I have successfully installed a new, 80GB HDD in my ST3500, loaded a fresh copy of Win2K, and installed the drivers. Everything is working perfectly!

While I was at it, I repaired the power connector.

I have put detailed step-by-step procedures, copiously illustrated with high resolution photos, on my web page here:
Fujitsu Stylistic 3500 Tablet PC

Have fun!

TD

Hi Mark,

Your 3500 page is great.

I am tempted to bid on one of these on ebay - I want
something to read PDFs.

If you have a few minutes to kill in the name of
gadgetgeekdom and higher education, could you do me
a favor?

Have a look at one of the PDF chapters available
from this page:
Garland Science - Molecular Biology of the Cell

Is it possible to read these textbooks with a 3500.
(What is the resolution on the screen you have?)
Much scrolling or eyestrain?

Thanks in advance,
debbie

Thanks for the kind word on my web page. I will try to update it as I find more info and do more surgery on my ST3500.

I had a look at the book you linked to. If I rotate the image and display it in full screen mode the text comes out pretty small, especially the captions on the pictures and illustrations. It is just fine when viewed in landscape mode, but then you have to scroll each page because it only displays about 1/2 of a page at a time. Scrolling isn't bad, and carrying a 3 lb computer is much better than carrying an 8 lb book.

Most ST3500s have an 800x600 display, though there was an option for a 1024x768 display. You can see what the book will look like if you set your display to 800x600 and open the book file. I don't have any problems with eye strain reading books on the ST3500. If you spend a couple hours per day in front of a computer you probably won't be bothered either.

Keep in mind that under best case usage the battery life will be limited to about 3 hours max. Since I have old, used batteries I am getting no more than about 2 hours use before recharging. I don't think it would be practical to try to use an ST3500 to replace all one's text books unless you have only and hour or two of classes per day.

TD

wow, that was fast! thanks for taking the time. :)

i suspected portrait mode would be too narrow for an e-textbook, but it's encouraging to hear that it looks ok in landscape mode.

you got it right, these textbooks are heavy, but it's not the weight of carrying them around that's the worst - it's difficult to relax and read anywhere else than at a table designed to withstand the weight of a sedated horse.

i think i'll take the plunge, even though i know any of the available batteries will be short-lived. i read mostly at home where battery life won't be a problem.

thanks again and good luck!

Excellent page regarding the new disk install on the 3500. Two things you may consider adding...

(1) The bit about installing as second drive on ribbon doesn't always work;

(a) many laptop drives do not come with a good jumper diagram.

(b) If your other drive is also fat32, when you are building the partitions in "fdisk" it will not let you set the new drive as "active", and consequently will not boot in the tablet. If you don't have any other fat32 drives it will automatically make it active, which I suspect the situation you were working in, and why you did not mention it in your tutorial.

If it is not clear from the above, the drive must be set as "active" before moving to the tablet.

(( side note: in a linux install, you do the whole install in the other machine, then move to the tablet, et. al. and manually run the x config generator again on the new platform. In this scenario, you must do first install as master on primary controller, or it wont boot, messes up GRUB ))

(2) Having done this my self more than once, and not just with tablets, adding a few files to the "big floppy", the harddrive that will boot to c:>, really speeds up the install. You have probably seen the warning "blah blah blah, SMARTDRIVE will greatly improve performance blah blah blah" when installing, it is no joke. dumping smartdrv.exe and himem.sys from the same version of win that you have sys'd the HD and then a config.sys and autoexec.bat, one line each, to activate himem and smartdrv cuts that copying files from hours to minutes.

here is the text for those two config files:
[start config.sys]

device=himem.sys

[end config.sys]


[start autoexec.bat]

c:\Smartdrv.exe /r

[end autoexec.bat]


I went through all this with the 3400 a few years ago, used it for a few months as my primary machine to see if I could make the switch to tablet.

Now it is a nice Network attached MP3 player in a plate stand on top of my home stereo.