/Δ/ - diy/projects

What kind of strange sounds? The thing that immediately comes to mind when you mention sounds are hard disk drives. Do you know what kind of hard drive that thing has? It's most likely a solid state drive but still… The only other moving part it probably has is some sort of fan. Maybe open it up and clean it, especially the fan. Make sure the blades aren't hitting anything or whatever.

>>701

>It's most likely a solid state drive but still…

It's probably a 120GB or 160GB 2.5" SATA harddrive. I had two netbooks at various times (MSI Wind U100 and an Acer Aspire One) and they both had 160GB of spinning rust, but I know some earlier models of each had 120GB instead. SSDs were still very very expensive at the time netbooks were popular.

But it should be easy to swap out the HD for an SSD on op's machine, the HDs were easy to get to in my netbooks, and it's plain old SATA.

A bigger issue is the battery. These things had only about 2-3 hours of life at best, and replacement batteries for something this old are hard to come by.

Normally I'm the first to advocate repairs over tossing-and-buying-something-new, but a modern x86 chromebook that can run GalliumOS (basically plain old x86 Xubuntu with chromebook-specific configs and drivers set up out-of-the-box) might be a better day-to-day machine than trying to refurbish an Aspire One. I've got an Acer CB-131 that cost me about $150, and has 4GB RAM, 12-13 hours battery life, a 720p IPS display, HDMI out, regular USB ports, the works. There's only 16GB storage, but the SD card reader is designed so that inserted cards fit flush with the body. You can keep a big SD card in there for main storage 24/7 without worrying about it getting broken off.

>>702
If you're going for a chromebook, the c201 (I believe that's the model number…) is compatible with libreboot, which I HIGHLY recommend installing.

It sounds though, as if OP wants a just werks laptop, and more wants a learning experience.

OP, I'd suggest opening it up, cleaning it, maybe upgrading to a ssd or maybe some ram, and trying to identify all the components on the main board.

>>703
>as if OP wants a just werks laptop
as if OP wants a just werks laptop LESS,

Batteries go bad over time so you could check how much charge your battery is holding via

upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 | grep energy-full

If it's way lower than the designed, just get a new battery.

If you think there might be hardware issues you could check the dmesg with

dmesg | less

There might be a hardware test for the laptop if you can find a manual online too.

Lines on the screen idk. Sounds like a bad monitor :/

I've been using my 2007 macbook a lot and adding an SSD was really easy. It took the boot time from 2 minutes to 15 sec. If you only have one it might burn through the ssd faster though. Old laptops are the best :)

>>702
ur comparing price to battery life and performance. there's x200 that will last 14 hrs at $10 on a 9-cell battery. it's called
us@hackbox:~$ sudo apt install tlp

i think your post OP is about basically rejuvenation. In that case, I would recommend peppermintOS or antiX OS is another fun one for having a highly functional laptop but very minimalist.

you can crack open the battery and replace them with good samsung 18650 batteries ($5-$15 per) but you have to do some research and find the right mAh and voltage. under the hood, you would find out the chipset (acer aspire one uses Atom N2600 dual core processor) but you can find a low voltage replacement for under $5 on ebay

low voltage ram is also a thing.

if you want to do moderately priced upgrades in the future, you could try finding a better motherboard and power delivery, and find some better cpu headers for maximum efficiency

>>716
>(acer aspire one uses Atom N2600 dual core processor)
Only a single model of the Aspire One used that CPU. Most of the AO's actually used cheaper single-core Atoms like the N270 or N280.

Hi, OP here.

Thanks for your comments, I've read them and I'll consider them through this expierence. Rigth now, though, work has taken most of my time and I plan to return to my old Aspire One at the end of March.

As much as I am interested in chromebooks, I must admit that I found out about them just when I went to the US. So it seems that chromebooks are still not a thing here. In any case, chromebooks seem ok, but I was worried about how much it depended on the cloud. I'm not that keen into leaving all my stuff on the Internet.

>It sounds though, as if OP wants a just werks laptop, and more wants a learning experience.

Most like it. I'm a total doofus when it comes to hardware and, although I don't think I'll ever reach wizardly levels in that knowledge, I still would like to learn. In any case, it seems that my laptop won't be functional ever again, so I suppose I'll just have my fun and then sell the pieces somewhere.

As for that post asking for the sound, it sounds as if something is stuck in there. I actually thought it was the hard disk but I asked some technician around here and he told me it is the motherboard.

He didn't look that knowledgeable, tho.

>>720

>As much as I am interested in chromebooks, I must admit that I found out about them just when I went to the US. So it seems that chromebooks are still not a thing here. In any case, chromebooks seem ok, but I was worried about how much it depended on the cloud. I'm not that keen into leaving all my stuff on the Internet.

This is certainly true if you're using Google's Chrome OS. Fortunately, the aforementioned Gallium OS (https://galliumos.org/) can competely replace Chrome OS on most x86 chromebooks (https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility) with standard no-Google-invasiveness-required no-cloud-storage-required desktop Linux. One can get the benefits of modern cheap-but-decent hardware without having to have anything to do with Google.

It does require a bit of reading to get it working, but if you're ever in a situation where you really need a new Linux laptop on a very very limited budget, it's a path worth considering.