How to Upgrade the RAM on a Samsung V25 Laptop

The RAM slots are located underneath the keyboard on this laptop so the first thing you need to do is locate and remove the single screw that is holding the keyboard in place from underneath the laptop as shown here:

You then to press two clips that are holding the keyboard in place as shown here:

 The PC133 RAM can be found under the metal cover which is being held in place with a single screw as shown here:

Running Diagnostics on the Dell Latitude D600 Series of Laptops

Not sure if this works on other newer/older Dell laptops, but on the Dell Latitude D600 I have, you can run the built-in diagnostics by doing the following:

• Hold down the mute button
• Power on the laptop
• Depress the mute button once the diagnostics start to load/run

The 'word on the street' is that on some Dell Laptops it wont automatically run the Diagnostics, instead it will appear on the F12 menu and you can then run it from there.

Do You Have To Match A CMOS/BIOS Battery Exactly?

The short answer is as long as it's the same voltage and you're not replacing a rechargeable version with a non-rechargeable version then it should be fine - as long as it fits that is!

The other day I had a retro laptop that had a dead CR2330 in it and after looking through my (ever growing) collection of new batteries I had everything but the one I wanted!

Thankfully the one I needed to replace was on a lead rather than having to fit in to a socket so I could change it for a similar size battery of the same voltage (3V) as the numbers that make up the battery code are basically its circumfrance and thickness.

How To Replace The IBM ThinkPad 380D (Type 2635) CMOS Battery

On the IBM ThinkPad 380D laptop the CMOS batter for the BIOS is located under the RAM cover on the bottom of the laptop so (after first removing the power cable and the main system battery) you then need to remove the RAM cover found underneath the laptop:

As you can see from the above photo, the CMOS battery is hiding next to the system RAM, it's held in place by some double-sided tape so to remove it all you have to do is unplug the lead and then carefully pull the battery away from the laptop.


You now have 2 options; Option 1: Look on eBay for a replacement or Option 2: Make your own replacement...

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If you chose option 2 then read on...

Now you have removed the CMOS battery, you now need to use a knife or other sharp object to carefully remove the plastic surround of the battery to reveal the terminals connected to the battery:

Using some pliers, very carefully remove the terminals from the battery so you are left with this:

 For the next part you will need some heat-shrink tubing, some conductive tape and a replacement CMOS battery.

Using the conductive tape, secure the red lead to the positive side of the replacement battery and the black lead to the negative side of the battery.

Next you need to cut a small piece of heat-shrink tubing to size and place over the battery.

Using a heat gun (or a soldering iron held very closely) shrink the heat-shrink around the battery - the reason for doing this is to prevent the battery from short-circuiting to any of the metal parts of the laptop.

Now all you need to do is insert the replacement CMOS battery back in to the laptop:

Done!

Todays Car Boot Sale Haul - Laptops and Shuttle PC

This morning (after not going for a few weeks) I woke up early and had an urge to visit my local (all year round) Car Boot Sale and I'm so pleased I did as I came back with this lot:

After haggling I got each laptop for £1.80 and the shuttle for £10 - there's no power supplies with any of the laptops and no hard disk drive in the Shuttle.

Initial tests of the Shuttle (now that I've added a hard disk drive and installed Windows XP Pro on it) show that it seems to be in good working order, although there looked like several decades of dust inside it before I took it outside and air dusted it!   I've already swapped out the optical drive as this one didnt like to boot an OS install disc from it - all I need now is to find a suitable floppy disk drive for it.

Now all I need to do is to dig out the 16V IBM ThinkPad power supplies I got the other month so I can start testing the laptops...