I finally found my Asus 901 netbook

VanillaCoffee

Active Member
Joined
May 17, 2023
Messages
110
Reaction score
30
Credits
1,022
So I had been after an Asus 901 Eee PC in white for a while.Yes I know its old but I like it. One showed up on the popular auction site so I had to have it and its in very good cosmetic condition and works but has a couple of minor issues to fix such as the CMOS battery and the main battery doesn't hold a charge.

Now those of you who read my earlier post about the previous Asus 1000 Eee PC I bought at the car boot sale that was totally shot.... well some parts from that are going to be re-used like the main battery. The battery from that I've now have it slotted into the Asus 901 and it looks like its charging up so although its a black battery it isn't to noticeable on the 901 and if its working then its all good. I can then work on the original 901 battery and see if I can get it open without damaging the battery casing to see if I can re-cell it with some new rechargeable cells.

I will be doing a few upgrades but first I need to replace the CMOS battery which I think I can take off the broken Asus 1000 that CMOS battery might just work. I can then get on with the upgrades. This netbook can take upto 2GB of RAM but currently has 1GB installed. The internal storage seems to be pretty small so I'll be taking a look at that and see if I have something of larger capacity.

This 901 Asus came with an XP driver CD which is very handy encase I want to install its original OS it shipped with and it came with its original ASUS bag/pouch. Its in such good condition its almost to nice to take out with me so I may just keep this as a collectors piece and try and re-build the original battery.
 


I can then work on the original 901 battery and see if I can get it open without damaging the battery casing to see if I can re-cell it with some new rechargeable cells.
if you are successful in getting it open, then make sure you use the correct type of cell, if it has Nickel based cells do not use Lithium as a replacement as they produce a much higher voltage and can burn out the laptop
 
Very good to know that. I will make a note of that to insure I use the correct cells. One thing that totally slipped my mind is the battery controller... sometimes when a laptop battery is totally dead which this one is, the battery controller goes into protection mode and without the right equipment and firmware it might not be possible to restore this battery but I will install new cells regardless and see what happens.
 
Very good to know that.
I found out by a friend who had an old mobile phone [came with Ni battery] he ordered a replacement, the new one arrived , he put in the phone and in a few mins it was smoking, the New one was Li and putting out nearly 20% more voltage
 
You must pay attention to battery type. I have been burned more than once with low cost battery replacements that were advertised as one type and then they shipped a different type.

Among common rechargeable batteries, there is NiCd vs. NiMH vs. Lithium.

Standard batteries also come in alkaline and "heavy duty" types. (Do those "heavy duty" batteries still contain lead? They are no good anyway.)

Button batteries come in alkaline, lithium, and silver.

Watch out for "courtesy" batteries that come with things you buy. They are the cheapest and worst batteries available. They fail quickly and leak more quickly.
 
Just an update... I have found that the original battery is now charging and is good. The spare battery only lasted about 10 minutes so I swapped it out for the original battery again and this time it began to charge and has been working fine. I have decided to go with a stripped down Xubuntu OS for this netbook... well its the full Xubuntu OS but I'm uninstalling what I don't need to make Xubuntu even lighter. I found that Parole Video Player for example was too heavy for the specs but VLC Player worked much better and I could play high quality videos in full screen. I'm still working on what else I can do in Xubuntu to make it even lighter.
 
The battery is pretty good. Performance on the Asus Eee PC 901 is horrible. My old Pentium III Panasonic Toughbook outperforms this Asus Eee PC 901 by a long shot. I decided to install Windows 7 on this which took nearly 2 hours but I do plan on dual booting it with TinyCore Linux so it will have a Linux partition.

It may have a very slow SSD inside I might just see what I can do to try speed it up a bit. Its painful, it takes too long to do a basic task. Its a nice collectors piece anyway so I might just stick this one on the shelf if I can't speed it up. For 1.6GHz its more like 166MHz
 
Last edited:
@VanillaCoffee :-

I don't think you can do much with your "SSD". If I'm not mistaken, that's not an SSD as such, it's eMMC flash memory (short for Embedded MultiMedia Card). It's like the stuff you got in early-gen SD cards, I think you'll find (even SD cards were considered to be an improvement on MMCs). Moreover, it's soldered to the mobo - hence the "embedded" part! - so you can't even upgrade it....

https://www.howtogeek.com/196541/emmc-vs-ssd-not-all-solid-state-storage-is-equal/#autotoc_anchor_2

One of our veteran Puppy community members has a whole stable of these eeePCs, and he's apprised us all about the multitude of issues you can expect with these tiny netbooks, many times over the years.


Mike. ;)
 
Last edited:
Thats good to know.. I'll probably use a fast SD card as a supplement or SD card with Puppy installed to it. as another option for an extra OS. I think this will be the only Asus Eee PC I will own I like small net books, Acer maybe better alternatives for cheap Linux netbooks to tinker with.
 
@VanillaCoffee :-

I believe SD cards are the preferred medium for use with these machines.

8Geee has also re-mastered a couple of Puppies that have been optimized specifically FOR the eeePCs.....taking into account the limitations of the hardware. They're not based around bang-up-to-date OS releases, but that's alright; with these netbooks, you almost have to run a date-sensitive OS to keep them reasonably functional, since OSs just get bigger & heavier as the years go by.

He has, however, modernized all the important stuff.....like certificates, TLS/SSL, dbus, and a slew of other items, so that theses OSs are as secure as they can possibly be.

Interested?


Mike. ;)
 

Members online


Latest posts

Top