Thinkpads Forum

I have TP R31 PIII 1.1 GHz 30 G HDD W2K OS.

I think i have lots of dropped frame when try to capture via USB . I was trying with firewire but it seems my laptop does not recognize firewire.
(I alreday posted a thread for this problem here)

I have couple of Q's for which i need answers and/or suggestions.

1) i think my HDD is below 7200 RPM. If i can buy a new drive with 7200 will it improve while capturing my video.
if yes then which HDD are best fit for TP?
also will i see the IBM logo when i first start the computer like i see now.

2)i think i my TP contain USB 1.1 . can i coinvert it to USB 2.0. if yes how?

3) Can i buy some new video card which i can plug into my laptop so my laptop can use dedicated memory. if yes then which products are best and will fit my configuration .also how to plug it in.

1. While a faster hard drive may help, I doubt if that is your problem. I haven't done video capture, so I don't have a definitive answer. Any 2.5" laptop IDE/ATA hard drive should work. Not sure about the IBM logo.

2. The best way and only way I know of to add USB 2.0 is to buy a Cardbus USB 2.0 PC card. I have done this on a ThinkPad 600E and it worked very well.

3. No. However I believe there are some Cardbus PC card video tranfer cards that have electronics inside to speed up the process, by compressing the video before sending it to the hard drive.

If my internet connection was better right now (my cellular hookup is acting flaky), I would look up some links to the cards I am describing. Take a look at http://www.pricegrabber.com for these cards by typing in some key words in the search box.

OK, now my internet connection is working better.

This is what you need in my opinion. It is a firewire Cardbus card. DVD EZMaker 1394 CardBus Notice system requirements are much lower than for the USB 2.0 solution. You should get the best performance from something like this.

DVD EZMaker USB2.0 Notice system requirements.