Networking works fine. I installed Gentoo by connecting it in my network. Took around 3 days of downloading and compiling. Slow processor(500MHz) and less RAM(128MB).
But my friend doesnot have a highspeed connection and hasn't tried the modem. Actually he just wants to use it for practicing using OpenOffice, listening to mp3 songs, or movies, etc. The question of USB drive popped up when we were discussing possibilities of transfering data from the machine, e.g. reports, articles that he writes. |
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