My new PIII 700 mHz X21!

[jaspen-meyer]

In the 'parts only' section of a local auction site I saw a dim-screened X21 selling for $5. I thought it'd be a fun machine to program on but I wasn't sure if it'd run.

It arrived. It booted into bios and I was thrilled to see a ton of bios options. Played around with them for a bit and then was ready to get the machine running. Easier said than done.

I tried booting from usb. Failed. Tried network boot. Failed. Tried booting from a CD. Failed. This was going better than expected. Stuck a Kingspec SSD in and it booted into debian!

A few questions:

1. How much ram can it take?

2. There were two vertical rows of dead pixels when I first turned the machine on (also two rows in the sellers photos). After I put a hard drive in, one of the rows went away and now there is just one one row of bad pixels. What's going on? Will the other bad row appear or can I get rid of the remaining bad row?

3. the hinges hardly hold the monitor up. how do i tighten the hinges?

4. can I stick an interna wifi card from a t41 in (can i use the no-1802 error iso I used on the t41 or do I need an iso specifically for the x21?)

the output of ~$ lshw is here:
http://termbin.com/m187

[jaspen-meyer]

1. I've fixed the floppy display by replacing the screws below the hinges and tightening them.
2. Added a pci slot wifi card (also see an extra T30 has a minipci wifi card which may fit)
3. was running javascript-heavy websites via ssh X-Forwarding into a second machine with
ssh -XC user@ip

Still trying to figure out how much ram the machine'll take. HWM says 386 mb but linux reports 1 GB. I only see one ram slot - are there two?

[axur-delmeria]

Download the Hardware Maintenance Manual, from there you will read that:

1. there is 64 or 128 MB RAM soldered on the system board (depending on the model)
2. there is only one memory slot.

The Intel 440ZX chipset supports memory modules up to 256MB, so the maximum for the X21 is 384MB for models with 128MB RAM onboard, and 320MB for those with 64MB onboard.

IF it's possible to replace the RAM chips to put 256MB onboard, then the maximum becomes 512MB. But that's a very big IF.

[jaspen-meyer]

Yes, I'd read the HWM ram limit. But, maybe that was just poor documentation which didn't consider that modules would be larger than 256 MB. Also, Linux is reporting a 1 GB capacity:

Code: Select all

 *-memory
          description: System Memory
          physical id: 25
          slot: System board or motherboard
          size: 256MiB
          [b]capacity: 1GiB[/b]
        *-bank:0
             description: SODIMM DRAM Synchronous
             physical id: 0
             slot: U346, U347, U358, U359
             size: 128MiB
             width: 64 bits
        *-bank:1
             description: DIMM DRAM Synchronous
             physical id: 1
             slot: J303
             size: 128MiB
             width: 64 bits
             

[axur-delmeria]

The 440BX chipset (the 440ZX's big brother) supported a maximum of 1GB RAM, split into 4 slots of 256MB.

Laptops are generally limited to two slots at most, so the practical limit is 512MB.

The 440BX and 440ZX do not support 512MB RAM sticks (no exceptions). Finding compatible 256MB RAM may be problematic, as there are specific requirements. This page has some relevant info: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/ram_bx_faq.html, and thinkwiki's page http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Unofficial_ma ... mory_specs can help, as any Thinkpad with the 440BX chipset will have the same RAM compatibility constraints.

[jaspen-meyer]

Thanks for those links. My board has 128 MB on board, so I'll try adding a 256 MB module with a 16x8 configuration.

[jaspen-meyer]

Added this stick of 256mb and it's working great:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251266890046

Thanks again.