IT and consumer electronics junk. Not my cup of tea but well it might be for the next few days.
Just been given this old mini-laptop (10" screen), dated from year 2009 it looks like. Quite a jump from the Tek 180A, 50+ years...
A Lenovo " IdeaPad S10-2 ". Whatever. Looked the specs on-line, not stellar, though mine appears to have a faster processor than what the interweb suggests.
1.6GHz Intel Atom, not 1GHz. Has Wifi, Ethernet, VGA and a few USB.
1GB of RAM.
Has a pirated copy of Window 7 at the moment, which I can only use a "Guest" because I don't have the PW of course. I hear it can be easily unlocked though.
No intention of bothering with that though. It's un-usably slow, Win7 probably was not its factory OS, must have been XP or something I guess...
Didn't come with its power brick, but hold on to your hat, I searched my box of plug packs and found one that works. I am stunned. This is the first time this box of junk is actually useful. I knew it was carrying all that junk with me when I moved...
Anyway, the idea is to wipe Windoze and install Linux via the Ethernet port, hopefully, then keep it in the lab as an early form of lab computing. I am to the point where I can afford to computerize the lab the way I would like to. So this free mini laptop would introduce some IT capability.. perhaps. If I can get Linux onto it, I could maybe do some things with it.
I could add an external UART-USB adpater cable so I could do serial stuff with my old TE, oir my own design projects. Could use my old "Dragon" Atmel AVR prgrammer, it's USB too.
Could attach a GPIB-USB adapter. Could be useful. If I can't get it to do that, it's gonna be spares. Practice soldering on 32 layer boards, I don't know... there is always something to do with junk. It's never 100% useless...
Problem is that the LCD screen ius fucked !
![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)
Huge white vertical band on the left edge, plus a few colourful vertical lines here and there.
I twisted the screen assembly (easy, it's VERY flimsy !
![ThumbsDown :--](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_thumbsdown.gif)
), pressed on it all over the place... but the defects/ pattern do no change one iota. So if it's a bad connection I certainly can't act on it
![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)
So I though maybe the video/data cable is fucked. SO I popped the bezel around the LCD so I can get to the cable. Fiddled with it... still no change on the screen.
So I popped the keyboard so I cna access the motherboard, where the screen cable plugs into. I wiggled the cables there, the connector... no joy.
so no matter what I torture, the screen doesn"t give a fuck and still displays &00% the same pattern/defect... so not sure anymore it's a bad connection ?
I mean, one I could physically access that is...
Could it be internal to the LCD itself ? I am fucked I think...
Luckily it has a VGA port, so I attached an external monitor to it.... a defective one I was given and that I fixed recently. I knew it could be useful.... today it is !
![Cool 8)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/cool.gif)
I entered the BIOS and despite the lack of "visibility", I half-blindingly navigated the menus in there, and found the menu item to switch the external VGA monitor, on.
Phew, I can now look at the BIOS properly. I see in the boot menu that it can boot from USB FDD or a USB CD-ROM or USB-HDD os not sure what they mean by the latter... a USB memory stick ??
Says it can boot from the Network too, but says "Legacy PCI device", so not sure what it means by that exactly.
Anyway, I remember 15+ years go when I started using Ubuntu, there was an option ot install it from the Network. IIRC you first had to download something on USB stick, boot from that, then it would go to the network. Well, IIRC... it was 15+ years ago
![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)
Or maybe I can just do the entire install from a USB stick, or just buy an external USB CD-ROM drive and stick the a normal DVD in there., ot maybe the BIOS meant STRICTLY CD-ROM, not a DVD, I don't know...
Anyway you get the idea, wipe Windoze and try to install Linux on it one way ro another. Just for fun, and it fdoes work, well I could make use of the machine in the lab, which would be cool.
Now for what method to use to get Linux on the thing, will be dictated by my wallet. Budget is 10 euros max. If I can find an old used USB CD drive for that much, cool. If not.. too bad.
![](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1454575;image)