So, as I mentioned here , my motherboard blew up in January and in the meantime I’ve been using an old laptop that I got free off a friend a couple of years ago.
Hey, it was either going to some musty drawer or straight to the dumpster and I like typing on laptops, so…I feel like I did the right thing.
As I said the thing is about 10 years old. And the battery lasts about 10 minutes.
It’s a Toshiba Satellite L30-11H.
Got it with a Pentium T2080 (it’s not even a Core2Duo, the thing doesn’t even support x64), 2GB of RAM, a el cheapo 32GB Chinese SSD off aliexpress and a top lid with a bit of DIY done to it (the hinges broke or something, don’t care, it works)
The first day I had it I found it had (has) a very funny quirk: if the DVD player is installed only 1 GB of RAM works.
Since then I knew this machine was destined to be great fun.
I mostly have been using it when I really didn’t have anything heavy to do, mostly at night, if I was just going to be typing away on some word processor or doing lightweight web browsing this thing at least saved some power. (I’m very green…I love trees, unless it’s eucalyptus)
When the motherboard blew I started using it full time.
And quickly I found it was way too sucky.
Watching some videos? Could play SD x264; x265/HEVC (even SD)? In my dreams.
Well, I could upgrade the CPU…
I mean, old mobile CPUs are cheap on Ebay, so I started searching what was the best CPU that this thing could get.
CoreDuo T2450 (again, not Core2Duo), well, if that’s the best…I’ll just keep what I have.
Then one day while browsing around I found this page.
Processor can be upgraded up to Intel Core 2 Duo T2450 2.0GHz for x86 system, or even Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz for x64 system.
What? That’s not official. And all the experts I found said it wouldn’t work in any way shape or form. Because x64 CPUs won’t work with this chipset.
Should I trust the experts or some random guy on a linux wiki?
Heck, how much does a used T7200 cost?
Answer: it’s about 2€ with shipping from China.
What do I have to lose? Nothing…well, 2€ and about half an hour swapping the CPU.
So I decided to trust the random guy on a linux wiki, shell out all of 2€ for a T7200 and wait for it to arrive.
I would like to thank that fucker, whoever he/she/it is.
The CPU swap worked brilliantly, unfortunately due to the FSB being limited to 533MHz the CPU runs at only 1.6GHz instead of the usual 2GHz, but everything worked fine, although due to the slightly higher TDP (34W vs 31W) the temperatures went a bit up, but it doesn’t exceed 80ºC at any load possible.
Now, not only do I have the possibility of going x64 with the OS (Lubuntu), I can watch video that isn’t SD.
It can play x264 at 720p (as long as it isn’t too high bitrate) and x265/HEVC at slightly more than SD (can do about 960×520, again as long as it isn’t too high bitrate).
Unless it’s any sort of embedded player, youtube’s player is bad but I can use SMPlayer to play the videos. Now twitter’s player on the other hand…let’s just say that the embedded player on twitter is already bad enough on PCs with decent power, let alone an ancient laptop.
I considered trying what the guy also says in the wiki and try 2GB + 1GB of RAM, but honestly I see no need, Lubuntu is working pretty nicely with only 2GB.
So…yeah, just another useless rant.