I bought this old Armada 1750 laptop in January 2025 after having a big run of issues with the last purchase(s); a pair of Sony Vaio laptops.

Specs

• Intel Pentium II: 300, 333, 366 or 400MHz - this particular machine came fitted with the PII 333MHz module.
• ATI Rage LT 4MB (AGP) video
• 12“ TFT LCD @ 800×600
• 13” TFT LCD @ 1024×768
• 14“ TFT LCD @ 1024×768
• RAM PC66 SO-DIMM
  • 64MB (onboard), expansion up to 192MB (unofficial support to 320MB with the right type of 256MB module)
• ESS ES1869 Audiodrive (ISA) sound

This particular example came with floppy module, CD-rom module, 128MB RAM (via a single 64MB upgrade) and the Pentium II 333 processor.

Good Points

• Mainly in reasonably good condition
• Nice non-integer scaling from the ATI graphics chip
• Screen free of blemishes/marks/dead-pixels
• ISA-based ESS Audiodrive sound with the cool ESS ESFM synth
• Working FDD, CD and HDD

Bad Points

• CMOS battery needs replacing
• Left edge of screen bezel and panel is loose (clips snapped - needs gluing)
  • This has now been fixed, and was a simple case to glue back into position.
• No main battery

• sp8975.zip - BIOS / Config Disk (.exe installer)
• sp12906.zip - Diagnostic Install Disk (.exe installer)

Compaq machines of this age had an unusual BIOS/Config method, partly using a small partition/image stored on the hard drive.

Without this diagnostic partition you can boot from a floppy made from the BIOS / Config Disk and it will run a minimal DOS environment with a graphical BIOS setting screen.

To reinstall the diagnostic partition on a new hard drive you need the Diagnostic Install Disk.

The Armada 1750 uses a standard Intel MMC-2 CPU module. The standard part being a 300-400MHZ PII with a 66MHz bus interface. However, since all of the memory interface is on the MMC-2 module it makes it (relatively) independent of a 66/100MHz board design. Consequently it is relatively easy to switch out the PII module with a PIII.

PIII MMC-2 modules of 600MHz and above are Speedstep enabled and won't work at the full speed with the non-Speedstep aware Compaq bios, but this just means that they run at their lower frequency, which is 150MHz below their rated speed. Hence if you install a MMC-2 PIII module, they will run at:

• PIII-400 : 400MHz
• PIII-450 : 450MHz
• PIII-500 : 500MHz
• PIII-600 : 450MHz (1)
• PIII-650 : 500MHz (1)
• PIII-700 : 550MHz (1) (2)
• PIII-750 : 600MHz (1) (2)
• PIII-800 : 650MHz (1) (2)
• PIII-850 : 700MHz (1) (2)

Note

1. Speedstep enabled CPU. Will run at the stated frequency in the Armada, rather than its design speed.
2. Possibly higher power/thermals than the Armada is designed to accomodate.

However it should be remembered that the cooling of the Armada 1750 is designed for PII-300 to PII-400 mobile processors which have a TDP of between 11W and 13W. By comparison the mobile PIII-400 starts at 10W, and the PIII-500 is 16W. Going much beyond that range is likely not within the ability of the Armada 1750 heatsink/fan to keep under control.

In addition, most reports indicate that the L2 cache of the PIII module is not enabled by default with the Compaq bios. You should use a CPU utility such as SETMUL, CPUSPD or CPUMSR to re-enable the L2 cache once the OS of your choice has booted.

Swapping the PII-333 with a PIII-650 in my Armada 1750:

Unfortunately after testing the machine for a few hours it spontaneously rebooted and now sticks at a state where the LCD is not active and the keyboard indicator LEDs are all lit.

This does not appear to be PIII-650 CPU upgrade related, as (a) the machine wasn't warm when it happened and (b) reverting to the original PII-333 CPU does not change the behaviour. I think the issue is more likely to be a failure in the internal power supply or the motherboard.

Bought this Armada 1750 in March 2025 to replace the original which seemed to develop the power fault:

Specs

• Intel Pentium II: 366MHz
• ATI Rage LT 4MB (AGP) video
• 14” TFT LCD @ 1024×768
• RAM PC66 SO-DIMM
  • 64MB
• ESS ES1869 Audiodrive (ISA) sound

Sadly this one has a motherboard fault that makes it impossible to use - the power on message is “102 System Board Failure” and does not allow you to skip or enter the diagnostics.

However the case, plastics, keyboard and screen are in far, far better condition (as in, really nice!)… so they would definitely be worth re-using to host a working motherboard, unlike the original one above.

Yes, a third. Really.

Specs

• Intel Pentium II: 366MHz (shows as 400MHz in the diagnostic screen, but all other software identifies it as 366MHz… the MMC-2 module itself is marked as a 366)
• ATI Rage LT 4MB (AGP) video
• 14“ TFT LCD @ 1024×768
• RAM PC66 SO-DIMM
  • 128MB (64MB onboard + 64MB SODIMM installed)
• ESS ES1869 Audiodrive (ISA) sound

The floppy drive works and the main battery does at least keep the machine running when the power cable is removed, though I have not tested for how long.

1. It came fitted with a 2.5” IDE drive, but this one is not working. Fortunately I don't need an (old, noisy and slow) 2.5“ drive, since it will be getting replaced with a 128GB mSATA drive instead.

2. On arrival this machine had a power-on BIOS password set, which meant it would not boot. On these machines it is easy enough to bypass:

• Remove the power cable
• Remove the main laptop battery pack
• Lift up the keyboard (release the two clips; under the left 'Alt' key and the right 'Ctrl' key) - if careful, you don't need to fully remove it
• Unplug the CMOS battery pack (to the right of the machine under where the right Shift key was - a silver coin cell with a short 2 pin cable)
• Leave the machine with everything unplugged for a few minutes

Now refit the batteries and plug the mains cable back in and refit the keyboard. The CMOS values will have been reset, including the password. Press F10 on boot to enter the BIOS setup (you'll need the BIOS boot floppy to do this; the Armada 1750 needs to load the setup routine from disk… not ROM).

3. There is a single-pixel yellow vertical line on the left edge of the screen. Also the screen is filthly (so is the rest of the machine).

Fortunately none of the above issues are deal-breakers; I only intended to use the motherboard from this machine, since the second laptop has by far the best case, plastics and screen.

The Frankenstein is my combination of parts from all three machines to get the best working setup possible.

It has:

• Case from the second machine
• Screen from the second machine
• Keyboard from the second machine
• Motherboard and CPU module from the third machine
• Floppy drive and CD-ROM from the first machine (since they were both tested working)
• Main battery from the third machine (since it at least partially holds a charge)

This leaves me with the following parts:

• 1x Armada 1750 with:
  • PII-333
  • 64MB RAM
  • Won't power on
  • Stuck pixel vertical line on screen
• 1x Armada 1750 with:
  • PII-366
  • 64MB RAM
  • Error 102 System Board Failure

Plus the following spares:

• 2x Floppy drives
• 2x CD-ROM drives (1 with cracked mounting bracket)
• 1x Spare main battery
• 2x HDD caddy trays

PC Player benchmarks:

Quake; 320×240 and 640×480 benchmarks:

Doom; low details and high details benchmarks:

Landmark and Speedsys benchmarks:

Fastvid: FASTVID.EXE 111 4 40000000

Oddly on this system enabling FASTVID / write combining makes almost no difference what so ever.