[Pc_Support] For Sale: Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Okay, this is my 5 year-old unit.  It was well ahead of its time in
its day (Summer 2001).  At $2,300 on-sale back then, it was the first
notebook with the nVidia GeForce Go Mobile -- with 16MiB of dedicated,
64-bit DDR VRAM (wow! ;-), although Dell followed shortly.  Now I know
I can't get even 10% of that for it, but I still want to offer it up
for a good home -- especially for Linux users.

Specifications:
- Intel Mobile Pentium III 850MHz (still kicks a Celeron M's butt**)
- 256MiB PC100 SDRAM (expandible to 384MiB)
- Intel i815 chipset** -- non-integrated GPU version, because ...
- nVidia GeForce Go Mobile (NV11), 16MiB DDR VRAM
- IEEE1394 FireWire and USB 1.1 ports
- Toshiba 20GB, 4200rpm hard drive
- CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive
- Battery doesn't hold charge long (it's 5 years old, after all ;-)

**NOTE:  I have a 2004 Toshiba M35X (a model 3 years newer) with a
Celeron M 1.4GHz, i845/855GM CPU-integrated chipset and this 2001
model _still_ beats it in _all_ 3D benchmarks, and most 2D ones as
well (the Celeron M really sucks, especially compared to the Pentium M
or even this mobile Pentium III).  The only reason I'm keeping the
2004 is that I've really "beat it up" and you wouldn't want it
(backspace key is broken, the enclosure isn't as "tough" as this 2001
model).  I only paid $499 for the 2004 model (and that was a steal at
the time).

The 2805-S402 came with Windows ME (just about 3 months too early for
XP Home), and I've run Red Hat Linux 7.1 through Fedora Core 3 on it.
I'll pre-install CentOS 3 or 4, your choice, as well as Windows ME
dual-boot if you want it.  If you want another distro, I can do that
too, but I won't know my way around as much.

For Linux, I recommend CentOS 3 with kernel 2.4 instead of 2.6.
Kernel 2.4 works with the Toshiba utilities for power, fan and other
management, 2.6 does not.  I also recommend either sticking with the
stock XFree/Xorg drivers (if you don't need 2D), or the older nVidia
3D drivers -- as newer nVidia drivers won't support TwinView so you
can't have simultaneous LCD/VGA-out:
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8774/README/appendix-i.html

Virtually everything works in Linux -- audio (i810 -- either ALSA/2.6
or OSS/2.4), NIC (Intel e100), IEEE1394 (Ti chipset), USB, etc...
Again, power management works on 2.4 with the Toshiba utilities, but I
couldn't get it to work on 2.6 -- other than the power button
automatically shutting down proper.  I haven't tried kernels newer
than 2.6.12 though -- newer distros might do better with its ACPI.

I'm not going to rip you off on the price.  I mean, you can get a
Mobile Sempron with the GeForce 6150 GPU-integrated chipset for $600
these days after rebates.  And the battery is rather worthless now,
which limits mobility (unless you want to pay $75 for a new one).  But
it's a solid Linux notebook, and I've run XFCE on CentOS 3/4 and
Fedora Core 3 with good performance -- including MP3 playback, DVD
movie playback (MPlayer), etc...

I kept it as my "backup," especially as my 2004 model wasn't as sturdy
and I've still used this 2001 model several times (especially for 3D
when the 2004 model didn't cut it), but I don't need a 3rd notebook
with my new HP dv9000z coming soon.