I recently got an old Toshiba Satellite T2135CS laptop from a friend...The case is extremely duct taped, the HDD area gets extremely hot, and it lacks proper sound and other forms of data transfer. Its got parallel, serial, VGA, PS/2 (keyboard only), and an unknown dock connector on the back. Floppy drive only. and 2 PCMCIA slots. A few questions: 1) What is the best OS? I have 3.1 and Workgroups 3.11, as well as 95. (on floppy). Also DOS 6.22. For a setup like the specs say, whats best? 2) What are my options on data transfer? I know of serial and parallel port direct transfers, but when your other computer is a Sony Vaio, utilities on that are very slim. Any thing like a ZIP drive? 3) Any way to do proper sound? I have the PCspeaker driver, but its not cutting it. I've seen some stuff on PCMCIA cards and Parallel port dongles, but I cant find said cards, and the only schematic of the dongle is in German. 4) What about internet? I have a PCMCIA card for Ethernet, but the connector from the card to the actual port is missing...and I cant find another of the same age. 5) What software? Currently I just have a few DOS image viewers, DooM, Wolfenstein 3D, Stunts!, and Office 4 (Windows). But what about video, better photo editor, and others? 6) What are my hardware options? A larger hard drive, an optical drive, some sort of larger capacity drive that would be easy to install? Wire a sound card to the board? Any help would be appreciated. Just a bit too reto

"the HDD area gets extremely hot, and it lacks proper sound and other forms of data transfer. Its got parallel, serial, VGA, PS/2 (keyboard only), and an unknown dock connector on the back. Floppy drive only. and 2 PCMCIA slots" Typical machine for 1994-95 from Toshiba. The HDD in these machines normally run hot and sound wasn't an option. Expect some sectors on the HDD to be bad by now. The dock connector on the back was soley for the docking bay. A decent workhorse laptop for the era it was made. You'll need floppies for basic setup and booting; look below (#2) for more options afterwards... "1) What is the best OS?" With only 8MB of RAM, DOS 6.22/WfWG 3.11 or a low-resource Win95 install. "2) What are my options on data transfer?" External parallel port devices (CD/Zip). Have a look here for a case for an external CD: http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/i... and an LPT Zip Drive: http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/i... Don't forget the drivers (on WeirdStuff's site) for the CD-case. Finding software for the Zip drive can be somewhat frustrating, since IOmega has taken down their public FTP Site; Google "guest.exe" for some links... "3) Any way to do proper sound?" Would virtually have to be PCMCIA sound, unless you use the PC Speaker driver for Windows: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138857 "4) What about internet?" Would also have to either PCMCIA or external hardware modem (which likely uses up the only Serial port on the machine). Software here: http://browsers.evolt.org/ "5) What software?" Still a lot of stuff for Win3x/Win95 out there, here's a start (with the last two being the best support sites out there): http://www.win31.de/elinks.htm http://wiki.oldos.org/Downloads/Win... http://sac-ftp.externet.hu/ http://www.mdgx.com/ http://www.95isalive.com/ "6) What are my hardware options?" At this point, limited. Perhaps a larger HDD (though it likely won't natively support one greater than 540MB) and more RAM (though it was almost impossible to find more for my T2130CS). The system will support up to 32MB, so that (plus the 540MB HDD) would give you enough for a decent (full) Win95 install if you choose to go that route...

In your previous thread, http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... you said you had a network card but were apparently missing the dongle? Anyway, you have some pretty good 16bit choices; my current 16bit NIC's are...for wired and DOS/Win3.x, I use a Belkin F5D5020 and for wireless on 95b, a Netgear MA401. I've also used a Netgear FA411 for a Wfw3.11 laptop. Look for inexpensive NIC/Modem deals...I bought 6 MA401's on eBay for ~10 bucks. I think the brand new Belkin was about $14. For data transfer, I use a 16bit generic "4 in 1 multi card adapter" I bought for ~$6. Something like this one... http://www.amtron.com/adapter/sdmca... All these 16bit cards will work on newer 32bit (cardbus) laptops so it's not like you're investing a lot of money that's dedicated to just one old laptop. Skip

http://www.amtron.com/adapter/sdmca... Hey Skip, that's a pretty slick device. Wish I'd had one of those when fooling with the T2130CS. May get one anyway...

Yeah, dug mine up after taking 30 hours to transfer W98Se install folder via intersvr/interlnk connection. Since then a 2Gb SD Card has allowed me near instant access to anything I want to mess with. Skip

I'm currently making a list. However, I REALLY messed up while trying to fix a whole bar of the screen that went randomly dead. I finally narrowed the problem down to a certian spot on the LCD, and as soon as I tried to press it back together, the ribbon cable to the strip of PCB made an awful pulling sound...the sound of pins being stripped from a connector. Yes, now the whole top half of the screen is dead. Yet hope isn't lost. Otherwise, the hardware is fine (minus the battery, but i've got an 8 foot power cable), and I know a place where they take old hardware and re-sell it at full potential (best hardware it can support, and the fastest, most modern OS for it), but they usually get old laptops and PCs they cant use (half dead). So they strip the good stuff, toss the bad stuff, and leave the cases and screens. If they're still in business, I've could have a brand new case and screen. And if I take all the parts, I might be able to get a better board from em...I'm thinkin the next step up, Pentium instead of that 486, and more ram. @T-R-A: Thanks! Alot of that was REAL helpful. I've got to look into that stuff. @Skip: ...and I thought PCMCIA was dead. At least, I haven't found any software about it. And yes, I was missing the dongle, and still haven't bought it. I'm gonna get to that shop as soon as I can. They once offered a Compaq laptop, fully loaded with 20gig HDD, Windows 98, Ethernet adapter (already configed), external mouse, and they offered a CD upgrade for 20$, and a wireless upgrade for 30$ (base price was 80$) Only reason I turned it down: I was short on cash and the guy behind me was eying it very strongly. Just a bit too reto