[PLUG] Laptop issues

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:06:40 -0800
Denis Heidtmann <denis.heidtmann at gmail.com> dijo:

>Update:
>
>A lot water has gone under the proverbial bridge. With Russell's
>assistance, we got a CD drive functioning, installed Win 98, but it
>crashed twice identically, leading us to believe that the newer
>machine and the older OS did not want to live together.  After the
>divorce, I tried installing 98 on a Gateway 4026GZ.  It installed, but
>would only operate in safe mode.  It did not know how to operate the
>display in anything other than the default. No matter; the USB did not
>work either.  I downloaded a generic USB driver and installed it.  The
>device manager said all is well with the USB. However, no life can be
>detected at the USB connections.  I am calling this marriage not even
>begun, unless there is a counselor who can save it.
>
>So, the need remains:  1) Get the scanner to operate from some
>operating system (it used to operate on win 98/me.) to prove it can
>still be done. 2) If successful, acquire an old laptop which can do
>1).  Russell has an old desktop which may be able to establish the
>proof of concept.  And I suppose I could use a desktop, although I'd
>rather avoid the power and space use that entails.

Do I understand correctly that the scanner requires USB? 

I spent a few minutes digging this evening and I found my ancient
laptop. Amazingly, it boots Windows 95, just as I left it many years
ago. It still has CorelDRAW 6.0, WordPerfect 5.0, Netscape Gold,
PageMaker 6.0 and some version of MS Office on it. It also has a Xircom
Credit Card Ethernet+Modem 28.8 and an Adaptec APA-1425/50/60 SCSI
card. (At the time I used this laptop I had an HP scanner that required
SCSI.) 

The hinges are cracked, but the screen is fine. It has a CD drive as
well as the floppy, and both are working. I was stunned to discover
that it has a whopping 8 MB of RAM. That's "megabytes." And the hard
drive is 1.2 GB. I even found a PDF of the spec sheet (Texas
Instruments Extensa 570CDT, also sold as Acer 570CDT) and apparently
you can upgrade the RAM to 40 MB. Might even get DSL on this thing. I
can't believe I used PageMaker in 8 MB of RAM. The copyright on the
spec sheet is 1996, to give an idea of the age.

However, much as my memory insisted that it had a USB port, it does
not. One could stick in a PCMCIA adapter, if such an adapter were
available cheaply. It does have a port for an external mouse/keyboard,
though, as well as serial, parallel, and even a VGA out port.

The box it was in also has all the Windows 95 install floppies.

If you can use any or all of the above, let me know. I can easily bring
it to the Clinic Sunday.