Got 3- Dell D810 and one Dell D800 cheap

Two of the D810 boot to bios.  The bios is pretty crude and couldnt get it to boot a usb SSD.  Did get it to boot external usb DVDrom though.  And it would boot LxPup 32bit.  It has 1.73GHz last generation pentium M processor.  Theoretically it could even run 32bit win10 though I wouldnt bet on it.  Meaning last generation M processor, the older M didnt meet requirements for win10.

Other D810, black screen and with external monitor you get scrambled egg display.  So both graphics card and LCD is bad.  Graphics card actually replacable but cost more than buying another D810, same with the LCD.  The D800 has cracked screen.  It wont boot PAE linux, has to be non-PAE 32bit of course.  It has built in cdrom and thats only way to boot it.  None had internal hard drive or the proprietary connector to attach one.  Those available $6 on ebay.  All, even the D800 can take upto 2GB RAM.  This is what makes them still useful.  Oh even worse the D800 has some ancient Nvidia graphics.  Without installing the proprietary Nvidia driver, you get fuzzy wuzzy graphics.  First again dont buy a D800.  If you have one, might try linux called antiX.  It doesnt come with Nvidia proprietary drivers but has a script to make it easy to install them.  I didnt research how easy or hard this is with Puppy since I am not replacing the cracked LCD.  I dont think any larger linux distribution would be worth effort trying to run it on such limited hardware.  

So made me dig around in my pile of old laptops and found HP ZE2000 with single core Sempron 2.8 which means its 1.6GHz. circa 2005.  I think AMD at time was trying to imply this Sempron was as fast as Pentium/Celeron 2.8GHz.  Whatever.  I had played with this sometime in past so it had full 2GB RAM.  In past Xubuntu did sort of ok, better that whatever Puppy I tried.  However Puppy as I used it then with frugal install, meaning it runs in ramdisk and hogs extra 500MB RAM on very RAM starved hardware.  So this time I do full uncompressed install of LxPup to small SSD which doesnt hog this extra RAM, important on computer with limited RAM.  Okie dokie, it boots up.  LxPup comes with Light browser and I could surf ok with it, but Light is based on some old Firefox and newer Firefox extensions wont install.  So download latest 32bit Firefox and Ghostery, selfdestructing cookies.  Amazingly it runs pretty darn well.  Much better than either Xubuntu or Puppy when I tried this in past.  Meaning if you just want light duty way to surf the web and do email and word processing, this could work ok.  I even watched couple youtube videos, lowest resolution but still very watchable.

I assume the D810s probably be similar.  I still wouldnt recommend anybody go buy any 15 year old 32bit computer, but if you have one or somebody gives you one.....  Or if you are really desperate maybe give upto $10 for working one.  These truly arent worth lot further investment.  You can get cheap RAM to max them out off ebay if you can wait for the slow boat from China.  New China RAM about only way, the used stuff tends to be small denominations, was expensive back in the day so few maxed out RAM on these.   And on ebay you see sellers trying to get as much for single core laptop as older two core laptop.  Seriously buy the two core!!!  And make sure it can upgrade to at least 4GB RAM.  Check type RAM and prices!!!!  Some of the really early two core couldnt.  I think days of 32bit systems are waning, even in linux.  64 bit system on any computer with less than 4GB RAM makes little sense, BUT when only 64bit is available down the road, it starts making lot more sense.  Not just 64bit operating system, but lot newer software only available in 64bit.  

Oh and any old computer, its worth taking it apart to where you can put new thermal goo between processor and heat sink (clean surfaces before applying new goo) and either replace or at least blow cobwebs out of the fan and air ducts.  You might also consider replacing the cmos battery while you have it apart.  None of this expensive.  Heat or burst capacitor is what usually does in computer.  Any old computer still booting has beat the odds and even with no further care probably give you some service.  But heat is the greatest enemy of computer longevity.

Still playing with the D810's . Both are kinda of PITA getting stuff to boot. Nothing much wants to boot automatically no matter boot order in the bios. However can get stuff to boot pushing F12 for one time boot menu. I even have Debian 10 booting on small SSD substituting for internal hard drive. Well it would boot, then if you tried rebooting once processor hot, it wouldnt reboot until it cooled. This morning took it apart and new thermal grease between processor and heatsink and cobwebs blown out of the little heat exchanger fan blows air through. That helped a lot. Still have to use F12 to get it to boot but it does boot and runs cooler.

I suspect all computers would benefit from internal cleaning and new thermal goo every four or five years. Pretty sure this one had never been taken apart. And completely dry between processor and heatsink. Probably should failed long ago.

Yea its old but this was a really good design like all the Dell Latitudes from that era. Too bad modern laptops arent that robust. No doubt no manufacturer has any interest in making something that far outlasts its expected lifespan. Back then think idea was since corporations were paying beaucoup dollars this was way to give reliability. I suspect they assumed further hardware innovations would outdate these much as it did hardware in the 90s. Instead it plateaued. Yea modern hardware faster and all but not enough that these cant still be very functional.

It was requiring me to do F12 to get the one time boot menu to boot from internal hard drive. I got to looking closer and in the bios boot order, it had a "1" next to cdrom though that was second in list, no numbers next to any others. Then looking and duh. You not only have to put them in order, but you have to tap space key to confirm it and create number next to it. NO number, no trying to boot from that device.

So I made internal hard drive "1", cdrom "2", and usb drive "3", left the other devices with no number since I dont want to boot from them. Rebooted laptop without pressing F12, and BINGO, it booted to Debian 10 automagically. As always the devil is in the details.

After I did this, vaguely remembered some other old computers with this numbering quirk. Its just that once you have boot order set, you usually dont change it the life of computer unless you are installing or reinstalling operating system. So dont necessarily remember that this is needed.

Will say I give the old laptop credit where its due. Once it was through posting, and when it started booting Debian, took 30 seconds to get to full desktop. I have yet to see any computer cold boot to desktop in less than 15 seconds. Sure some can, but...

Also took lot longer with old slow hard drives. SSD is pretty fast. I am using a small SSD.