Hey all,
Good to be here. I'm new so please bear with me. To anyone with Toshiba Satellite experience. I've had the unfortunate experience of trying to find out if I could make upgrades to my notebook so I can set up a dual boot with a Linux distro. Tech support first tells me its a P35-S609 and then says its a P30-40 (the p30-40 number isn't recognized by toshiba direct), so they can't seem to find a HD upgrade for it. My psp number is PSP30U-0F0015 which doesn't seem to match the psp numbers of other P35-S609 models I've looked at through Google. I want to be able to set up a dual-boot with XP and Ubuntu or other distro so I want a larger, faster hard drive. I even tried asking if my bios would support a larger HD if I gave them the Bios info (Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.1 Ver. 1.00PARTTBL PTTLD-6040000) which I retrieved using the siw.exe app. It was like talking to a wall. They just seem to was to charge me for tech support. Any advice or info would be appreciated

Thanks For Your Help,

Ctc

Your problem isn't with the hard drive (any 2.5 inch will fit, get it at newegg.com). The problem is that model uses an ATI video card, which in Linux will be a pain. If it uses a Phoenix BIOS, it's also not really a Toshiba - it's probably made by Compal, and sold under the Toshiba brand. That means there will be other compatibility issues, as Compal is Linux hostile.

Thank you for the info macemoneta!
It leaves me less in the dark concerning this model. When you say, "any 2.5 inch will fit", is there a way of determining what the maximum size and speed I could get away with? I know that the days of inputting HD info into the BIOS are gone and most auto-detect,(I got the laptop at the end of 2005) would you have a suggestion on how I could hedge my bet?
I know that for the balance of the devices I'll just have to list and find conformations on usability. I've tried some live CDs, with mixed results, could you recommend any that you think would be more suitable. I know that no one distro will work 100%, and that my wifi card is most likely out of the question, but a recommendation of one of two distros would give me a starting point in setting up a dual-boot with XP Pro. Thank you again for your sage advice.

Ctc12

Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora 7 LiveCDs are your best bet - the newer the distribution, the better the hardware support. Remember to apply all maintenance and reboot to use the latest kernel before trying to configure or debug any issues, as they may already be resolved in the update. You may also want to verify that you have the latest BIOS installed before starting.

For a machine made in 2005, you won't have any problem. Hard drive size limitations went aways with logical block addressing (ATA-2). LBA in ATA-6 (current drives) is 48-bit, so you are good to 128PB (petabytes). The machine uses an IDE interface, so the largest drive you'll find is probably a 160GB, as larger drives all seem to come with SATA interfaces.

Much appreciated Macemoneta,
I'll continue posting with any info I gather and my specs. Info for some of the Toshiba models is sparse and it may help other Linux curious users with their homework. God knows the latest Toshiba /Phoenix/Vista news is not promising. God save us from Vista and Microsoft!
Be Well and Wish Me Luck,
Ctc12