can mandrake v10.0 work on laptop Dell model c510/d510 with windows XP on.
 

Dell Laptop, model C510/C610 w/1.2gigHz intel processor, 512mb RAM,Mobility Radeon ATI display adapter, Intel 82801CAM ultra ATA storage controller-28A,Digital Flat Panel(1024x768), NIC is 3com 3C920 Fast Ethernet(3C905C-TX compatible), PCMCIA(Texas instruments PCI-1420 Cardbus controller),Intel 82801CA/CAm USB Host Controller and USB root hub. Also, I have a 320GB external harddrive(Western Digital) connected via the USB port.
Would Mandrake 1.0 distro work? Could a distro be put onto the external drive ( WinXP is on the internal 20GB HD and the WD is in FAT32 with some windows data files on it.).I also have a 2wire wireless adapter which connects via USB port.
The printer I usually use is an HP Deskjet 3930 but may soon switch to an Epson C88+.

I am a newbie to Linux but have an A+ certification and am willing to try something new. My email is:
alistairward007@yahoo.com
Thx 4 any hlp!

It may not be a good idea to install Mandrake 10 considering it is awfully "old" by now. Windows may release a new OS only every so many years but Linux distros tend to be revised at least once year. The successor to Mandrake is called Mandriva and the most current release is Mandriva Spring 2007. For a wide selection of available distros, please visit distrowatch.com.

As for the likelihood of your hardware being supported (or the hardware supporting Linux,depends on how you look at it), your best bet would be to get a liveCD, which is an OS that will run from cd instead of hard disk. Those make excellent diagnostic tools as well: if you haven't any issues running the liveCD, you shouldn't have any trouble installing either. I believe Mandriva has a liveCD of its own; other distros that put out a liveCD are Ubuntu, Knoppix, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, Mepis - and those are just a few of the many available.