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Dell Latitude CP

C

Conmega

Experienced Member
Joined
May 15, 2013
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274
Location
Poughkeepsie, NY
Well the other night I got a Dell Latitude CP M233ST for free.
Complete with floppy and cd drive (even a cable to use either externally with a parallel plug in the back) , battery and travel module (battery seems to hold a charge just fine too), and power adapter.
It's only missing its HD and a bunch of screws. (and its Pentium I MMX inside sticker)
In it's two PC card slots it had a 56k 3Com Global Modem card and a Belkin Network card.
It boots up with a DOS boot floppy so everything seems to be good!
May not be something really 'collectable' to most but A: it was free and its a Pentium I B: I grew up around Pentium processors C: If its not collectable now it will be eventually~
Anyway I'm happy. :)

Edit: The bios battery seems to be good too!

Sadly even though it still had the hard drive caddy its little adapter card is missing... So I will have to buy this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251342227375?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649
And buy a 6 gig or so Hard Drive.
Annnddd get a new sticker! :p

Edit: Opps apparently the CP had a Pentium I MMX not a Pentium II!
 
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Wouldn't worry too much about a sticker. Sounds like it'd make a nice in between system having a parallel port, serial ports and all.

What OS/OSs do you intend to slap in it?
 
I think I am going to put windows 95 or something on maybe with a dual boot of windows or something.
I know windows might not be easy to install on it but I saw a video of someone on Youtube who got windows 3.1 installed and running on this laptop.
I'm open to suggestions of what I should do with it!
I'll probably have DOS in there somewhere since it has a floppy drive. I'd be nice for playing DOS games and such on the go.
 
It is going to be fairly easy to get any windows system running once you get DOS. Do not worry about that and leave me a PM if you are having problems.
 
I can have access to really any version of dos or windows I want since I know someone who's been in the computer business for a long time...
I could get DOS 1.0 if I wanted but anyway I have a DOS 4.01 install floppy and I have a Windows NT workstation 3.51 disk sealed so yea...
What do you suggest me doing? I think I will be getting a 10 GB Tavelstar HD to put in it but I could get something bigger if suggested.
 
It'd run Windows 98 ok. You can lean that down a bit with a bit of work and it should be good for running a quite a lot of Dos, Win 3.1 and win9x era stuff out of the box so to speak. I've got a Toshiba 166mmx lappy running Win98 using IEoff which switches off most of the webbyness bloat that is standard with later Windows versions.

An option is the mutli boot dos/windows, an NT(3.51/4/2k), OS/2 (3/4/4.5) or even a lean -*nix (Linux or BSD) setup if you want a bit of variety of OS's on the same platform. Not for the faint hearted but if you've not done a multiboot setup before.
Of course you could get a couple of drive caddies and hdds then swapping them over as you suit.
 
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I'd probably go with a multi boot setup of some kind with a variety of OS's like you stated.
I'll just need say a 40-60gb hd and then partition it up.
It's running a 366mmx so it should run 98 fine then if you got it running on a 166mmx.
I've ordered one drive caddy I'll have to buy a drive then. Do you know what the drive size limit would be? If there is one?
 
Hmm well I'll have to do a bit of research on this laptop's bios.
Thanks for the info by the way I never knew about such limits.
 
Look, you should get a 10/20 gig HD imo
You can get enough partitions to run DOS (10mb is more than enough if you xcopy it from boot disk) and one or two OSes if you want for example Xenix 386, DOS and Windows together then i guess it can be done. Just remember to put windows as active partition so you get the OS Loader window. Personally i'd put NT3.51 or NT4 in there, because 95 is buggy and 98 is crappy and slow.
 
Well I came across a 40 GB travelstar laying around my house and threw it in and it seems to work without problems since it trys to boot of the Windows XP os that was apparently on it and in the bios it shows Primary Hard Drive: 40010MB. Now I was going to try and upgrade the ram to its 128mb max since it only has 64 in there at the moment so I took ram out of an old IBM Thinkpad I had (two 64mb sticks) and tossed them in and it just buzzed a low tone on and off and blinked all the keyboard lights... I'm thinking the ram is too fast... It says 100mhz on one of the sticks of ram so... I guess I'm stuck with 64mb at the moment. Otherwise I think with 40gb I should be-able to partition it up and install quite a few OS's on it. I know you said DOS jack and NT 3.51? I have an NT 3.51 disk still sealed in its packaging and I have a DOS 4.01 install floppy. So I can install those two things but with 40gb I think I could install some other things. Any more suggestions?
 
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I'd go for DSL, NT4 (maybe), NetBSD, Xenix, SunOS x86 (toss me an img via pm if you find any), OS/2 Warp 4, OS/2 Warp 3, SCO Unix SVR3 386, CP/M 86 (be aware that it uses its own filesystem), Debian (?), BackTrack (?)
With 40 Gigs you can do plenty.
I'd suggest you to leave your NT 3.51 untouched and get an ISO from WinWorld. That can get high value.
 
That's what I was thinking about doing with the NT 3.51 leaving it sealed and getting an ISO. This will be an interesting little laptop running a bunch of OS's. Some of those OS's I've never worked with before so it should be fun. Is there any specific way you recommend doing things? Like making partitions then installing the OS's one by one on each partition? I'm going to start searching for all those OS's now to make disks of. If I can't find it (like possibly the SunOS x86) then I know a guy who may have what I need.
Also do you have recommendations for partition sizes for each OS?
 
OSes like DOS, Xenix and CP/M uses very little disk space (i have 2 10mb partitions on my 386 Laptop and i run Xenix and DOS). CP/M 86 can also be launched from a Live Floppy (like DOS), with the difference that it's preconfigured (no need to edit autoexec, config etc.)

DSL should be around 50mb. Use a 150mb partition.
NetBSD 386 takes 200mb of space when fully installed. Use a 350mb partition
I don't know about OS/2, i'll try it as soon as i get an IBM lying around.
NT3 and NT4 can take up to 500-600mb but i recommend you to use atleast one gigabyte for each.
SCO Unix SVR3 is still a no-go for me since i don't have enough floppies to burn and install. It should take something like NetBSD.

Please note that you'll get the bootloader from Windows NT just with already configured systems (it should detect just NT351 NT4 and DOS). Linux/Unix can be booted by making the partition active, and you can set DOS to be booted from Xenix. CP/M 86 is not supported in any boot menu because of its weird (or just old) filesystem.
 
xOSL is a nice boot loader.

Jack. said:
I don't know about OS/2, i'll try it as soon as i get an IBM lying around.
Click to expand...
Why do you need an IBM machine? It can run on generic x86 class hardware just fine. Just make sure your video card and nic, if you want networking, are supported. Pics below are of v3 running on a 486 DecPC and v4 on a HP Pentium 200mmx-the same hdd was in a slot one Celeron 350 system for a number of years.
 

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I know, but i tend to put [manufacturer] OS on a machine which is from the same [manufacturer], or to preserve the original setup.
x86 Generic PC > WINNT351w
DEC PWS500a > WINNT400s
SunFire V100 > Solaris10
HP9000 > HP-UX
SPARCStation 5 > SunOS414 (gotta update it)
ULTRA1 > Solaris8CDE
A probable IBM PS/2 will run AIX and OS/2
 
I see you mean pure 32 bit OSs on 32 bit cabable machines. I'd imagine more generic x86 machines ran a Dos based system than anything else though. Most of the older x86 systems I come across have dos/win/wfw 3.x or win9x on them. They're probably just as "period correct" if you're that way inclined. One thing I like about generics is you're not tied to any specific OS. Just pick one, run with it and see how you get on. You might have to mix n match hardware in some cases, but that's to be expected. I did run Mandrake 6.1 (based on RH 6.0-sceen dump below) on my Compaq CDS 524 till the hdd fell over. Pretty cool that I could VNC(at the other end of the house) to my Win98 box at the time, over Thinnet and use it's web browser.

FWIW I've got Warp v3 on a 350meg drive (Default v3 install with later network client, IBM Works, along with some other goodies) and v4 on a 4 gig hdd (will happily exist in a 500meg partition) split in two.
 

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Yes, that's what i mean.
Indeed, generic x86 usually ran DOS-based setups, and later Windows 9x as you said.
Something fun to play with on x86 are CP/M86, PC-MOS, Xenix386 and the glorious GEM.
I'd love also to get SCO UNIX 386 working on a Pentium, but it will take 50+ floppies to get installed!
Also Inferno is pretty interesting, considered it can run on a NDS Lite (!) with a very lil' ARM
I was considering to burn a DSL copy to a CD and install it someday, but i haven't got time to do it yet.
 
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