Category Archives: ThinkPad

ThinkPad Audio PnP Hell

The other day I pulled an old ThinkPad 770X (300 MHz Pentium II, good old 440BX chipset, released in late 1998) out of the closet to see if it still works. It does, but I had the terrible idea to … Continue reading

Posted in Crystal Semi, IBM, Sound, ThinkPad | 14 Comments

My Second AMD

A few weeks ago I became a happy owner of a ThinkPad A485, the first ThinkPad (together with the E485 and related variants) to use an AMD CPU. History buffs will know that it’s far from the first ThinkPad with … Continue reading

Posted in AMD, PC history, ThinkPad | 38 Comments

Didn’t Expect That to Work

Once the ThinkPad T43p with a bad fan was in working shape again, I restored the preloaded software on it. Which meant Windows XP (this is a system from 2005). It didn’t take long for me to establish that XP … Continue reading

Posted in ThinkPad, Windows | 22 Comments

ThinkPad Fan

I suppose I am one, but recently I had trouble with the other kind of a ThinkPad fan. An elderly ThinkPad 43p with a 2.13 GHz CPU (Dothan Pentium M with 2MB L2 cache) and a rather nice 1600×1200 IPS … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware Hacks, IBM, ThinkPad | 4 Comments

Removable CF Card, or Not

This is from the “learn something new every day” category. I’ve been using CompactFlash cards together with IDE adapters for several years now. It’s a terrific way to manage storage for vintage PCs. CF cards are cheap, fast, (relatively) capacious, … Continue reading

Posted in CompactFlash, Storage, ThinkPad | 19 Comments

Zapping the SVP on a T42p

A T4x ThinkPad with a supervisor password is a ticking time bomb. The password is not needed during boot and is only required to change certain BIOS settings, something which isn’t typically needed. But if CMOS settings are lost, the … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware Hacks, ThinkPad | 4 Comments

ThinkPad PC Card Boot?

I have several 1990s ThinkPad laptops which all have PCMCIA slots. Some have a built-in CD-ROM and no floppy drive, and no support for CD booting. It would be rather useful to boot them from PCMCIA ATA cards, and the BIOS … Continue reading

Posted in PCMCIA, ThinkPad | 23 Comments

OS/2 on ThinkPad T23 and T30

Recently I had a need to install IBM’s OS/2 on real hardware rather than in a VM, and for various reasons I wanted “genuine” IBM OS/2 and not eComStation. One of IBM’s older ThinkPads was a logical choice. A T42p … Continue reading

Posted in OS/2, ThinkPad | 11 Comments

ThinkPad 701 Restore Using CF Media

Thanks to a kind reader, the OS/2 Museum obtained a file archive of the ThinkPad 701 recovery CD. The 701C/701CS was also known as Butterfly thanks to its unique folding keyboard. The recovery tool appears to have been designed for … Continue reading

Posted in IBM, ThinkPad | 23 Comments

ThinkPad 850 Hardware Maintenance Manual

Thanks to a very helpful reader (Mike Senior—thanks!), the OS/2 Museum can now publish the ThinkPad Power Series 850 Hardware Maintenance Service and Reference manual in the form of a PDF. This is IBM document number 30H2383. The manual might … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, PowerPC, ThinkPad | 5 Comments