CitroJim's AX, C3 Picasso, Cycling and Running Tales

[CitroJim]

Regular readers will recall I found my old Windows 10 laptop to be a bit below par when used with Diagbox... It was slower than a sluggish snail dragging a tortoise...

So I treated myself to a refurbished Windows 11 laptop for a stupidly small outlay. All good. Thing is, this new laptop is so good it has found manifold uses beyond Diagbox.

My old Win 10 laptop - which began life with Win 8 on it - was consigned to the scrap pile... I did think of Linuxing it but no point, I have no use of a Linux laptop.

Last evening I was idly looking at the Vintage Radio forum and in their off-topic area a discussion on reviving old laptops has been running. The universal recommendation was to install an SSD (Solid State Hard Disk). I was staggered that on eBay such a device could be obtained for less than £20, including postage. Worth a punt. So I ordered one last evening and amazingly, it arrived this morning!

I did think of cloning the old Hard Disk but as I have a digital licence key for Win 10, I went for a clean install from scratch using the Microsoft Media Creation Tool...

And besides, the old Win 10 install started as Win 8, went to 8.1 and then to 10 when 10 was all new and flashy so the old OS really was pretty tired and messy.

All very quick and surprisingly painless. It runs at a very acceptable speed even with only 4 gigs of memory. Diagbox installed very speedily and works beautifully

I have nothing else installed on this laptop, just base Win 10 and the VMWare player along with the Diagbox virtual machine files.

I'm amazed at what a huge difference an SSD and a clean install made. I've now treated the laptop to more memory so I'm expecting it to be even better after that.

A nice result

[CitroJim]

8 gigglebites of memory in the old Win 10 laptop now...

Runs like the wind and faster than a speeding bullet... That new SSD and the memory upgrade was worth every last penny of the £30 it cost me...

And Diagbox works very nicely on it Polly continues to be faultless across all her ECUs

In other news, I was shocked to the core this morning... I took Pix when I went shopping this morning. Nothing unusual in that but what was unusual is that I saw it had a full tank of petrol...

The last person to drive Pix was Sian, my daughter... She filled it up And thus proving some women both do know what the little orange light in the fuel gauge means and that they do actually know how to refuel a car

What a start she is

[Rp0thejester]

Now check the roof for scratches where she's placed her Mary Poppins handbag that all women seem to have.

[Hell Razor5543]

A friend of mine was asked to help somebody he knew. His wife kept forgetting to fill up the car with fuel, and on several occasions he had had to rescue her when she ran out. My friend put together a simple bunch of electronics, and fitted it to her car. She only ran out of fuel ONCE after that, and (although she continued to drive the car) she then 'remembered' to fill it up.

What were the electronics, I hear you type? It was a voice synthesiser connected to the fuel gauge. When the gauge was at 1/4 the car would say "You are running low on fuel". At 1/8 it would say "You are running very low on fuel". When the warning light came on it would say "You are going to run out of fuel". When the engine finally cut out it said "I TOLD you that you were running out of fuel!".

[CitroJim]

Now check the roof for scratches where she's placed her Mary Poppins handbag that all women seem to have.

Nah, not Sian... She's more of a rucksack kind of girl

His wife kept forgetting to fill up the car with fuel, and on several occasions he had had to rescue her when she ran out. My friend put together a simple bunch of electronics, and fitted it to her car.

I like that fuel warning system James

[CitroJim]

Thanks to Mick, I certainly got around a bit in 2023

This from my Google TimeLine!

Here's to much travel in 2024

[MattBLancs]

Good going there Jim!

[mickthemaverick]

A notable omission from those travels was your area Matt, we aim to rectify that in April. It would be great if you could meet up at some point while we are in that part of the world!

Details here

[CitroJim]

A notable omission from those travels was your area Matt, we aim to rectify that in April. It would be great if you could meet up at some point while we are in that part of the world!

Details here

Very much agreed, would be a delight to meet up with you Matt

[Michel]

8 gigglebites of memory in the old Win 10 laptop now...

Runs like the wind and faster than a speeding bullet... That new SSD and the memory upgrade was worth every last penny of the £30 it cost me...

Could you send me some links Jim please? I've got my late father-in-laws vintage 2015 laptop here which I reckon would benefit greatly from a similar upgrade.

[CitroJim]

8 gigglebites of memory in the old Win 10 laptop now...

Runs like the wind and faster than a speeding bullet... That new SSD and the memory upgrade was worth every last penny of the £30 it cost me...

Could you send me some links Jim please? I've got my late father-in-laws vintage 2015 laptop here which I reckon would benefit greatly from a similar upgrade.

SSD here Mike: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285482123303

And memory - specifically for my Tosh so maybe not for yours - here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234242548690

Both sellers very highly recommended.

[moizeau]

I've not looked at 'puter stuff for ages. Mine do what they need to do. My Desktop's CPU is an AMD Phenom x4 Black from way back. I have numerous HDD's plugged in. Can still boot up in XP if I wish. Running a hacked Win7 currently. The main reason for keeping so many HDD's is so I have back ups of photos and music. My laptop for Diags mainly and occasional surfing on the side is old, came with Vista! Now running Win7 32 bit. The HDD died but I had a spare from a Lenovo (that died a few years ago) that was official Win7 bought for my daughter way back. Plugged it in and the chipset was similar and booted straight up. Forgot the HDD allowed win updates with it being official.......and the laptop wasn't so got the 'This version of windows...' message. Sorted that.

The point of this blurb is that I couldn't believe how cheap SSD's are now. Might get one for the desktop and go win10 and see if the other hardware can cope. I know the difference in speed between the 2 types of HD are night and day, boot up especially, and for 25 squid for 1/2 a terra, no brainer.

[CitroJim]

The point of this blurb is that I couldn't believe how cheap SSD's are now. Might get one for the desktop and go win10 and see if the other hardware can cope. I know the difference in speed between the 2 types of HD are night and day, boot up especially, and for 25 squid for 1/2 a terra, no brainer.

Indeed Pete, it is truly mind-bendingly staggering... I honestly thought that for such a tiny outlay it was too good to be true...

The only thing to be aware of with an SSD is they are no good for archival storage as they can loose data over time (bit rot) and have a finite life. They are best kept in use and used for the OS disk and the old mechanical disks kept for long-term data storage..

[Stickyfinger]

Now check the roof for scratches where she's placed her Mary Poppins handbag that all women seem to have.

Nah, not Sian... She's more of a rucksack kind of girl

His wife kept forgetting to fill up the car with fuel, and on several occasions he had had to rescue her when she ran out. My friend put together a simple bunch of electronics, and fitted it to her car.

I like that fuel warning system James

I fitted the Clint Eastwood version

Orange light on for more than 15 mile, = "Ask yourself, DO YOU FEEL LUCKY PUNK" !

[myglaren]

I do! mine has been on for a month now and a fair few miles. Did 100 on Saturday. WCPGR?