Nice, a Brand New Video on Dell Latitude D600 Series, I Still Have the Dell Latitude D630 Laptop With Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows XP Professional With Service Pack 3
I've got a 620. Nice solid unit. Only problem I have is that I can't seem to find a new battery that holds a charge. (Three so far, Dell branded even. Fortunate it runs without.)
I used a D630 for work, liked it so much I bought my own for personal use, then found a matching dock at Goodwill. The display was great, better than other laptops I'd seen available back then.
I've also been given a few Latitude, Inspiron and Precision laptops that used the modular D/Bay system. I've had a Latitude D600, D610, D630, D810, Precision M60, M70, and an Inspiron 8600. I've since sold those laptops, and really liked the build quality.
I always considered the immediate follow on to these laptops to be the pinnacle for Dell easy serviceability. the E6400 and E6410. They put both ram slots on the bottom, and they made the whole bottom open up with one screw, both ram slots were on the bottom, they still had drive bays, removable batteries, etc.. by the time you got past the E6420 and E6430 dell started going backwards, removing features and discontinuing accessories in the name of making the laptop smaller and lighter...
The Dell Latitude D6x0 series machines are some of my favorite. My main laptop up until earlier this year was a Dell Latitude D610. I loved that machine, the layout and feel was perfect. I got that machine from my elementary school in 2014 and used it on a daily basis for over a decade and it never let me down. I wasn't nice to it either, it got thrown into bags and tossed around quite a bit. Sadly, a few months back the motherboard gave out on it, but it certainly was the best laptop I have ever had. I would buy another one, but at this point they are considered "vintage," and are going for more than I want to pay for a 20 year old laptop that I would probably only get a few more years out of before having to get something more powerful. I am currently using a Thinkpad T60 as it is a similar size and has a 4:3 display which I much prefer to 16:9, but the rubberized coating on those bothers me because it is so easy to mess up.
It's been awhile since you put a video out, I hope everything is ok there. If you look at your views, you'll see that vintage tower pcs get the most---I too wouldn't mind seeing a new video on one of those. I hope your holidays season is awesome :)
This makes me want to get back into my dad's Fujitsu Lifebook which is of similar vintage. I upgraded the RAM to 4(?) GB and gave it an SSD. It currently has Windows 10. I think I had considered replacing the CPU but never did. Until a couple years ago my dad was using it run Quicken and check email, but now it's buried under piles of stuff. Thanks for the inspiration.
You do need to be careful with the batteries though, I know some overheat if you attempt to charge them. Some will refuse to charge but if you remove and re-insert the battery it'll begin charging if it can.
Googled "how to bypass bios password" and Dell was the first result. LOL! I'm confident you can find a way around/through that though. It would be cool to see a video of you harvesting parts to build a fully functional laptop. I bet that last one with the bad monitor has a bad cable because that's exactly what my Dell laptop did.
It depends on the type of password as to how easy it can be bypassed. It might be possible to remove a BIOS password by removing all power to the laptop and shorting a couple of pins on the motherboard, I even have an older Toshiba laptop with a parallel port on it that allowed me to clear the BIOS password by making ap a parallel port "dongle" that just connected some pins to each other. If it's truly BIOS locked then the only way to bypass it would be to get to the BIOS chip on the motherboard and either swap it with an identical one that isn't locked or use an EEPROM programmer to flash an unlocked BIOS onto it.
Yeah I had a lot of these older machine where that flex test I did in the video sometimes altered the visuals. Either way, it will be fun to harvest all of the good parts and make a really nice machine.
@@TheRetroRecall I have a few older Dell laptops but not one of these - but I am equating it to the Thinkpad T61 which must be from around the same time given the similar specifications and the only way you'll remove a true BIOS lock from a Thinkpad T61 is using an EEPROM programmer, which you can technically build yourself with a Raspberry Pi and a serial programmer using a "croc clip" that connects onto the 8 legs of the BIOS chip. To be perfectly honest, that then takes you to a point where you think about how valuable your time is anyway, especially when you can probably pick up a used motherboard for around $30, and just replace that. But kudos to the clever people that do the BIOS reprogramming - there's quite a few videos on YT about it.
I had a dell vostro 1000 laptop not working correctly just powering on then no screen tryed out all the memory and still nothing working. A member of the public on the Freecycle site given me these. When I got them I had to rebuild the whole thing lots of piece of laptop parts everywhere what fun that was. Thanks again Paul
Honestly I would love to see if each these machines can be restored if possible. The Dell Latitude D600 Series are just amazing laptops and I would love to share as many these with future generations. I used to have a D630 and a D830 and they were just outstanding machines. I loved those machines and I wished I kept them but I had to give them back when my company was upgrading to the ThinkPad T420. I recently obtained Dell's competitor, the ThinkPad T61 which works but needs a new fan. Good luck with the BIOS passwords as those were a complete nightmare to remove and also LCD screens that have a pink or yellow hue to them is usually a sign that either the CCFL bulb(s) or the inverter board are going out. I had to replace the CCFL bulbs on a Dell Inspiron laptop due to the pink hue.
These D-series laptops are still available in working condition from Ebay and other resellers, frequently for less than $100. Scrap the hard drive, and install a SATA III SSD (up to 1TB works great). Makes that little Core2Duo just hum right along. If your business model requires an RS-232C serial port, you can't go wrong with one of these as long as it has an Intel GPU. I had forgotten about the inverter board, but, yeah, you're quite right: that is another source of the trouble.
Nice video! I have one D630 Core Duo.( Not a Core 2) This one miss the some parts, but still running with a 32gb ssd and XP and i use for led panel programming with RS232.
I really love the old 16650 UART 9 PIN SERIAL PORT hardware The best are the laptops with a USB port that will boot from USB A CD or DVD drive will work in a pinch too Being able to boot into real MS DOS 6.22 is critical For any two-way radio made before the late 90s, you need a real hardware serial port and the ability to boot DOS and run the Radio Service Software to program them And the Kenwood HTs and mobiles and the Motorola HTs and mobiles are solid like tanks. Even 35 years later they still work solid And with the adapters, you can take an IBM Thinkpad and get a docking station and have 2 serial ports and USB ports and other ports. The biggest issue was when I first bought them they didn't make any new PCMCIA hard drives any more. About 2 years after I bought them, and I was able to boot using USB to DOS, but I saw what they advertised as new Toshiba PCMCIA hard drives They look brand new. I think they are 40 GB But then I saw an M.2 SSD to PCMCIA adapter It has a PCMCIA connection on the one side to plug into the laptop and the other side was an M.2 slot and I put in a 128 GB M.2 SSD and I was able to boot using the Windows 7 32 Bit install DVD. It was a special version that I think is for embedded industrial applications, like I saw this version in a coal fired power plant that originally ran Windows 3.1 and 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and finally they were using Windows 7 when they shut down. The hardware they were using was 32 Bit I saw grocery stores that used a lot of parallel and serial cables through the store and they needed 32 Bit OS The XPe version is what I saw on a 1 GB CF card in one plant. The used to call these versions embedded and were on CF cards or other special cards or drives. One system used PCMCIA hard drives and they would just swap them for upgrades. I don't know if they made a Windows 8 or 8.1 32-bit OS I know getting the Windows 7 32 Bit OS was not easy. I was able to copy the directories from the power plant panel USB and screen keyboard. I remember MS said XP would be the last 32 Bit OS, but they made Vista and Windows 7 Most of the older laptops that had the 9 PIN hardware serial port were 32 Bit Because of the way the hardware is in the radios and the way the serial port queries the radio, you can't use a USB to 9 PIN serial adapter I have never seen anyone go through the work to see what hex code is actually being sent out to the radio It uses the mic and speaker to communicate and the cable has a special chip, maybe a TTL converter, that takes the serial commands and prompts and send the data to the radio, slowly. One of the issues is that the DOS software only allows you to select port 1 or 2 and they have to be the 3F8 or 2F8 and IRQ 3 or 4 that matches the DOS default. The other big deal is that it must be a clean DOS boot For whatever reason the software will not run using DOS on top of XP or anything else. When I was programming the radios every day in the 90s I had the awesome Boot Magic and Partition Magic with PQ Boot I had 8 different partitions with the DOS boots and Win 3.1 and 95 and 98 and 98SE and a couple drive D for the different DOS boots I was able to boot 98SE and get files from the server and load them into a D drive to be able to run them in DOS Partition Magic and Boot Magic were really great. I used them a lot. I have brand new Kenwood TK-250 and TK-350s My biggest issue is that they have not made the KDM-7 DTMF keypad kit in 30 years and I really need them. I bought 3 from Italy and 1 didn't work, not sure why. I installed the second one and it works great and the 3rd one I have hoping I can find a PCB creator and 3D printer that could duplicate the keypad and the film PCB that has the pads the keypad pushes to make the DTMF work.
Nice. Yeah these older systems are worth their weight in gold for some of their ports in use in industrial applications. USB converters don't always work.
I used to have a Dell D430 which was basically the "ultrabook" version sans the optical drive and while I loved it that thing got so insanely hot all the time and would throttle like crazy, tried replacing the thermal pads and fan, cleaning out dust etc but nothing! Maybe i'll pick up a D630 for funsies to play around with
Nice. I used a $50 D620 my first 2 years in college back in 2014 to get me buy when my laptop my parents bought me croaked. Core 2 Duo T7600 (later upgraded to a T9600 which fried the motherboard) 4GB ram and I started on a 160GB hard drisk but largely used a 120GB PNY ssd in it. I had a dual boot with Windows 7 + Windows 10 for awhile, and just as I started into Linux (and ran the Windwos 7 plus linux dual boot) I upgraded the CPU and fried the motherboard... nvidia graphics of DOOM! overheated and it was unfortunate. I had all the options for mine though due to buying alot of parts machines - bluetooth, fingerprint reader, cellular, webcam, higher res screen the works. I remember a kid using it in shop and trashed my keyboard while typing in with greesy gloves and he was scared I would be mad.... I just poped my keyboard off, tossed it in the trash and hooked up a USB keyboard - told him to keep working. When I stopped by the university surplus I picked up another parts rig that I used to fix that one and repeat.
For work I refurbished a Siemens centrino duo, for backup PC an print label. With mint and suspend to disk boot in 30-40 second. I changed bios battery only. It's slow but work. Only problem a error to network card, but work. And SO see only 3 gb of 4 of ram. I not spend much time for it. For me core duo is usable, but I suggest buy it, with same money can buy 1 or 2 gen
My Inspiron 600M had an internal battery, and thankfully my Lenovo X220 has the battery at the rear, helpfully elevating the keyboard LOL After six years, in 2010, I replaced the 600M's backlight and inverter via ebay for $28 CAD.
I think you should do a combination of restoring as many as possible, but for the BIOS locked one you might be able to reset it by removing the battery and then powering it on without the battery. If that does not work you might be able to replace the BIOS chip as they should be readily available, but ensure its for the same exact model. I mentioned in a previous video that I was getting a laptop from my Dad where the keyboard was having issues with some of the keys. I picked it up yesterday and it's a Toshiba Satellite C660-10D with an Intel T4500 2.30GHz dual-core CPU that's from 2010, and did originally run Windows 7. When I changed the HDD back in 2019 after the old one was not working properly I must have upgraded the RAM as it's got two 2GB DDR2 sticks. My Dad even still had the user manual for it which surprised me. So I took out the HDD as it's got his private info on it. I'm gonna look up what I can upgrade the CPU to, and see if I can get some 4GB DDR2 laptop modules if they are available, and probably put in a 256GB SSD. I won't do that until I can find a replacement keyboard. I'll also have to search the web archive to see if anyone has uploaded the Windows 7 Home Premium restore disks to make it easier to restore the system as I never created them when my parents got them. As always another great video, and look forward to the next.
Make the best computer you can out of the parts you got, that´s how I been doing it with computers since mid 90s to get even usable computers myself. you should see the most actively used laptop I got, an HP Pavilion G6 i3, the keys are not even worn on that, it has mirror finish on the keys! with glass smooth surface. you can even read text on the screen by looking at the correct angle of that now shiny keyboard!
Parts computers are useful and you could probably make two complete and working laptops from that job lot, hopefully the more powerful CPUs., will be transferable.
Advanced troubleshooting... Remove CD/DVD drive, remove audio and trackpad cable from palm rest that connects to motherboard...Disconnect antenna from Wi-Fi card and remove Wi-Fi card, also remove modem card and bluetooth card...Also remove battery...Hook up to external monitor...If nothing on the screen swap memory from one bank to the other and put in a lower ram stick...If still nothing on the screen, replace CPU with a known working CPU...And don't forget to remove cmos battery for 30 seconds...One last trick, swap a known working keyboard to see if that is preventing it from starting up... I know because I have several D531 laptops that I leave on all the time...Sometimes a device gets stuck in memory and shuts down the computer...
i would do both make one really good one and with the leftover parts make as many as i can of the others at least functional even if they wont look amazing
Dell laptops follow the same principle as intel CPU progression. The first model is a major redesign. Then the next is a minor update with some color changes. This is followed by another major redesigned. They have followed this up to the current day. The D620/D630 are so hard to tell apart because of this.
I got 3 D610s from the trash bin, and it appears that I can save two of them. I can max out the processor at a Pentium M 780 (2.25 GHz) and the Memory (2 GB of DDR2-533). For the drive, it takes the old Parallel ATA, so I picked up an adapter and it seems to work. Now I'm trying to get Windows 7 pro to activate! (In theory, it can handle Win 10, but it would be so slow) Now just need to replace the CMOS battery.
I hope that all of these don't have the Nvidia BGA video chips that were the subject of a class action suit a while back. They really are hit or miss. I have a D620 with an Intel i810 that is just rock solid. (I also have two Precision M4300 laptops, which are based on the D830 chassis. One of them has a bad GPU...) Batteries, keyboard, case plastics, and other parts are still available for these if you know where to look... (search parts-people ). I used to support a fleet of D6xx and D8xx laptops for engineering applications that required serial (RS-232C) comms. They are generally very easy to tear down and repair once the problem is identified. (I have the Dell service manuals on file if you have trouble finding them.) Stay away from the D400-series unless you know where you're getting your parts (they have a really oddball configuration... a 1.8 inch hard drive, just for starters...) If you have a D620 (the 32-bit little sister), it can be upgraded to 64 bit by a processor upgrade. The T7500 Core2Duo is a drop in replacement for the CoreDuo on the D620. Password resets? You might try bios-pw.org/ ... You will need the unit's serial number/service tag. That orange-ish screen may be having an incipient backlight failure... (Backlight replacement is tricky, and involves soldering/desoldering, a fine blade X-acto knife, and some foil tape. Much simpler to just replace the panel... hopefully replacing a 1280x800 with a 1440x900 super-bright.) When you get a black screen like that, use a flashlight on the screen to see if it's displaying but the backlight has failed. Reflected light will give you a dim but readable view of the screen. Get in the BIOS and set it to duplicate the screen by default - then your external monitor should work if the GPU is not shot. The battery has a charge and condition indicator built-in: press the button and look at the LEDs. Hold the switch while you're looking and they will eventually go out or show a different number of LEDs that indicate the battery's condition (the fewer LEDs lit when the shift occurs, the better the battery condition).
@@TheRetroRecall Hey, you run a professional channel. You're worth it. If you can find it, get a copy of Falcon Four 4.61 or ERD Commander 2007. Very useful rescue and repair disks for Windows. (Especially the Locksmith utility...) Psst... these little lappies will _fly_ running a good Linux distro.
The 630 has a firewire port and the 620 does not, and the firewire port is next to the headphone & microphone. That's how you can tell if it's a 620 or a 630 without even opening the lid.
You should be able to remove the CPU from the one with the locked BIOS and put it into one of the others as an upgrade, since they are all the same series.
These machines are severely limited in terms of RAM as the machines only use around 3.3GB due to a chipset limitation. I have personally ran many variants of 10 and 11 on my D820 and can tell you personally 11 is much too resource heavy for these to run any bit reasonable for anything more than a "I can do it just because" kinda thing. Although yes it IS possible to run, Id recommend against it from a usability standpoint
I had mine at 6gb of memory for sure. 8 should be possible (even though the specs may say it. Isn't possible) . I would stay to a max of Windows 10 personally or a Linux distro.
@@TheRetroRecall I was unaware any of these having the rare chipset allowing more than 2x2gb DDR2. If anything I could see the system recognizing it but as for utilizing it I dont personally think any of those actually did. Correct me if wrong though. Also my D820 runs Win10 LTSB so it keeps resource use down. Still a great machine for internet browsing and light youtube.
Man hard to call these retro.. the weird thing? Dell still used this charger standard on the laptops until the 5410 series. (Intel 10th gen I3/i5/i7). Dell still uses this charger standard to power some desktops and the USB-C docks)
@@TheRetroRecall Man the amount of accessories I tossed away from these. But I kept one of the floppy drive bay. Dell had wisely put a USB port on it so you could use the floppy and and DVD at the same time. I had scores of docks, stands, and even the large sized dock. The rare large sized dock had a place for another drive bay and a desktop PCI card, it also had a internal power supply.
I have a d600 its one of my all time favorite laptop upgraded it to 2gbs of ram for windows xp its more than enough , it dose need a new battery though
@@TheRetroRecall I have several programs that to either blank out the password or you have to interact with to generate a "master" password then you can clear out the password.
I have a Dell precision m4300 that is I think a rebranded d620 with a different aluminum lid? Not sure but I have it and its design is very similar to the D series shown in this video. The keyboard on mine feels awesome and it's one of my favorites. I upgraded mine from 2gb to 4gb of ram and from a core 2 duo t7500 to a t7700. It's currently running vista on its original hard drive. Mine is also in pretty good condition. Although I wish I could get the Quadro graphics to work on Windows xp.
no WAY! i have 2 D630 Too But Was Propety of School California because sticker.. so i restored to windows Vista extended kernel and the other windows xp extended kernel..
Ah yes, the confusing Intel Centrino branding. A Centrino branded laptop should have an Intel CPU (probably a Core Duo or 2 Duo, the Intel chipset and a Intel Wireless card.
Nice, a Brand New Video on Dell Latitude D600 Series, I Still Have the Dell Latitude D630 Laptop With Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows XP Professional With Service Pack 3
Nice! They are a great machine.
@@TheRetroRecall yep, in fact I did a laptop overview video on the Dell latitude d630 recently, it's still available on my RUclips channel.
Yup, I saw it!
I've got a 620. Nice solid unit. Only problem I have is that I can't seem to find a new battery that holds a charge. (Three so far, Dell branded even. Fortunate it runs without.)
I used a D630 for work, liked it so much I bought my own for personal use, then found a matching dock at Goodwill. The display was great, better than other laptops I'd seen available back then.
They were a really good, tough machine. I have my dock somewhere around here as well.
That PR01X dock is a rock-solid accessory, and makes life with a D-series laptop a lot easier.
Great video as usual! I'd personally love to see you combine the best bits of them all to build the best machine you can from them.
I've also been given a few Latitude, Inspiron and Precision laptops that used the modular D/Bay system. I've had a Latitude D600, D610, D630, D810, Precision M60, M70, and an Inspiron 8600. I've since sold those laptops, and really liked the build quality.
I agree - I also thought it was quite. A nice feature. I found this gennof systems were quite sleek at the time.
I always considered the immediate follow on to these laptops to be the pinnacle for Dell easy serviceability. the E6400 and E6410. They put both ram slots on the bottom, and they made the whole bottom open up with one screw, both ram slots were on the bottom, they still had drive bays, removable batteries, etc.. by the time you got past the E6420 and E6430 dell started going backwards, removing features and discontinuing accessories in the name of making the laptop smaller and lighter...
Yes it's unfortunate especially for us enthusiasts. I guess it all comes down to the bottom line.
The Dell Latitude D6x0 series machines are some of my favorite. My main laptop up until earlier this year was a Dell Latitude D610. I loved that machine, the layout and feel was perfect. I got that machine from my elementary school in 2014 and used it on a daily basis for over a decade and it never let me down. I wasn't nice to it either, it got thrown into bags and tossed around quite a bit. Sadly, a few months back the motherboard gave out on it, but it certainly was the best laptop I have ever had.
I would buy another one, but at this point they are considered "vintage," and are going for more than I want to pay for a 20 year old laptop that I would probably only get a few more years out of before having to get something more powerful. I am currently using a Thinkpad T60 as it is a similar size and has a 4:3 display which I much prefer to 16:9, but the rubberized coating on those bothers me because it is so easy to mess up.
Nice and yes, those coating are a pain, however they can be removed with some IPA and elbow grease haha.
It's been awhile since you put a video out, I hope everything is ok there. If you look at your views, you'll see that vintage tower pcs get the most---I too wouldn't mind seeing a new video on one of those. I hope your holidays season is awesome :)
I hope YOU'RE doing awesome.
I am!!!! Thank you!!!!!
This makes me want to get back into my dad's Fujitsu Lifebook which is of similar vintage. I upgraded the RAM to 4(?) GB and gave it an SSD. It currently has Windows 10. I think I had considered replacing the CPU but never did. Until a couple years ago my dad was using it run Quicken and check email, but now it's buried under piles of stuff. Thanks for the inspiration.
I have about 30 of these and I just love how durable they are.
You do need to be careful with the batteries though, I know some overheat if you attempt to charge them. Some will refuse to charge but if you remove and re-insert the battery it'll begin charging if it can.
100% agree!
Yeah, I do remember mine being picky. I'll be mindful of that.
Googled "how to bypass bios password" and Dell was the first result. LOL! I'm confident you can find a way around/through that though. It would be cool to see a video of you harvesting parts to build a fully functional laptop. I bet that last one with the bad monitor has a bad cable because that's exactly what my Dell laptop did.
It depends on the type of password as to how easy it can be bypassed. It might be possible to remove a BIOS password by removing all power to the laptop and shorting a couple of pins on the motherboard, I even have an older Toshiba laptop with a parallel port on it that allowed me to clear the BIOS password by making ap a parallel port "dongle" that just connected some pins to each other.
If it's truly BIOS locked then the only way to bypass it would be to get to the BIOS chip on the motherboard and either swap it with an identical one that isn't locked or use an EEPROM programmer to flash an unlocked BIOS onto it.
Yeah I had a lot of these older machine where that flex test I did in the video sometimes altered the visuals. Either way, it will be fun to harvest all of the good parts and make a really nice machine.
There is always a way :). Someone else suggested Hirens boot cd, I'll have to check that out.
@@TheRetroRecall It'll be nice to see you bring it back to life. You definitely have the resources to do it.
@@TheRetroRecall I have a few older Dell laptops but not one of these - but I am equating it to the Thinkpad T61 which must be from around the same time given the similar specifications and the only way you'll remove a true BIOS lock from a Thinkpad T61 is using an EEPROM programmer, which you can technically build yourself with a Raspberry Pi and a serial programmer using a "croc clip" that connects onto the 8 legs of the BIOS chip.
To be perfectly honest, that then takes you to a point where you think about how valuable your time is anyway, especially when you can probably pick up a used motherboard for around $30, and just replace that.
But kudos to the clever people that do the BIOS reprogramming - there's quite a few videos on YT about it.
I had a dell vostro 1000 laptop not working correctly just powering on then no screen tryed out all the memory and still nothing working. A member of the public on the Freecycle site given me these. When I got them I had to rebuild the whole thing lots of piece of laptop parts everywhere what fun that was. Thanks again Paul
Honestly I would love to see if each these machines can be restored if possible. The Dell Latitude D600 Series are just amazing laptops and I would love to share as many these with future generations. I used to have a D630 and a D830 and they were just outstanding machines. I loved those machines and I wished I kept them but I had to give them back when my company was upgrading to the ThinkPad T420.
I recently obtained Dell's competitor, the ThinkPad T61 which works but needs a new fan.
Good luck with the BIOS passwords as those were a complete nightmare to remove and also LCD screens that have a pink or yellow hue to them is usually a sign that either the CCFL bulb(s) or the inverter board are going out. I had to replace the CCFL bulbs on a Dell Inspiron laptop due to the pink hue.
These D-series laptops are still available in working condition from Ebay and other resellers, frequently for less than $100. Scrap the hard drive, and install a SATA III SSD (up to 1TB works great). Makes that little Core2Duo just hum right along.
If your business model requires an RS-232C serial port, you can't go wrong with one of these as long as it has an Intel GPU.
I had forgotten about the inverter board, but, yeah, you're quite right: that is another source of the trouble.
Nice video I have a dell latitude D505 and a D510 and a D610 I have done a few videos on the D505. They are very solid laptops
They are!
Nice video! I have one D630 Core Duo.( Not a Core 2) This one miss the some parts, but still running with a 32gb ssd and XP and i use for led panel programming with RS232.
Who needs some old Centrino Duo book ?
Keep them as a museum ? Nice you have enough parts to keep the original alife ;)
Hahah no one 'Needs' there lol, but they are fun :)
I really love the old 16650 UART 9 PIN SERIAL PORT hardware
The best are the laptops with a USB port that will boot from USB
A CD or DVD drive will work in a pinch too
Being able to boot into real MS DOS 6.22 is critical
For any two-way radio made before the late 90s, you need a real hardware serial port and the ability to boot DOS and run the Radio Service Software to program them
And the Kenwood HTs and mobiles and the Motorola HTs and mobiles are solid like tanks.
Even 35 years later they still work solid
And with the adapters, you can take an IBM Thinkpad and get a docking station and have 2 serial ports and USB ports and other ports.
The biggest issue was when I first bought them they didn't make any new PCMCIA hard drives any more.
About 2 years after I bought them, and I was able to boot using USB to DOS, but I saw what they advertised as new Toshiba PCMCIA hard drives
They look brand new. I think they are 40 GB
But then I saw an M.2 SSD to PCMCIA adapter
It has a PCMCIA connection on the one side to plug into the laptop and the other side was an M.2 slot and I put in a 128 GB M.2 SSD and I was able to boot using the Windows 7 32 Bit install DVD.
It was a special version that I think is for embedded industrial applications, like I saw this version in a coal fired power plant that originally ran Windows 3.1 and 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and finally they were using Windows 7 when they shut down.
The hardware they were using was 32 Bit
I saw grocery stores that used a lot of parallel and serial cables through the store and they needed 32 Bit OS
The XPe version is what I saw on a 1 GB CF card in one plant.
The used to call these versions embedded and were on CF cards or other special cards or drives.
One system used PCMCIA hard drives and they would just swap them for upgrades.
I don't know if they made a Windows 8 or 8.1 32-bit OS
I know getting the Windows 7 32 Bit OS was not easy. I was able to copy the directories from the power plant panel USB and screen keyboard.
I remember MS said XP would be the last 32 Bit OS, but they made Vista and Windows 7
Most of the older laptops that had the 9 PIN hardware serial port were 32 Bit
Because of the way the hardware is in the radios and the way the serial port queries the radio, you can't use a USB to 9 PIN serial adapter
I have never seen anyone go through the work to see what hex code is actually being sent out to the radio
It uses the mic and speaker to communicate and the cable has a special chip, maybe a TTL converter, that takes the serial commands and prompts and send the data to the radio, slowly.
One of the issues is that the DOS software only allows you to select port 1 or 2 and they have to be the 3F8 or 2F8 and IRQ 3 or 4 that matches the DOS default.
The other big deal is that it must be a clean DOS boot
For whatever reason the software will not run using DOS on top of XP or anything else.
When I was programming the radios every day in the 90s I had the awesome Boot Magic and Partition Magic with PQ Boot
I had 8 different partitions with the DOS boots and Win 3.1 and 95 and 98 and 98SE and a couple drive D for the different DOS boots
I was able to boot 98SE and get files from the server and load them into a D drive to be able to run them in DOS
Partition Magic and Boot Magic were really great. I used them a lot.
I have brand new Kenwood TK-250 and TK-350s
My biggest issue is that they have not made the KDM-7 DTMF keypad kit in 30 years and I really need them.
I bought 3 from Italy and 1 didn't work, not sure why. I installed the second one and it works great and the 3rd one I have hoping I can find a PCB creator and 3D printer that could duplicate the keypad and the film PCB that has the pads the keypad pushes to make the DTMF work.
Nice. Yeah these older systems are worth their weight in gold for some of their ports in use in industrial applications. USB converters don't always work.
You definitely need an SSD for Windows 10. Good to see at least 2 of them are working & bootable. I'd like to see those onboard diagnostics going!
Sounds good! I think we will do that when we work to combine everything into one system.
I used to have a Dell D430 which was basically the "ultrabook" version sans the optical drive and while I loved it that thing got so insanely hot all the time and would throttle like crazy, tried replacing the thermal pads and fan, cleaning out dust etc but nothing! Maybe i'll pick up a D630 for funsies to play around with
You won't be disappointed!
Nice. I used a $50 D620 my first 2 years in college back in 2014 to get me buy when my laptop my parents bought me croaked. Core 2 Duo T7600 (later upgraded to a T9600 which fried the motherboard) 4GB ram and I started on a 160GB hard drisk but largely used a 120GB PNY ssd in it. I had a dual boot with Windows 7 + Windows 10 for awhile, and just as I started into Linux (and ran the Windwos 7 plus linux dual boot) I upgraded the CPU and fried the motherboard... nvidia graphics of DOOM! overheated and it was unfortunate. I had all the options for mine though due to buying alot of parts machines - bluetooth, fingerprint reader, cellular, webcam, higher res screen the works. I remember a kid using it in shop and trashed my keyboard while typing in with greesy gloves and he was scared I would be mad.... I just poped my keyboard off, tossed it in the trash and hooked up a USB keyboard - told him to keep working. When I stopped by the university surplus I picked up another parts rig that I used to fix that one and repeat.
Dude.. YOU'RE GETTING A DELL!!
Hahah yes!!!
For work I refurbished a Siemens centrino duo, for backup PC an print label. With mint and suspend to disk boot in 30-40 second. I changed bios battery only. It's slow but work. Only problem a error to network card, but work. And SO see only 3 gb of 4 of ram. I not spend much time for it. For me core duo is usable, but I suggest buy it, with same money can buy 1 or 2 gen
Oh for sure. However if you find these machines in the wild, it's nice to tinker with them!
My Inspiron 600M had an internal battery, and thankfully my Lenovo X220 has the battery at the rear, helpfully elevating the keyboard LOL
After six years, in 2010, I replaced the 600M's backlight and inverter via ebay for $28 CAD.
Nice!!
I think you should do a combination of restoring as many as possible, but for the BIOS locked one you might be able to reset it by removing the battery and then powering it on without the battery. If that does not work you might be able to replace the BIOS chip as they should be readily available, but ensure its for the same exact model.
I mentioned in a previous video that I was getting a laptop from my Dad where the keyboard was having issues with some of the keys. I picked it up yesterday and it's a Toshiba Satellite C660-10D with an Intel T4500 2.30GHz dual-core CPU that's from 2010, and did originally run Windows 7. When I changed the HDD back in 2019 after the old one was not working properly I must have upgraded the RAM as it's got two 2GB DDR2 sticks. My Dad even still had the user manual for it which surprised me. So I took out the HDD as it's got his private info on it. I'm gonna look up what I can upgrade the CPU to, and see if I can get some 4GB DDR2 laptop modules if they are available, and probably put in a 256GB SSD. I won't do that until I can find a replacement keyboard. I'll also have to search the web archive to see if anyone has uploaded the Windows 7 Home Premium restore disks to make it easier to restore the system as I never created them when my parents got them. As always another great video, and look forward to the next.
Thanks, good luck on your build. It's always a good time.
Amazing Dell Laptops I got windows 10 on there and no problems awesome model
I use to have a D600 but not any more but I do have a D820
Nice!!
I see Dell Latitude D6*0 in the title, I give like. Also, I would go with #2 and put the better CPU and RAM on it.
Thanks!!
Make the best computer you can out of the parts you got, that´s how I been doing it with computers since mid 90s to get even usable computers myself. you should see the most actively used laptop I got, an HP Pavilion G6 i3, the keys are not even worn on that, it has mirror finish on the keys! with glass smooth surface. you can even read text on the screen by looking at the correct angle of that now shiny keyboard!
Parts computers are useful and you could probably make two complete and working laptops from that job lot, hopefully the more powerful CPUs., will be transferable.
I believe we will be good as I think they are drop on.
hirens boot cd can unlock the bios.. and if not you can reflash the bios that will delete the bios password !!!
Appreciate it!!
Oh,i had D600,nice one it was.
Advanced troubleshooting...
Remove CD/DVD drive, remove audio and trackpad cable from palm rest that connects to motherboard...Disconnect antenna from Wi-Fi card and remove Wi-Fi card, also remove modem card and bluetooth card...Also remove battery...Hook up to external monitor...If nothing on the screen swap memory from one bank to the other and put in a lower ram stick...If still nothing on the screen, replace CPU with a known working CPU...And don't forget to remove cmos battery for 30 seconds...One last trick, swap a known working keyboard to see if that is preventing it from starting up...
I know because I have several D531 laptops that I leave on all the time...Sometimes a device gets stuck in memory and shuts down the computer...
deoxit or similar is also recommended (GHOSTING IS CENSORSHIP)
i would do both make one really good one and with the leftover parts make as many as i can of the others at least functional even if they wont look amazing
I'd love to find a few spare Inspiron 6400 for parts etc for my two machine's
Yeah, they are getting harder to find, unless you can find some at a thrift store or online marketplace.
@TheRetroRecall seems that way indeed. I imagine part of it is probably alot if not most of them have been scrapped and recycled
Dell laptops follow the same principle as intel CPU progression. The first model is a major redesign. Then the next is a minor update with some color changes. This is followed by another major redesigned. They have followed this up to the current day. The D620/D630 are so hard to tell apart because of this.
100%
I got 3 D610s from the trash bin, and it appears that I can save two of them. I can max out the processor at a Pentium M 780 (2.25 GHz) and the Memory (2 GB of DDR2-533). For the drive, it takes the old Parallel ATA, so I picked up an adapter and it seems to work. Now I'm trying to get Windows 7 pro to activate! (In theory, it can handle Win 10, but it would be so slow) Now just need to replace the CMOS battery.
I would restore one to top specs and try to restore one or two more with the other parts
Agreed!
Yup, I would do the same!
I hope that all of these don't have the Nvidia BGA video chips that were the subject of a class action suit a while back. They really are hit or miss. I have a D620 with an Intel i810 that is just rock solid. (I also have two Precision M4300 laptops, which are based on the D830 chassis. One of them has a bad GPU...) Batteries, keyboard, case plastics, and other parts are still available for these if you know where to look... (search parts-people ).
I used to support a fleet of D6xx and D8xx laptops for engineering applications that required serial (RS-232C) comms. They are generally very easy to tear down and repair once the problem is identified. (I have the Dell service manuals on file if you have trouble finding them.) Stay away from the D400-series unless you know where you're getting your parts (they have a really oddball configuration... a 1.8 inch hard drive, just for starters...)
If you have a D620 (the 32-bit little sister), it can be upgraded to 64 bit by a processor upgrade. The T7500 Core2Duo is a drop in replacement for the CoreDuo on the D620.
Password resets? You might try bios-pw.org/ ... You will need the unit's serial number/service tag.
That orange-ish screen may be having an incipient backlight failure... (Backlight replacement is tricky, and involves soldering/desoldering, a fine blade X-acto knife, and some foil tape. Much simpler to just replace the panel... hopefully replacing a 1280x800 with a 1440x900 super-bright.)
When you get a black screen like that, use a flashlight on the screen to see if it's displaying but the backlight has failed. Reflected light will give you a dim but readable view of the screen.
Get in the BIOS and set it to duplicate the screen by default - then your external monitor should work if the GPU is not shot.
The battery has a charge and condition indicator built-in: press the button and look at the LEDs. Hold the switch while you're looking and they will eventually go out or show a different number of LEDs that indicate the battery's condition (the fewer LEDs lit when the shift occurs, the better the battery condition).
Thank you for all of this, lots of great info which is quite helpful. Thanks for sending along that link!
@@TheRetroRecall Hey, you run a professional channel. You're worth it. If you can find it, get a copy of Falcon Four 4.61 or ERD Commander 2007. Very useful rescue and repair disks for Windows. (Especially the Locksmith utility...)
Psst... these little lappies will _fly_ running a good Linux distro.
The 630 has a firewire port and the 620 does not, and the firewire port is next to the headphone & microphone. That's how you can tell if it's a 620 or a 630 without even opening the lid.
Thanks!
You should be able to remove the CPU from the one with the locked BIOS and put it into one of the others as an upgrade, since they are all the same series.
Yes 100%!
I think you should try to restore each machine and what's not really working, it will serve as parts.
Yeah, i think unlocking the BIOS will help jumpstart the process and see where we land.
YOU COULD DO THE WINDOWS 11 THROUGH RUFUS
These machines are severely limited in terms of RAM as the machines only use around 3.3GB due to a chipset limitation. I have personally ran many variants of 10 and 11 on my D820 and can tell you personally 11 is much too resource heavy for these to run any bit reasonable for anything more than a "I can do it just because" kinda thing. Although yes it IS possible to run, Id recommend against it from a usability standpoint
I had mine at 6gb of memory for sure. 8 should be possible (even though the specs may say it. Isn't possible) . I would stay to a max of Windows 10 personally or a Linux distro.
Yeah, it is technically possible, however I wouldn't go further than 10.
@@TheRetroRecall I was unaware any of these having the rare chipset allowing more than 2x2gb DDR2. If anything I could see the system recognizing it but as for utilizing it I dont personally think any of those actually did. Correct me if wrong though. Also my D820 runs Win10 LTSB so it keeps resource use down. Still a great machine for internet browsing and light youtube.
Man hard to call these retro.. the weird thing? Dell still used this charger standard on the laptops until the 5410 series. (Intel 10th gen I3/i5/i7). Dell still uses this charger standard to power some desktops and the USB-C docks)
100%! And yeah, time is flying.
@@TheRetroRecall Man the amount of accessories I tossed away from these. But I kept one of the floppy drive bay. Dell had wisely put a USB port on it so you could use the floppy and and DVD at the same time. I had scores of docks, stands, and even the large sized dock. The rare large sized dock had a place for another drive bay and a desktop PCI card, it also had a internal power supply.
I did not know that. That would have been a perfect idea - having a USB port built right in, shared workload.
I have a d600 its one of my all time favorite laptop upgraded it to 2gbs of ram for windows xp its more than enough , it dose need a new battery though
Yeah the batteries always went in time. It's a great machine and I'm glad to hear you still have yours!
Dude you got Dells !
Hahaha so many Dell's!
@@TheRetroRecall i'm probably getting another dell work station :)
Nice!! They are built well, make sure to check those capacitors.
@@TheRetroRecall the workstation i was fixing doesn't work but i got parts from it
I used to repair and resell Dell laptops I bought from eBay, I learned how to bypass the BIOS lock. Every one I got, there was no hard drive.........
What did you do to bypass the lock?
@@TheRetroRecall I have several programs that to either blank out the password or you have to interact with to generate a "master" password then you can clear out the password.
@@johnpendleton1647Full information and links would be helpful for the community.
Agreed.
Which programs are they? Do you have any references for the rest of us as it could be quite helpful.
I have a Dell precision m4300 that is I think a rebranded d620 with a different aluminum lid? Not sure but I have it and its design is very similar to the D series shown in this video. The keyboard on mine feels awesome and it's one of my favorites. I upgraded mine from 2gb to 4gb of ram and from a core 2 duo t7500 to a t7700. It's currently running vista on its original hard drive. Mine is also in pretty good condition. Although I wish I could get the Quadro graphics to work on Windows xp.
no WAY! i have 2 D630 Too But Was Propety of School California because sticker.. so i restored to windows Vista extended kernel and the other windows xp extended kernel..
Nice!
That D620... its the same problem as mine and it was with the Nvidia GPU that died :|
I heard of the Nvidia chips cooking themselves. I'll have to make sure that they are repasted.
sadly those commonly had faulty nvidia video chips that's might be the problem the first test.
Why These Latitude Has 2 COA Sticker, 2 Old COA 2 New COA?
AND These D600 Series Has 2 Ram Slot First Under The KeYbOaRd And Second Under The Laptop
And You Should Pull Off T9300 And Put On You D630
Ah yes, the confusing Intel Centrino branding.
A Centrino branded laptop should have an Intel CPU (probably a Core Duo or 2 Duo, the Intel chipset and a Intel Wireless card.
Yes yes, good ol intel lol
Hello❤
Hey there!
to unlock unplug battery plug back in presto