After a break for the summer holidays and an operation on my knee, I’ve started a couple of hardware projects. First up is a Toshiba Satellite (AMD Athelon X2 era), which is in need of some love. It arrived with a blocked fan and borked keyboard but without a battery.
The gunge from the fan and keyboard was removed (see photo) in order to get past immediate overheat failure and into the BIOS. This revealed further work needed to re-flash the out of date firmware up to v1.3.
With some super glue to fix a broken track pad button we the had a basic working machine, albeit weighed down with Windows 7 and Toshiba’s bloat ware.
Next up was an install of Linux Mint 17 XFCE which fits better with this low end CPU to provide a much snappier experience for the user.
All we need now is a replacement keyboard and this laptop will be ready to give it’s owner a few more good years of service.
gothicpreston 
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