Dell Latitude CPx tidbits

krome · 10-26-2003, 04:35 PM

Tidbit :I have found that my touchpad works irratically at the GNOME desktop. Since I don't use it often, no biggie. But, I accidently found that when I am in one of the consoles, it works fine. That is I can move it accurately(it shows as a white rectangle on the black screen) and I can even highlight things in the window.
Question: does anyone know if 1) the dell bios(I've got A14) can handle seeing 2 HDs at once or 2) if anyone makes something that will allow me to have 2 HDs conncted at once? Thanks

hw-tph · 10-26-2003, 05:42 PM

You can get a drivebay from Dell. Pop a hard 2.5" IDE drive in it (if you purchase an empty bay) and replace the floppy or CD-ROM in the modular bay. Works fine with my CPi 300XT.
I did this with the stock BIOS, works fine with the current one too.

Håkan

Ginux · 10-27-2003, 02:20 PM

I agree...
A modular HDD works fine, but you'll have to remove the CD drive, the floppy works well using the parallel cable. (Remmember ONLY the FDD works with the parallel cable, the CDD won't work, and it may damage the PC)
On the other hand you may try and use an external USB HDD, if you don't mind slow transerfers (USB1.1) then it's perfect. (I have a 40GB :-))

Ginux

krome · 10-27-2003, 02:47 PM

Well, I just talked to Dell and after 4 or 5 different people finally got some part numbers and was chacking price when I was told that this laptop will only boot from the side mounted drive anyway. They say the bay mounted drive is only for stoorage. I don't know if I mentioned that I want to be able to boot off of either drive rather than having to swap them out for different OSs.

Ginux · 10-27-2003, 03:17 PM

Yes, thats what Dell supports...
I don't remmember, but I think in the latest bios (page 2) there is the possibility to boot from the modular HDD, even if Dell doesn't support it, they had to give the users the possibility to use thier own HW as they wished.
i.e.
Dell doesn't sell any more FDD's (well 95% at least) and their replacement is a USB memory key, the bios supports booting from the USB, but Dell won't help to make a USB key bootable.

Ginux