Refurbishing Old Laptop as Amateur Radio Station Computer!

Refurbishing Old Laptop as Amateur Radio Station Computer!

I had revived an old laptop with burnt off NVME SSD and bulged out battery to use for Ubuntu Linux in view of tracking EIRSAT-1 Telemetry Soon After Launch. As the old laptop had problem with some of the keys and the touch pad, bought a new external USB keyboard and mouse.

I had installed a new NVME SSD from the local laptop repair shop. The bulged out and damaged battery was also removed from there. A new 32 GB USB flash drive was used for preparing Ubuntu boot disk. The same USB drive was used to prepare a Windows 10 boot image as well. Both operating systems were installed as dual boot so that I could boot to either of the two using the bootloader at startup.

I wanted to have Linux in addition to Windows as many Ham Radio softwares are available only for Linux. One problem remaining is the delay in booting because the CMOS battery is not there and I am running the laptop using a UPS. Every time I switch on the laptop, one reboot is needed because of this. That can be sorted out by installing a new battery for the laptop, which is currently not available in the local repair shop and they are trying to get it on order from elsewhere. Next step will be to connect to the amateur radio with CAT control cable, which in case of FT-710 AESS is just a USB printer cable with Type A pin at one end and Type B pin at the other end. WSJT-X software has to be downloaded and installed if planning for amateur radio digital modes.