Laptop upgrading possible?

[MartinB]

This isn't specifically to do with Linux, but I have a Maxdata laptop (running Gentoo ;)) that is about a year and a half old and was wondering if anyone knew if it might be possible to upgrade the components of this laptop? I'm not sure exactly what specific model... It's an Athlon 1800, 256MB RAM, CDRW DVD combo and 20GB HDD.

I've built my own desktop systems, but have never tried opening a laptop and messing around with the innards, so I really have no idea if this is possible, and if it is, how difficult it is to do.

I was mainly thinking of swapping the hard disk for say, a 60GB and adding more RAM, say upping to 768MB or 512MB, and also replacing the CDRW-DVD combo drive, which seems to have become extremely temporamental in the past couple of months to the point where it no longer reads or writes CD's. It can only read DVD's, and the warranty has ran out on the machine.

Does any know of any websites that have guides for doing this sort of stuff? I couldn't find anything in relation to Maxdata laptops at all, it doesn't seem that they're very popular, which is a shame, as this is an ideal, fully Linux-compatible machine :).

Cheers,
Martin

[Hayl]

usually all you can do is upgrade to more RAM and a bigger hard drive... plus add pcmcia cards.

there are apparently new laptops where you can change the video card - wither out or coming soon.

other than that they is pretty much nothing you can do.

the best to do is read the manuals / specs or contact the manufacturer regarding what you can and can not add.

or take it to a computer shop.

[saikee]

Laptop hard disk is easier to change than that in the desktop. 2.5" is 2.5" hard disk and there isn't another standard for it. The first thing I did after buying the laptop was to upgrade its drive from 40 to 80Gb.

[MartinB]

Thanks... nice to know that RAM and HDD should be possible. I think I'll probably take it up to a couple of shops then and ask about it.

Already got a PCMCIA card for Wireless LAN, heh (haven't got it working yet though).
I also bought a 52x external USB CD writer too and afterwards found out that my laptop only has USB 1.1, so I can only run it at 4x... would've got a firewire one if I'd known. :p

Upgrading the video would be nice for my OpenGL projects, since the S3 Savage3D isn't the greatest 3D accelerator in the world, but I'd be almost certain that it would be built onboard on this machine.