keeping a Toughbook going

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Gower
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Dave Gower

I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G HD. I love it.
The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best I've ever
experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer, i.e.
calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty of power.

The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came with. XP won't
fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs reinstalling. I have an
old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't have the
original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting to reinstall
98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is problematic
and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed properly.

Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a geek to want to
start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible with a
browser i.e. Firefox.
 
I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G HD.
Click to expand...

I presume the "700mz" doesn't mean 700MHz due to the age.

I love it.
The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best I've ever
experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer, i.e.
calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty of power.

The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came with.
Click to expand...

Time to put a bigger HDD in it? That's not a bad idea for
reliability reasons even if you mange to get 2GB of space to
suffice. Even so, Win98/98se IS the best OS for a system
that old... XP would be horribly slow. Win98Lite would be a
very nice match
XP won't
fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs reinstalling. I have an
old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't have the
original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting to reinstall
98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is problematic
and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed properly.

Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a geek to want to
start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible with a
browser i.e. Firefox.
Click to expand...

If you're having trouble with drivers for Win98, it might be
even more difficult if not impossible to source drivers for
XP or ???

I wouldn't try updating the OS. Win98 is where you want to
be on that laptop. If it's problematic, focus on why. If a
clean install clears up problems, good. If it doesn't,
likely you have a problem that *any* OS won't solve, like
buggy application or hardware is getting older, flaky.
These are vague generalities since you don't mention
specific problems.

IMO, you ought to pull the drive out and copy off all files
onto a desktop system. Notebook IDE adapters are cheap and
easy to find if you don't have one. Once you have all the
files copied off, you then know you have the drivers... just
a matter of weeding through the files to isolate them, if
they weren't already together in a folder.

To give you an example of one why to try salvaging drivers,
I'm currently looking at another monitor here with a win98
box hooked up. In Device Manager, you can choose a piece of
hardware, for example sound, right-click on it. In the
Properties, Driver Details button, you'll see a list of
files. Some of them may be files from the OS, but you could
simply copy all those to a folder. Maybe that's all the
files you need, or maybe not. When it comes time to
reinstall the driver, and you browse to that driver folder,
if any files are missing it'll prompt for them. Although
they might not be in that folder YET, you have made a backup
of the notebook HDD to the desktop, so you can simply copy
any remaining files over and have the complete driver.

Repeat the process for any other devices not natively
supported by the OS. Not knowing the specifics of the
Panasonic Toughbook, I can't enumerate those devices, but
the typical things like video, audio, lan, modem, while
chipset drivers shouldn't be too hard (nor large) to
download online.
 
Dave Gower said:
I have a 10-year old Panasonic Toughbook, 700mz, 64M RAM, 2G
HD. I love it.
The screen is magnificent, and the keyboard feel is the best
I've ever
experienced. I only use it as a back-up to my main computer,
i.e.
calculations, note-taking and some surfing, so it has plenty
of power.

The problem is that it only has room for the WIN98 it came
with. XP won't
fit. And I'm pretty sure that the original 98 needs
reinstalling. I have an
old WIN98 disk, but since I bought the computer used I don't
have the
original driver set. So I'm a little nervous about attempting
to reinstall
98. I only have a 56k dial-up so downloading huge data sets is
problematic
and I'm not at all sure I could get them all installed
properly.

Is there an easier way to update the OS? I'm not enough of a
geek to want to
start with Linux, and anything I used would need to compatible
with a
browser i.e. Firefox.
Click to expand...

The toughbook was a fine series of laptops, born out of the old Grid
Computers that went into space.

Detailed specs for your model would be helpful, but based on the age
of the machine I would suggest sticking with Win98. Older laptops were
often designed to work with one operating system and were unsupported
if the user changed up.

"http://tcc.toughbook.com/" exist with numerous downloads for
toughbook, and an email link if your model is not listed. I would
suggest a new HDD as a drive that long in the tooth, will not have
smartdrive to tell you its going to fail. In looking at hard drives
keep in mind you will probably need to update the BIOS and may be
restricted on size.

Good Luck.
 
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