~Toughbooktalk~

Just received a D430. Hdd was thought to be dead, however new hdd connector ribbon has the hdd functioning. 120 gb hdd. Thinking about using a 64gb 1.8 inch ssd and Watt 32 bit. Would be a decent throw around unit then. Thoughts?

Bill_TN wrote:Would be a decent throw around unit then. Thoughts?

not Tough enough for throwing around LOL

Yea, for me a throw around amounts to one that Will perform on a level I want it to, can easily fit into the saddle bags on the bike and is light. This feels as well built as the D630 I use for that right now. Just substantially lighter and with one of the ssd's that I recently acquired, it will handle the bouncy ride in the bags better than a typical hdd. I plan to try it under Win and Linux to be fair. However I expect it to be a Linux unit when all is said and done.

Eh, won't handle more than 2gb ram. Bios are old, maybe there was an update that allows more. 1gb is integral to the MB. Hate that crap. But as a free unit I can't actually complain.

I have sold a few they are good units. I am wanting to say the last D430 I sold had at least 3 gb of ram. I scrapped out the last D420 (core duo version) this time home. Kept the good hard drive, cable, caddy rubber and screen. The unit would turn on but still thought it was connected to a dock, never could get it out of dock mode to work normally even after a work around to load the OS. May need to pick up one more stripper ebay model so I can use those parts and free up some more space.

Would love to figure out how you might have gotten 3 gb to work. Each stick other than 1 gb just shuts it down. Like dead ram. But each stick works in a couple of other machines.

Well. I have tried EVERY 2gb ddr2 that is under this roof, even pulled them from working units. 6400 on down. This thing will not work for ME on more than 2gb. The 1 on-board and the 1 add in. With wireless in or not ect. Won't even boot to bios. So now I'm going to have to do some form of Windoghs install so can update the bios and see if that will help it. The more I play with this the more I appreciate the D420 and 430's that I've built and passed on. Still have my beater 430, but it's seen better days.

I didn't even add ram to that one, it was like that when I got it. Maybe a late make model had two GB onboard ram? I know the chipset can support it. Hell Now I am going to have to to pull the D420 base out of the trash and see if I can get it to boot with 2gb stick now just to see.

Well the 420 is close to it. NBR review and Dell's specs place it as an earlier version. But I can find those on ebay with 2.5 gb and only 2gb for the 430.

Thinking back it may of been like my Alienware M9750. With a bios update it would take 4gb of ram. But even with a 64 bit os I couldn't use it. The bios would see it, windows would see it. But I could only use 3.25 worth of it because of platform limitations.