Evening, gang.
I have to report the passing of the D630 Latitude. I suspect the dratted Nvidia Quadro GPU had undergone a few too many thermal cycles.......more than that early lead-free solder could handle, anyway. And those volcanically "run-hot" Quadros really didn't help with that brittle solder the industry was using in the early days (before they got the mix right). It's no wonder they got whacked with a class-action lawsuit, given the sheer number of failures that got reported at the time....
I started getting multiple lines across the bottom of the screen about 2 months ago, followed by the bottom quarter of the screen mirroring the top quarter. Soon afterward, it was almost unusable, with top and bottom of the desktop all jumbled up together with lines, spots, shears and other artifacts. The very next time I booted it.....no display at all. That was it; she was a 'goner'.
Sooooo.......in Queen's words, "another one bites the dust". So sad.....but it was around 16 years old, with most of that lifetime spent struggling with M$'s bloated offerings. She'd done well, really.
Off to take a troll round eBay, and see what was floating around..!
I wanted another Lat, TBH, but also wanted to move up the ladder a ways and get summat a wee bit newer and better equipped. I soon found a sweet-looking E6430; Ivy Bridge (3rd-gen) Core i5-3340M - 2.7 GHz base, 3.3 turbo boost - dual-core with HT.....effectively a quad, of course. This was paired with a single 8 GB DDR3 SoDIMM (I'll double this up to 16 GB in a few weeks time).....and a WD 'Blue' 640 GB plate-spinner, adorned with Win 7 Ultimate! This will be getting replaced with a Crucial BX500 480 GB SSD when I get around to it (plenty big enough for Puppy); the date of manufacture on the WD is August 2009, so I wouldn't trust it any further than I could throw it.
The seller was asking GBP £60 for it, which I haggled down to £52. I'm happy with that.
This has Dell's composite magnesium/cast aluminium chassis, with a brushed stainless 'bumper' round the edge and a very smart dark blue (almost black, but not quite) aluminium cover on the back of the lid, with a razor-sharp chromed Dell logo. Apart from one scratch & a coupla scuff marks on one side, it's in nice condition......and built like a brick s**t-house.
Only a 1366x768 14" display, but that's plenty big enough. At least this is true 16:9 HD; the D630 was a strange 1280x800 (apparently termed "WXGA"??? I get completely lost with this stuff, I'll be honest).
I've already replaced the battery (the old one - a DELL original - wouldn't hold a charge at all; like the proverbial dodo, it was D-E-A-D.) Currently, I'm in the middle of setting her up with Fossapup64 and the Debian 12-based BookwormPup64 on a SanDisk Ultra 'Fit' 256GB thumb-drive; that'll do me till I snag the BX500. The Centrino wireless works OOTB, ditto the built-in webcam.....though the latter has only a single resolution available, and very few adjustments. I'll probably still use the c920, 'cos the picture quality is miles better. Even the built-in microphone works OOTB.
I'm quite happy with it!
The rubberised coating round the keyboard and palm-rest hasn't yet gone 'sticky', and even the dedicated volume buttons to the right of the keyboard work with Puppy, too. And I think y'all can just make out the SD card reader slot to the right-hand side at the front in the second pic....
It's a nice piece of kit, if I'm honest. This one has an Nvidia chip onboard, yet the i5 still has on-die Intel HD graphics.....and most Puppies run with the Intel driver, anyway, which suits me better.
Mike.
I have to report the passing of the D630 Latitude. I suspect the dratted Nvidia Quadro GPU had undergone a few too many thermal cycles.......more than that early lead-free solder could handle, anyway. And those volcanically "run-hot" Quadros really didn't help with that brittle solder the industry was using in the early days (before they got the mix right). It's no wonder they got whacked with a class-action lawsuit, given the sheer number of failures that got reported at the time....
I started getting multiple lines across the bottom of the screen about 2 months ago, followed by the bottom quarter of the screen mirroring the top quarter. Soon afterward, it was almost unusable, with top and bottom of the desktop all jumbled up together with lines, spots, shears and other artifacts. The very next time I booted it.....no display at all. That was it; she was a 'goner'.
Sooooo.......in Queen's words, "another one bites the dust". So sad.....but it was around 16 years old, with most of that lifetime spent struggling with M$'s bloated offerings. She'd done well, really.
Off to take a troll round eBay, and see what was floating around..!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wanted another Lat, TBH, but also wanted to move up the ladder a ways and get summat a wee bit newer and better equipped. I soon found a sweet-looking E6430; Ivy Bridge (3rd-gen) Core i5-3340M - 2.7 GHz base, 3.3 turbo boost - dual-core with HT.....effectively a quad, of course. This was paired with a single 8 GB DDR3 SoDIMM (I'll double this up to 16 GB in a few weeks time).....and a WD 'Blue' 640 GB plate-spinner, adorned with Win 7 Ultimate! This will be getting replaced with a Crucial BX500 480 GB SSD when I get around to it (plenty big enough for Puppy); the date of manufacture on the WD is August 2009, so I wouldn't trust it any further than I could throw it.
The seller was asking GBP £60 for it, which I haggled down to £52. I'm happy with that.
This has Dell's composite magnesium/cast aluminium chassis, with a brushed stainless 'bumper' round the edge and a very smart dark blue (almost black, but not quite) aluminium cover on the back of the lid, with a razor-sharp chromed Dell logo. Apart from one scratch & a coupla scuff marks on one side, it's in nice condition......and built like a brick s**t-house.
Only a 1366x768 14" display, but that's plenty big enough. At least this is true 16:9 HD; the D630 was a strange 1280x800 (apparently termed "WXGA"??? I get completely lost with this stuff, I'll be honest).
I've already replaced the battery (the old one - a DELL original - wouldn't hold a charge at all; like the proverbial dodo, it was D-E-A-D.) Currently, I'm in the middle of setting her up with Fossapup64 and the Debian 12-based BookwormPup64 on a SanDisk Ultra 'Fit' 256GB thumb-drive; that'll do me till I snag the BX500. The Centrino wireless works OOTB, ditto the built-in webcam.....though the latter has only a single resolution available, and very few adjustments. I'll probably still use the c920, 'cos the picture quality is miles better. Even the built-in microphone works OOTB.
I'm quite happy with it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The rubberised coating round the keyboard and palm-rest hasn't yet gone 'sticky', and even the dedicated volume buttons to the right of the keyboard work with Puppy, too. And I think y'all can just make out the SD card reader slot to the right-hand side at the front in the second pic....
It's a nice piece of kit, if I'm honest. This one has an Nvidia chip onboard, yet the i5 still has on-die Intel HD graphics.....and most Puppies run with the Intel driver, anyway, which suits me better.
Mike.
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