Hewlett Packard Omnibook 3000

This is the first laptop I owned, it originally came with Windows ME installed on a 2.1GB hard disk, but it was swiftly upgraded with a 4.1GB disk and Windows XP SP1. This laptop served its purpose for many years until it became too slow and was replaced with an EeePC 901XP.

Specification wise, this is an older Pentium II machine running at 233MHz, it has 16MB of on-board RAM, with two 64MB RAM modules fitted, meaning 146MB of total RAM, this is the maximum amount of RAM it can support. It has a 1024x768 screen resolution and a CD ROM optical drive. It has a 4GB hard disk, again, this is the maximum it can support. Windows XP SP1 is about the limit for Windows operating systems, although Lubuntu claims to claims to work on these older machines. Windows 2000 runs quite nicely, as well as Lucid Puppy Linux, I have run into issues with video drivers with other Linux distributions



Not much to say about the case, other than it's a typical laptop of the era



The battery and CDROM slots on the right of the case, the CDROM could be replaced with a floppy disk drive, or a second battery




The battery and CDROM, note the CDROM is from a Dell



The left side of the case has two 32bit cardbus slots, audio in/out and headphone sockets, the power adaptor socket, and the security lock slot



The rear of the laptop has an infra-red port, a USB 1.1 socket, and a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port. Under the flap that fell off some time ago is a serial port, parallel port, VGA, and a dock connector.



This laptop only supports one particular hard disk, an IBM DTCA-24090 in either 2GB, or 4GB capacities, no other hard disk will work, although I never tried. I do have two of them, one with Windows 2000 installed, and another with Lucid Puppy Linux installed



Keen-eyed readers may have noticed there's no on-board networking, so here's a Belkin wifi card, I used to have a dial up modem card, but I've no idea where it is right now. I also have a USB 2 card which is installed in another laptop now



I have found the USB 2.0 card, I made a lead to get power from the on-board USB as the original Belkin power supply died





I've found the dial up modem card and cable, who remembers downloading stuff at a blistering 6KB/s?



You may notice the screen surround has cracked by both hinges





I can't remember which drive is installed, so lets boot it up. It appears to be Windows 2000, which froze on the last screen, probably because the BIOS battery is dead, so the date was sometime in the 1980's



So into the BIOS settings to set the date and some other settings



Success, but my password has expired? I don't remember setting a password? But bizarrely clicking ok updated it



So, this is Windows 2000, how I've missed it, and as expected the Belkin software for the Belkin wifi card doesn't work. So let's try the other hard disk



Remove the battery and unscrew the two screws, then slide the hard disk caddy out, you can also remove the RAM cover now



I'm missing a couple of screws, but unscrew the four screws to release the drive from the caddy



Gently prise off the connector




Then put it all back together



What?



Take it all apart and put it back together again...



Lucid Puppy Linux



The wifi works in Puppy, unlike Windows 2000



However the laptop won't switch off completely from Linux

For more retro hardware check out my online museum here