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Main - Computing - Lappy019, the "Tablet PC" New thread | New reply


stag019
Posted on 03-04-12 05:33 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150342


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Posted by stag019 on Jul
So I (fairly) recently acquired a touch screen register from my work Arby's. It has Windows 98 SE on it right now.

Here's some specs:
  • Processor: Intel Celeron 566 MHz
  • RAM: 128MB (standard SDRAM SO-DIMM you'd find in a laptop)
  • HD Space: 10.041 GB (9.352GiB)
  • The screen appears to have a maximum resolution of 800x600, although up to 1280x1024 is supported by "scrolling"....
  • 1x Microphone port
  • 1x Speaker port
  • 1x Keyboard port
  • 2x USB ports
  • 1x Parallel port
  • 2x Serial port (DE-9 connector)
  • 1x Serial port (ethernet connector)
  • 1x Ethernet port
Currently, I have Opera 10.63 on it with Flash Version 9.0.280, and it runs YouTube great. It does pretty much anything I'd want to it. There are a few drawbacks though.
  • No battery
  • No Wifi
  • Fan is rather loud, and while it does a great job reducing the heat when it's on its stand, if I put it on my lap, it heats up rather quickly
But I had some plans to make it even more awesome, but I'm not quite sure how to go about all of them (in order of how much I want to do them):
  • Build a battery pack, and perhaps a car adapter. According to the bottom of the register, it's rated 12VDC, 6.5A, whereas the AC adapter box lists its output at "+12V (Direct current symbol) 9.0A" Does anyone know if I'd need any other specs, and how I could find such a battery?
  • Some sort of Wifi adapter. This one, I have a two options. There is an internal PCI slot, however, it's rather awkward seeing as there's no place for the bracket to come out of the computer. For a Wifi card, that may not be too much of a problem; I could just rip the bracket off. I'm just still not sure if it would fit. My other option (that I kinda like better) is to get one of those "AP-Client"s (basically, Wifi to ethernet adapter) off of eBay. The only main problem is they require a USB port for power, although there are a few unused pins on the inside that are labelled 5.0V. The thing is though, even though I have two ethernet ports, I'm unsure if the one labelled "COM" can be used for internet or not. Also, I'd really like to keep as many ports as possible free anyways. That's why I want to find a way to have it so when there's something plugged into the ethernet port, it overrides the AP-Client and uses that instead. But how would I go about that?
  • A new internal fan. Easy enough, I've seen some that are compatible with the voltage and the pinage and the same dimensions on eBay. I just hope they're quieter than this one.
  • Internal Speakers. Similar to the AP-Client, I'm not sure how I would get it so that plugging in speakers to the speaker port overrides the internal ones.
  • Internal Microphone. See above.
  • A 512MB stick of RAM. It might come in handy. Especially just in case I decide to do the bullet point below.
  • Windows XP. I'm rather unsure of this one. I know even as it stands now, it meets not only the minimum, but the recommended specs, but I'm still not sure how well that would run. Anyone every try Windows XP on a rather weak computer?
  • Bluetooth. See the Wifi thing about a PCI device. And again I'd rather not use up a USB port. Plus this'd probably only be if I updated to Windows XP (it would be a pain in 98), and I'm not even quite sure how much I need it in the first place


Any question/concerns/comments?

Additional stuff: forgot to mention on Jul there's a Floppy Disk Drive port that I'm not entirely sure if I know what kind of plug plugs into there, pictures, figuring out what a "shunt" is, and my most recent acquisitions are another one with "a credit card scanner, a fingerprint scanner, and a little lcd screen thingy".

blackhole89
Posted on 03-07-12 04:22 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150366


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In my experience, XP with eyecandy and some resource-heavy aspects stripped out should even be somewhat usable with machines in the order of 300MHz. Otherwise, how difficult would it be to upgrade the processor to something faster using the same socket? You can probably get compatible ones very cheap.

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Xeruss
Posted on 03-07-12 06:27 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150367


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Posted by blackhole89
how difficult would it be to upgrade the processor to something faster using the same socket? You can probably get compatible ones very cheap.

This briefly crossed my mind. If it's doable, I'm sure you could find a hacky way to get Windows 8 to run on it. It could prove to be a fun toy having Windows Metro on a touch screen PC.

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stag019
Posted on 03-08-12 06:21 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150382


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Last view: 2169 days 		I doubt it. Even if I could replace the processor, I'd still be limited to at most 512MB of RAM if I bought more. At this rate, why not just buy a new tablet PC?

But even then, why would I want to replace the CPU? 566MHz is fine for anything I'll be needing to do on the go. I don't really want or need Windows 8. At most, I might try Windows XP, but 566MHz should be fine with it, seeing as how Windows XP can run even on 233MHz processors.

What I'm more concerned with is the hardware itself. In order to make it truly portable, I'd need a battery pack. But as far as how I would go about getting a battery that would be compatible, as well as getting it all to work internally correctly, I need help on. And some sort Wifi adapter. Read the "Some sort of Wifi adapter" bullet point in the first post.

MiniCompute
Posted on 03-12-12 04:42 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150433


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Posted by stag019
I doubt it. Even if I could replace the processor, I'd still be limited to at most 512MB of RAM if I bought more. At this rate, why not just buy a new tablet PC?

But even then, why would I want to replace the CPU? 566MHz is fine for anything I'll be needing to do on the go. I don't really want or need Windows 8. At most, I might try Windows XP, but 566MHz should be fine with it, seeing as how Windows XP can run even on 233MHz processors.

What I'm more concerned with is the hardware itself. In order to make it truly portable, I'd need a battery pack. But as far as how I would go about getting a battery that would be compatible, as well as getting it all to work internally correctly, I need help on. And some sort Wifi adapter. Read the "Some sort of Wifi adapter" bullet point in the first post.


hmmm, if your going the windows xp route, I advise you kick up the cpu and ram options abit higher.

Is this a socket 370 based motherboard also what is the max fsb on that celeron 566 ?
It maybe possible, but you could opt in for a pentium 3 at 700mhz.
Finding sd-ram should not be a problem for you if you know where to look and what sales maybe going on.
Check pricewatch.com and see if you can get 512mb of ram.

Believe me when I say this, if you plan on going with xp, don't settle for 566nhz if you plan on using it quite abit.

Good luck with it stag.

stag019
Posted on 03-12-12 11:36 PM Link | Quote | ID: 150436


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Last view: 2169 days 		No, really.

I don't want to replace the CPU, I promise.

I got this thing for free, and I really don't have the kind of money to be spending on a new CPU and RAM and all that jazz. At that point, why not just get an iPad (or something similar)? I only planned on going with XP because I know the current hardware supports it fine. And I thought maybe upgrading the RAM because it's easy and cheap, but even then I don't really want to spend the money I don't have. But really Windows 98 does not bother me at all. Opera 10.63 is fine and a good web browser is all that's truly needed for something I'm not going to be using constantly. Anything else that I could add on to that is just a plus (simple things like a Gameboy emulator or simple games that don't require much of the processor/RAM).

I'm far much more interested in making this thing truly portable. But I haven't the slightest clue on how to work on a battery pack or the likes.

MiniCompute
Posted on 03-13-12 10:39 PM Link | Quote | ID: 150450


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Posted by stag019
No, really.

I don't want to replace the CPU, I promise.
I'm far much more interested in making this thing truly portable. But I haven't the slightest clue on how to work on a battery pack or the likes.


Ok, give me any model numbers or serial numbers you may find on your tablet, and I'll try to track down the info.

Shouldn't be hard to find someone with a new battery pack somewhere.

blackhole89
Posted on 03-15-12 12:15 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150461


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As far as performance-for-money goes, you are probably best off looking for some sufficiently low-tech laptop battery pack (i.e. one that would, if all else fails, provide you with power without any sort of initial talking to control electronics required). With plain, off-the-shelf batteries, rechargeable or otherwise, you'll at the very least require something like this, and in either case, you won't really have any straightforward means to measure remaining charge digitally (for laptop batteries, you'll need to interface with them properly, and for plain batteries, the only information you get is the voltage before regulation, e.g. by sticking a multimeter into it), and they won't be able to remotely live up to the capacity of even a cheap Lithium ion battery.

One thing you ought to pay close attention to is whether the batteries you are employing can actually be safely discharged at a sufficiently high rate to satisfy your device's power consumption. This value seems to be rarely, if ever, advertised on off-the-shelf consumer batteries (although I believe laptop batteries ought to have it), and I'm fairly certain that you wouldn't get 50 watts out of an AA battery. (Connect many in parallel.)

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stag019
Posted on 03-15-12 01:00 AM Link | Quote | ID: 150462


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Last view: 2169 days 		See, but I know so very little about electronics. Should I be following the amp rating on the power converter, or just on the tablet itself? I'm assuming the one on the tablet is more important.
But here's what seems to happen:
* Any battery of sufficient voltage/amperage ratings are far too large and/or heavy to be practical
* Any battery of sufficient voltage has far too low amperage to be practical to put many in parallel (119 of these which would also require ~$167)
* Therefore, the only viable option is to find an actual laptop battery that would be compatible. Laptop batteries, on the other hand, are rarely exactly 12v/6.5A. Amps don't matter as long as it's at or above 6.5A, right? Volts on the other hand usually do matter to the almost exact value (I'm pretty sure). But all the voltage regulators I've seen online mention a maximum output of 1A. I know nothing about voltage regulators; can I use 7 in parallel?

stag019
Posted on 05-10-12 01:16 AM (rev. 2 of 05-10-12 01:16 AM) Link | Quote | ID: 150869


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Last view: 2169 days 		I've been using this tablet as my main desktop computer for a while now since my main desktop's hard drive failed. I have the case opened up and my desktop's graphics card in the PCI slot (it's so big I had to move the fan around) so I've still got my 1920x1080 and 1024x768 dual monitor setup working. I've currently got open Process Explorer v11.04 and Opera 11.62 with three tabs, and that alone is consuming 166MB of RAM. Which meant virtual memory, except for I got a new stick of RAM for it. The problem is, it is advertised as 512MB (it said so on eBay, and on the stickers on the stick) but BIOS/Windows only recognizes 256MB of it.

...

What do I do?

MiniCompute
Posted on 05-15-12 04:30 AM (rev. 2 of 05-25-12 06:51 AM) Link | Quote | ID: 150919


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Main - Computing - Lappy019, the "Tablet PC" New thread | New reply

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