Time for a new (old) RSS laptop. Suggestions?

[Elroy Jetson]

The time has come for me to try to find another laptop in GOOD condition to replace my ancient, absolutely trashed,
and unusable laptops used for RSS.

It'll have to be usable with essentially all types of RSS, from the HT600 RSS up to the last DOS version of the Astro software.

If I had to, I could sacrifice the ability to run the OLDEST RSS titles but it's got to be a machine that's not too fast to run RSS
for Sabers, HT600S, MT1000S, Jedi radios, or of course, any Astro radios.

And it needs to be fully tested, known to have a good serial port, and at least be able to run while plugged in via its
charger. I don't demand that it has a good battery but it wouldn't hurt if it did. It'll have to have DOS on it, and
should NOT have any version of Windows on it. It only needs to have one good 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive, and a hard
drive of adequate size. (120 MB would be more than enough.)


If you know where I can get such a machine in good working order, please PM me about it.

I definitely do not want it to have anything loaded onto it other than DOS and maybe PKZIP/PKUNZIP. You KNOW I'm not
looking for software. I bought what I needed from Motorola a long time ago.


Elroy

[jackhackett]

Does it have to be a laptop? If you don't actually need to cart it around from place to place you might have an easier time finding an old desktop.

[Elroy Jetson]

A laptop would be preferrable, yes. I have been taking my laptop back and forth between my shop at work, my home, and job sites in various locations including other countries.
But it's frankly had it. The serial port appears to have completely died.

Elroy

[fineshot1]

I use an old NEC Versa 6030H with the removeable floppy & CD Rom drives so I can switch back & forth between them. I just had to replace the Lithium Ion battery but that was cheap on ebay($40 shipped). Only thing I wish it had is a USB port so I could use a memory stick to move files back & forth between that & my desktop for archive purposes. I normally run Windows 98 on it but boot in into MS DOS for many apps as well as the moto radio programing software.

[RADIO43]

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-27 with Win98SE running. I have the inter changing CD-Rom and 3 1/2 floppy drives as well. Works great and the touch screen is a nice touch.


radio43

[motorola_otaku]

I used a Toshiba SatellitePro 320CDT (P2 233 MHz, 64MHz bus) for several years running Win98SE, and it worked great. I never tried HT600, Syntor X9000, R100, or any of the reeeeally old stuff, but it would run STX, MTX800/900, and Saber with no problems. M1225 ran in Windows just fine, but Astro CPS was slower than creeping bullfrog Jesus.

My current machine is an IBM Thinkpad T23 (P3 1.13 GHz) running DOS 6.22 and XP Pro SP2 in dual-boot. Saber is about the oldest software that'll read/write on it; STX and MX1000/2000 fails with a comm port error, as I imagine any of the super-old stuff would. It's fast enough to handle Astro CPS, though, which makes it an excellent compromise machine.

Both of the above were confirmed to work with:
-All flavors of Maxtrac and Radius Mobile
-Analog Spectra
-All flavors of Astro RSS

[boteman]

One word: eBay.

[wavetar]

One word: eBay.

Two more words: Old Thread.

[ve3nsv]

USB Dongle FTW.

Just programmed some MTX-LS's this morning using a Dell D520 (P4 1.7Ghz with 1GB of Ram) booted from a USB Dongle loaded with a DOS 7.0 image made from a Win98 bootdisk.

There hasn't been a radio yet I haven't been able to read / write from GM300, M120, HT1000, MTX-LS, MTX-838, HT600, M206, M10, GTX and many others I'm sure I missed.

Be sure to search for Wavetars "How to Thread" on the USB Dongle.

One word: eBay.

Two more words: Old Thread.

[wavetar]

Be sure to search for Wavetars "How to Thread" on the USB Dongle.

No searching necessary, it's a sticky in this very forum.

[motorola_otaku]

Just programmed some MTX-LS's this morning using a Dell D520 (P4 1.7Ghz with 1GB of Ram) booted from a USB Dongle loaded with a DOS 7.0 image made from a Win98 bootdisk.

There hasn't been a radio yet I haven't been able to read / write from GM300, M120, HT1000, MTX-LS, MTX-838, HT600, M206, M10, GTX and many others I'm sure I missed.

How about the STX? Or Syntor X9000?

Yeah, I know the X9000 ain't happening, but STX is another one I've had to resort back to the Compaq 386 for. MX1000 is similarly picky.

[wavetar]

Just programmed some MTX-LS's this morning using a Dell D520 (P4 1.7Ghz with 1GB of Ram) booted from a USB Dongle loaded with a DOS 7.0 image made from a Win98 bootdisk.

There hasn't been a radio yet I haven't been able to read / write from GM300, M120, HT1000, MTX-LS, MTX-838, HT600, M206, M10, GTX and many others I'm sure I missed.

How about the STX? Or Syntor X9000?

Yeah, I know the X9000 ain't happening, but STX is another one I've had to resort back to the Compaq 386 for. MX1000 is similarly picky.

None of those is shown as "pentium compatible" in the Motorola matrix, so no they won't work. About the oldest you'll get is the HT600, whose very last version was made compatible, and even that one is dicey.

Todd

[boteman]

[quote="ve3nsv"]
Just programmed some MTX-LS's this morning using a Dell D520 (P4 1.7Ghz with 1GB of Ram) booted from a USB Dongle loaded with a DOS 7.0 image made from a Win98 bootdisk.

There hasn't been a radio yet I haven't been able to read / write from GM300, M120, HT1000, MTX-LS, MTX-838, HT600, M206, M10, GTX and many others I'm sure I missed.
[/quote]

I bet it won't program my MICORs.