• Tag Archives Dell

  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Inspiron 1525

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Dell Inspiron 1525 appears to have been one of the more ubiquitous laptop models. At least if we are talking in about 2008 or so. Like many laptop models, this one had a pretty wide variety of configurations and included Celeron, Pentium Dual Core, and Core 2 Duo CPUs. Generally speaking, it was a mid-range laptop but there was a wide variety in that range. Specifically, at least according to Wikipedia, the Inspiron 1525 could come with any of the following processors:

    • Celeron 540
    • Celeron 550
    • Celeron 560
    • Pentium Dual-Core T2370
    • Pentium Dual-Core T2390
    • Pentium Dual-Core T2330
    • Pentium Dual-Core T4200
    • Pentium Dual-Core T4500
    • Core 2 Duo T5250
    • Core 2 Duo T5450
    • Core 2 Duo T5550
    • Core 2 Duo T5750
    • Core 2 Duo T7250
    • Core 2 Duo T8100
    • Core 2 Duo T8300
    • Core 2 Duo T9300
    • Core 2 Duo T9500

    What really relegated it to, at best, a mid-range machine was the lack of dedicated graphics, instead relying on an integrated Intel solution, in this case a GM965. The vast majority of laptops at the time used motherboard integrated Intel graphics because it was cheap and functional though it was pretty close to useless for gaming.

    The stats of this particular Inspiron 1525 include:

      • CPU: Pentium Dual Core T2390 @ 1.86GHz
      • RAM: 3 GB DDR2 667
      • Chipset: Intel GM965 Express
      • Graphics: GMA X3100
      • Display: 15.4″ 1280×800
      • Hard Drive: 250GB ST9250315AS
      • Optical Drive: TS-L632H 8x DVD±RW Dual Layer
      • Wi-Fi: Broadcom 4312
      • I/O: 10/100 Ethernet, 56K Modem, S-Video, 4 x USB 2.0, Express Card, VGA, HDMI

    The 3GB of RAM seems like an odd number but I think that amount was provided because that is often all that 32-bit versions of Windows could see. Sometimes other hardware limitations made it impossible to see a full 4 GB as well. This laptop came with Windows Vista and despite this laptop having a 64-bit CPU, I’m pretty sure it came with a 32-bit version of Vista. I think the reason was that many vendors did not have 64-bit compatible drivers ready. A 64-bit OS as the default wasn’t really the norm until Windows 7 came along. Windows Vista had a lot of stability issues early on anyway largely due to immature drivers. If you ordered an OEM system then you were likely ok but if you were building your own, good luck. People who built their own systems largely stayed with Windows XP until Windows 7 came along.

    The delineation between a Core 2 Duo processor, a Pentium Dual Core processor and a Celeron were not always very clear. Generally speaking, Core 2 Duo > Pentium > Celeron though that’s only true when comparing processors released in the same general time frame. And even that is not always true between the Pentium and Celeron. The biggest difference between the Pentium dual core and Core 2 Duo is that the Core 2 Duo has twice the cache (2 MB vs. 1 MB). This made some difference in speed but not a huge amount (at the same clock speed of course). However, Core 2 Duos were available at higher clock speeds and higher bus speeds.

    One notable problem this model had was overheating. Many people experienced random shutdowns most often due to overheating, sometimes when pushing the CPU hard and sometimes hardly at all. It seems the Inspiron 1525 had a rather poor cooling design. Part of the problem is that the fan intake is easily clogged with dust. This happens with most laptops eventually but it seems to happen in pretty short order with this model. Even the one I have experienced this problem to some degree. It didn’t shut down but I did see the temperature reaching pretty close to the max this CPU can handle resulting in periodic throttling. I blew out the van vent area and now it is better. It still runs hot when pushed but not so hot that the CPU throttles. I probably need to take the bottom cover off and remove the heatsink to get to the dust bunnies more thoroughly.

    As far as upgrades go, your options are somewhat limited. The CPU can be bumped up quite a bit as any Inspiron 1525 should support at least the CPU list above and probably lots more besides. Google tells me that it should be upgradeable to the Core 2 Duo T9500 which is 2.6 GHz. A pretty nice bump from 1.86 GHz. However, RAM upgrades are limited by the chipset. Officially, you can install 4 GB but the system will still only see a fraction of that last GB. I have seen reports of the BIOS recognizing up to 6 GB but I’m not sure that would increase the usable amount. So basically, this laptop has 3 GB installed and effectively it isn’t upgradeable beyond that. That means as far as Windows operating systems go, you could probably run 8.1 but 10 would be effectively unusable even if it technically works. Personally, while it originally came installed with Vista, I would stick with XP or just put Linux on it (which is what I did). You can of course always stick in an SSD in it which would make it snappier and would probably be especially beneficial if you are trying to run Windows versions past XP. This laptop really sits in an odd place. As a usable low-end machine, the lack of RAM upgradeability makes Linux your only practical option since Microsoft has dropped support anything earlier than Windows 10. As a retro machine for playing games it isn’t that great because it was a crappy machine for games when new. However, you could probably install Windows XP and play some earlier XP games on it. It would just have to be stuff released a few years (at least) before this laptop came along.

    The Dell Inspiron 1525 received mostly positive reviews. Reviewers seem to have an obsession with thinner and lighter and this model was a pretty substantial improvement in those areas over its predecessor, the Inspiron 1520. However, despite being a little bulkier, the previous model at least had the option of discrete graphics making it a better choice for some. The build quality of the Inspiron 1525 seems pretty decent. I like the silver look on the inside and the way the trackpad is just a recessed part of the palm rest (though it could be a little bigger). There were several options for colors as far as the outside goes. This one happens to be black and it looks pretty good. It also has not gotten sticky with age as I have seen happen to some other models.

    Despite having a relatively low-end processor, even for the time, and only 3 GB of RAM, it handles an install of the latest version of Xubuntu pretty well. I am able to have BOINC running a couple of tasks and a browser open with 2 or 3 tabs without any massive slow down. It’s not exactly snappy but it isn’t painfully slow either. Basic office tasks should be fine as well. I’m sure opening very many more tabs or trying to navigate resource intensive web pages would slow things to a crawl though.

    You can check out how it is doing on Einstein@home, Rosetta@home, Milkyway@home, and Universe@home or how see how it is doing overall at Free-DC or Boinc Stats.


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  • Dell Precision T3610 Computer Demons

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    I’m going to start posting my random computer questions here in the hopes that someone might be able to answer them. Now I am a software engineer by trade and have been building my own PCs for 20+ years. I’m not exactly a novice so whenever I ask a question here it’s because I’ve reached the conclusion that it is computer demons at fault and am hoping that someone has a better answer because clearly that can’t be right…can it?

    This question involves a Dell Precision T3610 with an Intel Xeon 2697v2 (Ivy Bridge) 12-core CPU, 64 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC RAM and an nVidia Quadro K2000 video card.

    When I first got this machine, it had a recent version of Linux Mint installed. It seemed to work fine. I installed BOINC on it (which I do with every computer I get my hands on) and added my typical projects – einstein@home, rosetta@home, milkyway@home and World Community Grid. After it downloaded work units and started crunching them, the computer started responding VERY sluggishly. While BOINC works a computer hard, it runs at low priority so typically it is only using what would otherwise be idle cycles and normally a computer running BOINC would still be very responsive. In addition, I noticed that the work units were progressing much more slowly than they should be. However, everything looked like it should otherwise…CPU was running at about 3GHz, BOINC tasks were using most of the CPU cycles, etc. Nothing looked out of place to indicate why it would be operating more slowly than normal.

    Upon rebooting and paying closer attention, it looked like Linux was spitting out some error messages during boot that indicated corrected memory errors. I forget exactly what the errors were but when I looked it up it sounded like the problem MIGHT not be actual memory errors but a bad driver. Instead of trying to screw around with that I decided to install a fresh copy of Xubuntu (my normal linux of choice) to see what would happen. Perhaps unsurprisingly I got the same results.

    Then I installed Windows 10. Windows 10 behaved basically the same way. It got very sluggish when BOINC started up its tasks. I did notice that the System task was using quite a bit of CPU (at least one full core) and also hitting the disk pretty hard. But this is so often the case with Windows that it’s hard to say for sure if it is related. So CLEARLY this is a problem of bad memory, right? Well, maybe…but here is where it gets a little weird…

    I discovered this “fix” quite by accident. When you install Windows 10, it defaults to putting your computer to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. Since I run BOINC I never want this to happen but I inevitably forget that setting until it happens the first time after a new install. So sure enough, I forgot to change that setting and the computer went to sleep after 30 minutes. I pressed the power button to wake it up and it woke up…but without the sluggishness it had before. Also, BOINC tasks seemed to be progressing at a more reasonable rate of speed. It seems whatever the problem was had been cured by a short nap. A fluke you say! But no…it’s repeatable. If I reboot the computer, it behaves sluggishly when BOINC is running and runs much slower than it seems it should. Put it to sleep and wake it up again, and it performs normally until rebooted again. And when I say rebooted, i don’t even mean power cycled…just rebooting brings the problem back.

    I also ran Windows Memory Diagnostic and it found no errors.

    This machine has the latest BIOS available and Windows does not show any missing drivers (and of course seemingly the same problem existed under Linux as well…not sure if a sleep and a wake-up would have fixed it there too or not). The memory is new but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a bad stick (it has 4 16GB modules in a quad channel configuration). It just seems odd that putting the computer to sleep and waking it up solves the problem and rebooting brings it back. What could possibly cause that? Since the problem exists across multiple operating systems, surely it is a hardware issue of some sort.

    Personally, I’m leaning toward a slightly more obscure solution than bad memory as I don’t see how sleeping and waking could possibly fix that. Maybe a flaky memory controller on the CPU? I would think if that were the case though that I would see all kinds of stability issues but there are none, either in its “sluggish” state or in its “fixed” state. It can run for hours on end either way with no crashes or other signs of instability, all the while using nearly 100% of the CPU and GPU for BOINC tasks.

    Poking around in Windows Event Viewer, I did find a whole crapload of WHEA-Logger errors that seemed to correspond to when the system was sluggish that say “A corrected hardware error has occurred. A record describing the condition is contained in the data section of this event.” But the “data” section might as well be random numbers for all the use it is.

    For one reason or another, I suspect that I am getting a constant stream of memory errors (that are ECC correctable so no crash) in the sluggish state and this is somehow resolved by sleeping and waking. Can correctable memory errors lead to a sluggish system? Why would sleeping and waking resolve this sort of problem?

    Like I said, it’s computer demons…

    I guess by process of elimination I could try swapping out the memory and then the CPU, I just don’t know if I have appropriate spares lying around at the moment. And it’s not like this is my primary computer…it’s just a toy to play with so as long as sleeping and waking it resolves the issue, then that’s what I’ll do. It just seems so weird.


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  • Digital Archaeology – Dell Latitude D600

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The great thing about Dell computers is that you can usually go to Dell’s support site and type in the service tag which is typically on the computer somewhere and it will give you all kinds of information about it. In the case of this Dell Latitude D600, there wasn’t a whole lot. It seems that with some older computers, Dell has ‘lost’ certain information like the shipping configuration. However, other interesting stuff was still there including the shipping date, warranty expiration date, user manual and service manual.

    This particular artifact, er, laptop was included in an auction I won of various similar items. It can be hard to define what exactly is ‘vintage’ when it comes to computers. Is it any computer over a certain arbitrary age? Any computer that predates 64-bits? Something else? On one hand, this laptop has a 32-bit architecture and is rapidly closing in on 20 years old. On the other hand, it can still run at least one modern operating system (a 32-bit Debian distribution in this case). And on the first hand again, while it is running a modern OS the performance isn’t exactly spectacular and for all practical purposes unusable for modern web browsing. On the second hand again it CAN run a browser and you can slowly load some web pages as long as they aren’t too taxing and you aren’t using more than a tab or two. It’s also perfectly fine for basic office tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, etc. And if you stuck Windows XP on it (definitely the best version of Windows for this machine) then you could play some games of that era as well.

    The Latitude line is Dell’s business line of computers so there’s a good chance that this was once in an office somewhere. According to Dell’s support site, it was shipped on June 25th, 2004 and the warranty expired on June 26th 2007. So in a few months, this laptop will be a legal adult. If you were born 18 years ago or this laptop (or one like it) was the first computer you ever used as a kid then no doubt this PC will seem quite vintage. On the other hand, if your first computer was a Commodore 64, it will merely seem a bit old.

    To put the age of this computer in perspective, popular movies in June 2004 include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban, Spider-Man 2, and DodgeBall. Popular TV shows included CSI, CSI: Miami, American Idol, Everybody Loves Raymond, ER, Lost, CSI: NY, House, Boston Legal and The West Wing. George W. Bush was President.

    So what hardware did a laptop from 2004 include? In this case:

    • Pentium M @ 1.6 GHz CPU
    • 1 GB RAM – DDR 266 MHz
    • ATI Radeon 9000 (AGP)
    • Samsung CDRW/DVD drive
    • PCMCIA slot
    • 2 USB ports
    • 56K Modem
    • Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Ethernet
    • Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG WiFi adapter
    • 1024×768 display

    This model generally got positive reviews. Personally, I liked the build quality of the previous generation C600 series. The D600 has a metal (some kind of magnesium alloy I think) lid but the rest of it is plastic. The C600 was all plastic but it seemed to be a heavier duty plastic that what most of the D600 is made out of. Plus it was all black as opposed to the primarily gray color of the D600. The keyboard was also a little better. If there was one area where the D600 got some criticism it was the keyboard. However, there’s no doubt that the Pentium M and other hardware in the D600 was a step up from the Pentium III-M of the older generation. Unfortunately, this particular laptop only has a 1024×768 display which wasn’t really enough even when it was new in my opinion. Higher resolution displays were available for more money though.

    ZDNet’s take on the D600

    The Pentium M was a pretty major advancement in laptop CPUs. There was a mobile Pentium 4 and even desktop Pentium 4’s were used in some desktop replacement laptops. However, neither one was particularly energy efficient and performance was mediocre for the power consumption and price. The Pentium M actually resembles a Pentium III more than a Pentium 4 from an architectural point of view but is much more energy efficient and faster per clock than early Pentium 4s. The energy efficiency of the Pentium M is in large part what started Apple down the path to switching to Intel CPUs over the Power PC CPUs they had been using.

    As with every computer I power up, I currently run BOINC on this machine along with various projects. It’s still capable of running a few though no doubt I’m not going to break any records in terms of credits. Currently, this computer ranks 280,154 out of 349,636 according to boincstats. To be fair, I don’t actually have it turned on much though it happens to be on now because this is being typed on it.

    My first laptop was Pentium M based but It had a better display and more powerful graphics than this Dell Latitude D600. However, it does have some upgrade potential. I believe that the CPU can be upgraded from the existing 1.6 GHz model to as much as a 2.1 GHz model with double the cache (2MB vs. 1MB). In addition, I should be able to take the RAM from the existing 1GB up to 2GB. I’m not likely to bother in this case though. For more information on the hardware of the D600, check out the output of HardInfo here: https://www.megalextoria.com/DigitalArchaeology/da_Latitude-D600/hardinfo_report.html


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