The existing one is either 6GB or 8GB (forget which). Derek has
offered a similar size one for £10 which is probably good enough for
such an old laptop. It used to have Windows 98SE on it, we were trying
to replace that with Windows XP when the drive gave up the ghost.
We've tried several times to FORMAT it, but it stops at the same place
every time at the 13% mark in the FORMAT with a horrible noise.
It won't boot up now of course, so we resort to the Win 98 startup
disk to FDISK and FORMAT it, hoping to be able to convert it to NTFS
for Win XP if and when we get it to format!
The hard disk was itself a second hand replacement for a smaller hard
disk which was in it when we bought it. I've since given away that
small hard disk.
Thanks for offering - I'll try Derek's offer first and appeal again if
that is unsuccessful.
My son is 12 now and VERY into his computers (as you might expect of a
son of mine!). This Christmas, he got a little £60 Aiptek digital
video camera, spent most of Christmas day recording his mum, dad,
grandparents etc and made a very good half hour video of it all (with
Windows Movie Maker, which was a traumatic learning experience until
we realised we had to set Windows Virtual Memory to a massive 1GB to
edit a video at a snail's pace on a 1.4GHz Pentium, which makes me
very glad of what we are able to achieve at a few MHz on a QL
sometimes) which is now on DVD doing the rounds of the family! Quite a
learning curve, involving digital video editing, DVD creation
software, SD card usage, USB file transfer, bluetooth links between
phones and computers to import stills taken on 2 separate mobiles etc.
A bit hairy at times, but we've both learned so much in just over a
week that we are very happy about our achievement even if it was a
bumpy ride!
Bluetooth was an interesting experience and quite a challenge. My son
had got a new Nokia phone late last year and I swapped him something
for his old Motorola V3 phone which in an even worse condition than my
ancient Nokia. Both phones (allegedly) have Bluetooth. We bought a USB
'Dongle' for his PC (just £2.50 from Ebuyer) so he could transfer his
photos to his computer. That worked quite well from phone to PC, but
the PC won't play the MP3's he's downloaded from his phone (don't know
if it is a new file format problem, or if the MP3's are flagged only
to work on the system they are downloaded as an anti-piracy or
something).
Then we realised the PC wouldn't send to the phone, but the phone had
an obscure security setting which prevented that, but even after
finding that we're still struggling to send to the phone. Next, we
tried phone to phone. That was a hassle, it was only today we (well,
my son actually) eventually found some little used feature on one of
the phones which had prevented successful 'pairing' of the two
phones - we were soon able to transfer files from one phone to the
other very easily as long as we weren't far apart - I guess Bluetooth
is only meant to work up to a few metres apart.
Even more successful was connecting my phone to my PC and setting my
Freeola dial-up to point to the USB-phone link as a modem. Dial out,
and the phone magically springs to life, connects to Freeola and a
little later I was downloading email and browsing via the mobile, then
I realised it was 25p per minute. Oops, back to BT I think. But it
works - I should be able to use this as a modem while away from home,
possibly at Quanta workshops, and if the QPC or QemuLator TCP/IP can
work with it, I'll be able to get some degree of internet access and
emails from QPC via mobile phone, though I haven't got that far yet. I
also want to get a USB Bluetooth dongle like my son's to see what I
can achieve with that.
While all this PC fiddling (and I call the PC fiddly as opposed to
QL tinkering) may seem irrelevant, the fact that this appears to the
PC just as any other modem, it means that I can set my sights on
finishing the QPC email program I started writing last year and
wouldn't that be great - mobile email access from QPC running on a
laptop!
My pet project for 2008 perhaps :-)
--
Dilwyn Jones
- Original Message -
From: Rick Chagouri-Brindle [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] 2.5 inch HD
Dilwyn Jones wrote:
Does anyone have a cheap second hand 2.5 inch IDE hard drive of a
few
GB capacity to sell?
The hard drive on my son's Toshiba Tecra 780 laptop has failed. We
lost Windows, so set about reinstalling only to find it refused. An
attempt to reformat failed after 13% (drive made awful noise).
Don't want to spend 40-50 pounds on a new drive as the rather old
laptop isn't really worth much more than that.
What kind of size are you looking for? I might have one, I'll have
a
rummage.
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