# Where can I find a downloadable manual for



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

a Micron GoBook2 300 laptop? I've searched and searched and cant find one. MPC that took over Micron PC division has drivers and boot disks, but no manuals that I can find. 

I bought one of these in beautiful condition for $23 minus the hardrive and power supply. I have a 19V power supply but this uses funky 4 prong connector. Little symbol with solid line over a broken line in the plastic housing next to where power supply plugs in, assume the broken line is positive? I'll just solder it permenently as power supply with correct connector is pricey and no good reason I would need to disconnect it.

Not having owned this new of a laptop, I am assuming laptop hardrives got thinner as years went by because hardrive out of my old AST wouldnt come close to fitting in the caddy slot let alone fit in the caddy. Hopefully it didnt use some proprietary hardrive...


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## Teresa S. (Mar 2, 2006)

ebay or postaroo?


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Teresa S. said:


> ebay or postaroo?


Ebay. 99cents plus $22 shipping. Remarkably clean and no signs of wear, like it was hardly used. 300mhz and 160mb ram so plenty to make Puppy Linux happy. Apparently these were rare model as I am having lot trouble finding info. The Micron Trek2 of same vintage was lot more popular. They came with a 3.2mb hardrive, but saw one listed with a 12gb hardrive and google found where somebody was specifically selling a 20gb hardrive for them at some point in time. 10-20 gb would be fine, but not really necessary, and I would like to know exactly how big of a hardrive the bios supports. I hate those software overlays hardrive manufacturers provide for computers withold bios.


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## Teresa S. (Mar 2, 2006)

Actually, I meant to look at ebay or postaroo for a manual...lol, but it sounds like you got a heck-of-a-deal~! It would make a wonderful Linux machine~! I have never seen THAT good of a deal on Ebay....heck, it has enough to run windows xp!
I have ran XP on 300mhz with 100 megs of ram and a 7 gig hard drive--works perfect!


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Hmm, depends what you want to do with XP. On such minimal hardware, it will run smaller progs ok. I think if you throw in a virus program and other goodies the poor thing would be miserably slow. Now maybe that tinyXP I mentioned some time ago would work fine. It was FAST on my old desktop that wasnt much higher spec than this laptop.

any way this is big step up in way of laptop compared to my present 100mhz 40mb ram AST. Heck if it works out ok, might even get a wifi card and take it to library where they have free wifi hotspot (you log on with your library card number).

Yes cheap for what it is, but maybe older laptops are coming down in price since Vista has appeared and upped the ante for computer hardware. I have looked at laptops on ebay for some time and anything beyond a early pentium would go for crazy price. 500mhz laptops for close to $200, give me a break.


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## chuckhole (Mar 2, 2006)

3kliks shows a 40GB hard drive available for your laptop so that is a pretty good indication that it will go that far - http://www.3klix.com/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=1616

THey also have the power adapters but they are pricey.

If you can't find one, try the Travel Adapters. I have one made by Targus that has a bunch of different laptop adapters that goes with it. You can connect your laptop into a standard 12V cig lighter or the Airline outlet in the seats. Many of the International flights have added the power outlets in their arm rests. On those long flights, I watch DVD's on my laptop.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

chuckhole said:


> 3kliks shows a 40GB hard drive available for your laptop so that is a pretty good indication that it will go that far - http://www.3klix.com/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=1616
> 
> THey also have the power adapters but they are pricey.
> 
> If you can't find one, try the Travel Adapters. I have one made by Targus that has a bunch of different laptop adapters that goes with it. You can connect your laptop into a standard 12V cig lighter or the Airline outlet in the seats. Many of the International flights have added the power outlets in their arm rests. On those long flights, I watch DVD's on my laptop.


If you look in the description of the hardrives on link you give, you see "Supplied with FREE Easy Installation Bios Overlay Software if required." I dont like using these overlays.

This computer requires 19V 3.62A power supply or very close to that. I have a 19V 4.69A power supply, it just has the wrong end. Couple minutes of soldering to save $40, sounds like a plan to me.

I rarely travel, never been on a plane in my life. And this is pretty low end specs to play dvds even if it had a dvdrom. Not impossible. Puppy Linux combined with commandline ogle player (needs lot less resources than most video players) can do the job on such a machine (I did it on my old desktop of simular specs) although maybe bit jittery if you try to play movie full screen. Also not just computer speed, but I would guess this thing has like 2mb video chip and no way to ever improve that unlike a desktop where you can get a better card.

In my life laptop has maybe 3 functions. First especially in winter I can check email while laying in a nice warm bed downstairs instead of going upstairs to desktop where its chilly. Second electric goes off once in a while out here in boonies and can stay off for few days. Being able to run off car battery is a good thing. Third I dont know how well it would work since I've never messed with wifi, but library has a wifi hotspot and if its fast, could go there to download big files in fraction of time, it takes on very slow dialup. Surfing on dialup isnt too bad if not graphic intensive, but downloading big file is royal pain in rear. For example it takes me around 6hr on dialup to download a new Puppy Linux iso which is around 60mb. A Knoppix iso which fills a cd takes me 3 days. I wouldnt even try to download anything bigger than that on dialup unless absolutely desperate and none of my downloads are a necessity.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Ok, found this tidbit for a GoBook on installing a 20gb hardrive. Maybe original gobook, and not a gobook2, author of webpage wasnt specific. Anyway...

"Power up the GoBook and enter the BIOS. Set the number of cylinders to 35,968. The BIOS won't let you set any other values correctly for this drive, but setting the cylinders will get you about 18GB capacity - plenty!"


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## chuckhole (Mar 2, 2006)

I did not read the part about the requirement for the BIOS overlay. Geeesh, that brings back memories. Hated to use them too. They were nothing but trouble with a big T.

Sounds like you got a solution. You won't be writing out to the end of the hard drive but who cares. 18GB is better than the 3.2GB drive by a stretch.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Have laptop up and running. I am going to have to find a different 128mb chip as I got a "memory doesnt match" from bios when I booted. It only recongnizes the builtin 32mb memory. The 128mb chip turns out to be PC100 Sodimm and this laptop needs EDO Sodimm. 128mb EDO Sodimm chip is apparently rather rare so sells on high side considering its age. 

Anyway got latest Puppy Linux 2.14 installed and it boots ok, recognized video and sound and pcmcia just fine. Seamonkey (current name for Mozilla browser which is a memory hog) takes forever to load and doesnt load pages fast due to low ram. Been using Dillo browser which works loads fine. Posting from it right now. Going to download latest Opera browser and see how it does with 32mb ram.

Anyway nice laptop for my needs even with low ram, much nicer than my ancient early pentium AST. I'll just wait and should eventually find cheap 128mb edo sodimm chip to max out memory.


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## Teresa S. (Mar 2, 2006)

Glad to hear you're up and running!


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Ah, those 128mb Edo sodimm chips going for around $50. Too rich for my blood so I got a 64mb chip for $9 delivered price. Shame the GoBook only has one slot for memory. Puppy is fairly happy with total of 96mb ram and was surprisingly usable with just 32mb builtin ram though Seamonkey browser didnt like low amt memory and was PITA. Opera browser fine with 32mb if you didnt push it too fast. Endless troubles from old pcmcia modems I had laying around. One with x-connector had to forever jiggle the phone cable and the other one with dongle would do the modem handshake for 10 minutes with no results if I let it. I finally just used a serial modem. Will have to get a working pcmcia modem if I want to run off battery though. This is just such a big improvement over my ancient AST Ascentia J series laptop. Probably should give some credit to the new hardrive I bought for this labtop, faster and bigger cache than what originally came in this laptop I am sure. Next time to town, will try my cheapo wifi card.


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## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

wow! you're getting your self a nice little laptop! Glad to hear you have what you want!


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