IT HAS COME!

[lucid]

My computer crap! My mother's husband has some old shit that I asked for, so he sent me a big package. In it were some old cables that don't really apply anymore so.. meh, some cat 5 cables, not bad, about 4 different mice, two of which are old as fuck and the other two are nice wireless ones, but don't have the adapters so, useless. There was also a USB hub with four USB slots, awesome. Finally there was not one old Lenovo like I expected, but two! The other laptop is a compaq presario. Some details:

The first one is a Lenovo IBM thinkpad. The Lenovo has Win XP on it but I wasn't gonna keep windows on that bitch anyway so, no matter. It doesn't get past the Windows logo screen, it just hangs there for ever. However, I popped in a live Arch CD and it booted right in. AWESOME!! It works quite speedily with linux in it. Haven't actually installed Arch yet, I'm thinking about installing BSD on it instead and turning it into a router/server.

I was quite surprised about this computer. It makes not a sound whatsoever when it's running. Not only that, but I discovered that it has a whopping 2gb of RAM! Which to me seems like a lot for it's relatively old age. The only downside I'm seeing right now is that it has a Broadcom ethernet controller :/. That, and I think it has a bad CPU fan, considering that about 5 minutes after starting it up with the LiveCD the bottom of it got incredibly hot.

The other one is a quite different story. While the first one doesn't make a sound, this one sounds like an airplane taking off when it starts up. It's also running Win 98 . It takes about 5 minutes to get to the login screen, and I don't know the password so I haven't gotten past that as of right now. Haven't paid as much attention to that one, but there is one last detail. It has a floppy drive lol.

So, I'm not really sure what to do about the old Win 98 PC yet. The Lenovo looks promising and useful, except for the part about the probable fucked CPU fan. Have any of you ever replaced a CPU fan before? The most I've done as far as laptop repairs is fixing my laptop screen, and I imagine replacing a CPU fan would be harder.

[Super_mario666]

Replacing a CPU fan on a laptop is pretty easy to do, but usually involves taking it apart and exposing the motherboard, so if you aren't interested in seeing the guts of your laptop, you shouldn't try this.


You should read the service manual for that machine to see how to do this properly. Always ground yourself before starting. Usually the fan and heat sink come as one unit, so you should get some thermal paste as well.

[lucid]

I'm not afraid of computer guts. The only trouble would be actually getting the CPU fan. I know there cheap but I'm cheap too. I've had it on for relatively long periods of time with seemingly no problems. With linux booted on it anyway... With Windows well, it get's pretty damn hot.

[Super_mario666]

Well, you kinda have to buy a new one in this situation. laptop parts are very specific to the model, you can't really salvage parts, unless you come across one thats the exact same model.

[lucid]

I know. For now I'm hoping that it isn't a big enough problem that requires urgent care. Time will tell.

[Super_mario666]

Just out of curiosity, is the fan even spinning? i've had this happen to me before, the laptop would randomly shut off from the heat, only to figure out that the fan wasn't even going.


you really should immediately deal with that fan, especially if your gonna run that computer as a server. the heat will destroy your processor.

[lucid]

I'm thinking that's what the problem is actually. It's way too damn quiet for an old computer xD. I have yet to open it up though, can't find a screwdriver that won't strip the screws.