Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

Some new hardware just arrived. Everything looks OK on first look



Some new hardware has just arrived. Everything looks fine at first glance. There are four notebooks, three PCMCIA LAN cards, one USB->LAN card, some floppies, a bag of RAM and some CDs with drivers for the notebooks.

I will look at each of the notebooks. I have tried booting them all. One of them has Windows XP password locked. I have not tried to hack the password as I am going to install the system that was originally on these laptops (based on the licence stickers on the bottom), one starts but Windows refuses to boot because of some "security issue". The other two boot, but one has no working touchpad/trackpoint. The second has Windows 98, which is locked by a password, but in Windows 98 you can easily log in to any account by pressing ESC or clicking Cancel on the login dialogue. This one seems to have a problem with the hard drive, as it 'ticks' every X seconds, causing the system to lag for half a second. It may be necessary to replace the hard drive.

So I will check each of them and try to get them working. However, it will be a bit difficult as the laser in the CD drive is not able to read, so I will have to install the OS from the HDD or via the network. A lot of work, but also a bit of fun. I will keep you updated on the progress, if there is any.