An armada of Armadas (and an Acer)

[IPNixon]

I got these laptops from a nice fellow off Freecycle.

http://i33.tinypic.com/m96pdv.jpg

Compaq Armada 1750, PII 400 MHz, 128MB, 10GB, XP

http://i35.tinypic.com/2h38lxz.jpg

Compaq Armada e500, PIII 450 MHz, 128MB, 10GB (no power supply, possibly broken power button)

http://i37.tinypic.com/28l59nm.jpg

Compaq Armada 1598DMT, PI 266 MHz, 64MB, 4GB, NT 4.0

http://i33.tinypic.com/1fv5ur.jpg

Acer Extensia 503t (screen detached, unknown specs)

http://i37.tinypic.com/29xzwj5.jpg

So far, they're all working perfectly. The 1598DMT will stay an NT machine, I'm not sure what's going on the 1750 yet, and I want to get an AC adapter for the e500. I currently don't have any plans for the Acer.

Woo!

 

[iamdigitalman]

Very nice. I had a tricked out Armada 4220T back in the day with both docks, 4 batteries (this beast could hold 3 at once!!) and max ram (paltry 96mb).

I loved that thing, even bought a replacement AC adapter when the other one frayed out (and gave me a nasty shock). These machines were the desktop replacements.

take the 1750 down to Windows 2k. you will see a hell of a performance improvement over XP. Especially on only 128mb of RAM. XP benefits from 256+.

-digital

 

[coius]

I brought one back from the dead (Pentium IV 1.8Ghz) nearly being thrown into the trash heap. Someone took it apart and jammed everything into the slots wrecking pins. After about an hour, I got it up and running.

I think offered my friend (Which got it with a bunch of other laptops) a trade for my services, to get the laptop. Was one of the best trades I have made.

The sucker was LOADED with the following setup:

15" DVI 1400x1050 LCD Screen (DVI-Based I believe..)

1.8Ghz Pentium 4 w/ 512K L2 Cache

1GB DDR-2700 RAM (2x 512MB, could be maxed at 2GB)

Radeon 7500 64MB *DEDICATED* VRAM on an AGP 8x Bus (The "Dedicated" part was what turned it into a decent gaming machine for world of warcraft despite the laptop being from 2002)

100GB EIDE HDD

DVD-RW

5 Hours battery life!!!! (normal charge, normal use). And have you SEEN the size of those batteries?!?!?

USB 2.0, no Serial, no PS2, no Parallel (which was great. No legacy!!! All brand new Applish type ports!

This thing was AMAZING. It blazed through windows faster than my iBook G4 could blaze through OS X 10.4!!!

Also, I sold it to a friend that now uses it for gaming under WoW. He has put 2 Wireless modules in it (802.11b Multiport with built-in antenna) and (802.11g, Mini-PCI w/ Special antennas under the keyboard)

He also uses it as a webbrowser, and it's faster than snot.

Great score man! these things really outshine Compaq's other products as this is the "Apple/IBM" of the Compaq lines. Total quality. Built like a brick and runs very decently because of the non-shared video ram

 

[IPNixon]

Also, this isn't my first experience with an Armada. My dad's old job gave him an Armada 1700 to use, but they never asked for it back.

There's something wrong on the motherboard, it randomly shows garbled picture. I found out yesterday it happens when you press on the upper left of the case, so something must be loose maybe.

But using these sure did bring back memories.

 

[coius]

yeah, that's a display cable issue. It could be something as simple as opening the machine and pushing the connector back it. It generally means one of the pins isn't making contact with the DVI Connector

 

[IPNixon]

I'm not gonna worry about it, the machine has no HD, either (this is my dad's old laptop we're talking about, all of the others I got yesterday work fine).

But DVI? On a 2000-era machine?

 

[techfury90]

I'm not gonna worry about it, the machine has no HD, either (this is my dad's old laptop we're talking about, all of the others I got yesterday work fine).
But DVI? On a 2000-era machine?

Laptops do not have DVI connectors for their displays. They have LVDS connectors, and the pinout varies widely between makers, and even between different models.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, wow those are cool.

 

[funkytoad]

Quite the catch.

 

[LCGuy]

Very nice. Dad's first company laptop was an Armada E500 with 192 MB of RAM running Windows 2000. Very nice machine, that one was.

 

[Temetka]

I love Armadas.

They make quelling rebellions and oppressing the masses easy and profitable!

j/k

I have owned a 4131t and an M300 and I loved them both. I've also served E500's and they are great machines as well. Maybe not as good as the T series thinkpads, but excellent machines nonetheless.

Enjoy.