On some older monster Beats by Dre headphones, I’ve used dryer sheets to get off the sticky rubber coating but seeing as those are black and white leave some white marks that’s just a warning if you try my way I haven’t only watched about halfway through the video though at this point.
These ThinkPads have a standby NiMH battery that allows sleep-swapping batteries inside the keyboard assembly. This battery WILL leak and kill the keyboard if it isn’t removed. You should really get that battery out of both units if you want them to stay working. I really enjoyed the video!
@@psivewri awesome! Those batteries unfortunately ended up in a ton of laptops from that time. Dells, Toshibas, Compaqs, VAIOs, Apples and more. They’re beginning to become a real pain. Luckily they went out of use by around 2004.
@@psivewri These batteries are probably already dead and you're running on borrowed time ;) just a heads-up: the palmrest is tricky to get off; be careful not to use too much pressure or it might bend and not sit flush after reinstalling. The first symptoms of a leaked battery are dead/intermittent working keyboard and TrackPoint buttons and crackly/dead right speaker. They can run just fine without the standby battery btw. Some more info for ya: Extra BIOS settings in the "Test" tab: Ctrl + A - additional options, such as a looptest Ctrl + K - keyboard test (works only after pressing Ctrl + A first) Ctrl + D - CMOS editor (forgot if it was to be pressed in the Test tab, or not... and some more info: - Use the IBM Fuel app to change the LCD battery display method (percentage/estimated time left) - the hard drives can be extracted from their caddies with relative ease - but be wary of the HDD limit; - if you ever want to archive the hard drives, some common 44pin adapters might not cut it - these hard drives require an additional +5V signal (pin 43 on the 44-pin connector) - the 765's Mwave sucks for gaming - 760/765: the keyboard latches, the rubber/plastic "bar" behind the screen (with 2 LEDs) and the PCMCIA slot buttons are notorious for being brittle and breaking + dust gets into the speaker slider and creates cracking noises, beware; - 380/385: they don't like any IDE->SD adapters. You might have more luck with a IDE->CF adapter though. And be ultra-careful with the keyboard & HDD ribbons; - if you do enough digging you can upgrade the screens for all of those systems, BUT look up IBM's reference guide if you want to. The graphics chipsets are the biggest problem here; that 380 can be upgraded, but only with a screen that came with a laptop with the same graphics chipset; - you can get original recovery media for those laptops - even ones with the Select-a-System option (so WFW 3.11 + PC DOS + OS/2) online, but most of vintage Thinkpadders are incredibly secretive and don't want to share the media. I think I have some for the 760 and 380 series somewhere. These are lovely and durable machines. One I bought (760EL) was beat to hell, but had WinXP installed and chugged along! If you ever find a docking station (especially the one with PCI/ISA slots), you can have truly one of the most amazing machines to ever come out from the 90s.
Seeing the worn N and M keys reminds me of working at a loan servicer that was using a software from First Data that was originally meant for credit cards, their graphical front end didn't pull all the information we needed for all occasions so some times we had to go straight into this software, that was probably designed in the late 70s or 80s, I think it was to find the regular payment amount on accounts that were paid ahead, I had to type the loan number, then hit f5, the type "nm cl1" to get to the screen where I could find the fixed payment amount, and then you'd have to do that again for each individual loan and it was always the customers with tons of loans that needed this information.
@@ahoyrobi I don't know what the actual software was, they just referred to it as "FDR," which I don't think was the actual name for the software, it just stands for "First Data Resources," We only ended up with that software because the company was originally going to get into issuing credit cards but then decided not to but still had the contract with First Data, so they converted all the loans onto it and it was a clusterf**k, all the loans still had some data store in the old servicing system because ancient credit card software isn't exactly meant to do things like keep track of 1098E eligible interest. There was a guy in upper management that used that same exact software at a certain major credit card issuer/servicer/processor (that's not AmEx,) and that was as far back as in the early 90s and while he was at that company he actually worked as the middleman communicating between the developers and end users on the graphical frontend they were making in the late 90s or early 2000s. The software the loan company originally used was internally purpose built and they never should have abandoned it, it dated as far back as the late 80s, at one point I found an old ComputerWorld or InfoWorld article about the system from the mid 90s, explaining that it was built to work on some Amdahl mainframe and that it was pretty much the best education loan servicing platform ever made at that point and that's part of the reason the government was still giving them FFEL Program loan contracts and hadn't went to doing all Direct Loans like they did after 2010 because at that point in the 90s there was really no other servicer that could do what we could as efficiently as we could, and that was in the early 90s, that software was still in active development until they stopped primarily using it about a decade ago, it was so well designed and built for the purpose that they should have never stopped using it and I think now I heard they may have actually sold that software to First Data/Fiserv.
As an old fart in his 60's who has enjoyed buying a lot of tech over the decades. I have had had first hand experience of these horrible rubber coatings disintegrating on many products. The worst part is some of my tech made of plastic, such as Psion organisers and a few other items. The actual plastic has become brittle and just breaks away. The tech of the 70's and 80's was much better built than the tech built today. I expect in another 50 to 60 years from now most tech of the 1970's and 1980's era will most probably have turned to dust. Unless it is enshrined in some form of hermatically sealed case and not touched.
That rubber coating was used by VW group on their cars in the late 90's and early 2000's and has the same issue now. Mainly used on switchgear where scratching really shows up due to the backlighting.
Got out of retro games collecting 2020-2021 and it’s wild how quickly 90s stuff is starting to age the last few years. It’s gone from merely collecting and storing to full on preservation work
Retro is becaming very expensive and the 90s stuff starts to show its age. People need to take care of stuff, old hardware needs care, needs to be powered on from time to time and used, not just stored in a box. Batterys leak, caps leaks, cdrom belts become loose etc. Some people that only collects and store and not take care of hardware, someday they will try to turn on the device and does't work and some maybe beyond repair.
1:54 Always delete your files when you sell on your computer! You never know who may be buying it, so you don't know what will happen to your data. At the very least, clear everything that can be seen as "personal information" - including the wireless networks, etc - though ideally, reinstall the OS or (even better) take out the hard drive, put another compatible hard drive in and clean install the OS.
@@romella_karmey What I meant is, when you sell your PC on (when you no longer need it), make sure to remove everything personal before you sell it on, so that personal documents and stuff don't go to the new owner.
The rubberised coating is used on a LOT of stuff and it starts to melt REALLY quickly. I have a Lenovo USB DVD drive and the rubberised coating started to go sticky after only a few years. I ended up covering the case in sticky backed plastic because every time I handled the drive, my hands got sticky. But it's not just electricals. I've even had ball point pens coated in that stuff and it's really unpleasant trying to write with a pen that leaves all that stuff on your hands. It also makes you wonder how toxic the chemicals can be?
7:55 ah the sound of nostalgia... I didn't have a Thinkpad but I rememeber booting up my old PC with Win 98 and playing HoMM 3, Fallout 2, Abe Oddysee, and Rayman 2 among many other classics.
At 5:42, you can see a small label with a Canadian flag on it. It say "Industry Canada" in French and English. These tags were placed in IT products and telecomunication devices provisioned by the Government of Canada to their employees.
It's odd that there was a UK modem card and an old UK dial up ISP (freeserve) installed and the laptops had those stickers, yet they ended up in Tasmania!
The keyboard also has the British currency symbol which makes me think the computer is originally from UK. I have a Toshiba T5200 I picked up locally in America that is also from the UK somehow...
@@epic_paul27 tbh all the multinational banks, insurance firms, etc that operate out of London mean a lot of businessmen pass through periods living there and then go on to a branch in NY, Sydney, Frankfurt, or what have you. But often keep the laptop, since after all you're not leaving the company. Er, they're not leaving the company.
I have an old T500 and I'm also 65++. First thing I did was open it up and clean out the cooling system. Second thing was ditch that miserable 5400 RPM SATA hard drive in favor of a bigger SSD. This cut the cooling load and helped both read and write access. Added more RAM and then Linux Mint just rocks on it. Love those old ThinkPads!
I have a 365XD which are a year or two earlier. They are straight black plastic, so no gunk. I do love how easily they open and you can get at the inside from the keyboard lifting up. Neat design...they are definitely the size of a thick textbook.
I remember I had to do repairs on a Thinkpad 7-series during my voced in high school and was mesmerized by the fact that every major LRU had color coded tabs, latches, and instructions and component information on the protective housings. This was in 2009 so it wasn't super old at the time, but it was huge departure from electronics back then when iMac G5s were big. It was incredibly simple because the parts were on hand. IIRC it had a CD-ROM drive click and required a new installation of Windows 95SE. The latter was fine because there were no super valuable data that was stored on the laptop. Still blows my mind thinking about how based this boy was back in the day.
I liked your video so much I "blanked" almost all the way through it. Was going to thumb up but broke the mouse "blanking". Just about managed to tab through to the comments and tell you how much I liked it.
You can remove the rubber coating with brake fluid. Fully disassemble and let the panels sit in brake fluid and gently scrape with old bank card. 24 hrs usually works. Don’t let them sit too long as brake fluid can make plastic brittle. You can then paint. I had a 600E i did this to. I painted it candy apple metallic red. It looked like a million bucks. 2k clear.
I’ve got a few older Thinkpads and what I do for the rubberized coating is: wipe down with PB Blaster Silicone lubricant and let soak in- followed by a few coatings of Meguiar’s Ultimate Black plastic trim restore. Both can be found in auto parts stores
Electronics can get hot if left running for a long period of time. In fact, planes have crashed due to overheating electronics that literally melted during the flight. There was a Swiss Airlines flight that had an experimental IFE system in first class that was similar to the seat back screens you see on modern planes but it was only available in first class. The electronics controlling this system got so hot that they started melting wires that were part of the electronics in the cockpit, causing crucial instruments to fail. In the end, the plane crashed into the sea with no survivors
I have a 760XL that I bought about 10 years ago. Keeping a vintage laptop running is quite a challenge: the original 2.1 GB died, so I change it to a 6GB. Then I forgot to remove the NiMH backup battery, you MUST remove those, they will leak and damage your precious old laptop, I had to repair the small board under the keyboard where the battery was connected. Then the screen started to rot, first black spots and then finally died. I managed to find a new old stock LCD, but now is showing some white background stains. Yikes!
I have two of these in my "repair" pile. They are so sticky, I couldn't convince myself to fix them. Never thought I could just remove the rubber coating :) This easy-to-maintain design is fascinating and was the main reason I've bought them.
This model is a middling Win98 machine at most... but makes for a beast of a DOS machine if you care to downgrade. The MMX chip with the setmul utility is perfection.
If you want to clean the sticky gunk off an old laptop/camera - don’t use a solvent. Use a microfibre cloth dampened with water to gently wipe away the surface layer of grot, over and over and over again … and it will eventually slough off.
I think the companies knew that the rubber coating would eventually break down, and we're okay with it. I don't think they ever thought someone would collect their products, and that they would just go to e-waste after a while.
That rotten stuff was put on a number of high-end consumer products, stuff like portable radios that weren't going to be obsolete in a couple of years. I think they just didn't test it properly, especially in humid climates. It did feel really nice when it was new, though.
@@michaelwright2986 I have an electronic pen from 2006 coated with this stuff. I'm not using it anymore but when I checked it recently the coating had turned into goo
@@michaelwright2986 it's rubber reversion, and it's been a known problem for many kinds of rubberised coatings. It's possible that, a lot like with certain painkillers, they thought that This Time They'd Solved The Problem... but I kinda doubt it. As a rule of thumb these things just only ever have 20-30 year lifespans. It also seems time away from oils accelerates the degradation, as devices which sit unused degrade faster (sometimes even just 5 years) and some people have reported using olive oil or mineral oil to rejuvenate some of them. I've even seen it begin to happen with some older spare silicone cooking utensils when I use my wooden ones.
i worked and sold hundred and hundreds of these IBMs i used to buy stuff at auction and fix it before every one started doing it on there own like online most places now keep the good stuff and put it online for sale so cant do that any more but it was fun i sodl thousands of pcs and gave away a few hundred i miss it i still cry sometimes i really did love it
I had one of these back in the day and used it to demonstrate I could our code everyone. My laptop was quite limited vs the servers our software ran on but my code would always run 10x to 100x faster than others 😁
UGH. I had one of these laptops in college; it had a mobile Pentium II 233. Everyone hated these. The hard drive made weird noises after a couple of years and the video chip (NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD) would crash the system all the time. Sometimes the system would freeze up so bad that the power button wouldn’t work and you had to unplug it from the wall and remove the battery to make it turn off. I don’t miss this at all.
That rubber coating really is a bane! I have a boxful of small devices (Mostly MP3 players) which have it, and they are in the _very frequently postponed_ process of being seen to. ⏳ My approach is to remove the plastic shells from the devices, then either soak them in a solution of regular bathroom soap and water for 24-48 hours, or apply a moderate coating of soap directly to the decayed rubber. After a good soaking (Which can be seen by the rubber noticeably becoming lighter in hue) the coating can then be removed quite easily with a soft plastic spudger, guitar pick, or strong fingernail. 👍
I remember seeing these in brochures and thinking someday when I can afford it I'll buy a strong laptop like it. Here I am almost 40 and still cant afford anything at that price
I recently found my dads 2000 lenevo. As expected the battery was dead and no charger. I took the battery apart and made a 3 stage divider then powered bms board with 12v from bench power supply and shorted the fets briefly to enable output and it worked. The laptop powered on and the harddrive was still running. I got into windows me and after discovering it still has a lot of files i shut it down and removed the hdd , and plugged into my pc with a usb to ide adapter and made an image of the drive. I found a lot of sus meterials in the download folders. Including some really low quality 18+ things 💀💀
@@liammccauley9380 that's right but i also found a crap ton of child hood pictures and videos. My dad was a camera guy and he had a huge sony camera in 2003 that used to record in dv tapes at 1080i. And a bunch of those were in that laptop cus it was the only one with a fire wire port & it had svideo , tv tuner and separete left and right audio line in , optical toslink digital out. These features can not be found in any new laptop. Specially a builtin svideo and tv tuner. 99% laptops do not include separete line in but atleast they have a software defined port so u can make it line in but not have line out at the same time. No chance of getting digital spdif or optical in any laptop made in last 10yrs.
Funny how I got to watch this video, I'm not even a tech enthusiast, but it made me realize once again that I lived on a different planet once, I'm old enough to remember a time before all this stuff we take for granted today. It also made me remember I have an even more ancient laptop than the ones in the video lying around somewhere. Back in 2000 or 2001 I was working on my masters thesis and I got to use a laptop that used to belong to my then girlfriend's dad. That laptop was already old and obsolete by that time, I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was an early 90s machine that ran on DOS, which suited my purposes just fine at the time. That thing must have cost a fortune when new, I completely forgot about it for years but I still have it tucked away somewhere. Last time I tried to see if it still worked must have been at least 10 years ago and by then it already had given up the ghost..
That was a really nice overview of these machines! I'd personally keep the one with the upgraded 5GB hard drive - hopefully that was the one that you cleaned up! I must say, I don't like rubberized coatings on laptops either, since they tend to break down. Even some Dell Studio laptops that I've bought not too long ago (~10 years ago?) have started to have their rubber surfaces melt. :(
DONT GET RID OF THE COATING!!! if you don't have to remove the coating and it doesn't look melted and is just sticky, then put baby powder on the surface of it. it sounds ridiculous but it works. i did it with the coating on the palm rest of my dell precision and it hasn't been sticky
Yup! Did exactly the same with that terrible coating on my 755, not fun at all…funny thing is, they still use that same coating that gets sticky after just a few years on modern tech even now!
I've had good luck using a multisurface polish and magic erazer on those sticky coatings on cameras, rather than remove it it sands it back down into a consistent rubberised coating again that lacks that sticky grease texture, it still has the grippiness to it, not the smoothness from factory but going heavier with the MSP did help, if you wanted to keep the other original of course.
I have had success with normal Armor All wipes and significant scrubbing - it removes the soft touch coating but leaves the underlying plastic clean. You'll want gloves (the soft touch stuff will stain as it's removed), but once it's gone, there's no residue.
When this thing was released, it was so prohibitively expensive here in Brazil, that rich people would go into the US for vacation and bring a bunch for at least half of the price...
I have a 770X, bought it from a guy in Germany, the shipping costs were expensive (I live in Colombia) but totally worth it. awesome machine with 1028x1024 screen, that would be amazing in 1999.
Most smartphone charging cable also still using the smooth rubber coating. It's fine until 2 years of use, after that the rubber feels sticky, and after 4 years, the rubber are starting to crack and crumble. Fortunately, some charging cable are now using braided style which has slightly more durability
Hey, Nathan. Great video! I would love to see you get some iPod Classics and go all out by flash modding them, putting a bigger battery, etc. I think you would enjoy it, and it is relatively simple to do. I’m sure you know who DankPods is. Cheers!
you see you see this is why even a laptop needs new thermal paste from time to time to keep it running cool it will burn it self out and melt it's case even from heat build up
A bunch of my devices have this issue of sticky rubber, even recent ones. Not sure what causes it, but it was nice to see how you removed it. Just goes to show, I'll probably not be able to fix this easily until I can find a way to dissolve the rubber more easily.
If you can submerge the part in isopropyl alcohol, the rubber should peel off after a few hours. Alternatively wrapping the parts in a wet vloth/kitchen paper could help as well. Otherwise it's gonna be qtips+alcohol +lots of rubbing.
i had a p2 thinkpad at one time and i donated it to the tech building at my local college. i do however have an old thinkpad leather bag with the multi colored ibm logo on it in amazing shape.
You can pretty easily remove this soft-touch (rubberised) coating with solvent 647. But be careful: under it sometimes could be gray and/or ugly plastic so first try on hidden place. In this case i'm painting it with tranperent nail varnish, but it's also a bit ugly. You can also try some spray varnishes, but i'm not sure if it's safe.
if you can find out what the plastic is, then you can find out what can be applied. i would imagine a good clean and almost any paint would stick, they used to use alot of abs plastics back then.
@@jasonstalder5208 yes but there is still a lot of new soft touch stuff, and i have variable sucess cleaning it - a lot of times you don't even have to paint it
Those old IBM Thinkpads were bricks. They lasted way longer and we’re just iconic. I still have an old R52 that works just fine, except for some screen weirdness. We use “Lenovos” at work, but they don’t capture the same feel or quality.
I have a t40 and it’s really well made. The keyboard is also the best keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop. Better than even the unibody MacBook Pro keyboard.
Hey not sure if this helps at all but if you need to transfer files between these old windows boxes you can use the serial port much the same as you would FTP. Back when I needed to do this I would just keep a variety of DB9 and DB25 converters. The amount of times i'd plug a USB into windows 98 only to remember it would prefer a CD was annoying, love the videos the classic tech space is awesome
As you discovered, isopropyl alcohol and rubbing can remove all the rubberized coating. Soaking the pieces for a while helps as well (a wet cloth could do the trick). Alternatively corn starch or baking soda could be used to temporarily make the surfaces non sticky, until these wear off.
That price tag made me gag, I have a L15 and my brother a T15 Gen 3 both of which we got below 1500 dollars (815 for mine, 1400 for my brothers) it really sucks when one laptop starts to have issues and you replace it, and the another computer dies.
I have 2 of these 760 something, I bought them in 2000 for just $50 or so. Government second hand. I used them for a couple years, I loved them! In fact they are still functional and I occasionally use them to drive teletypes. But they both have rubber rot 😞
That rubberised coating is a real pain. I have it on a DVD-RW portable drive and tried to clean it using an alcohol based cleaner. This made it far worse. Now it is so sticky.
I have a 390X running Win 95 and still in good working order, apart from the battery. I use it to run old games like Doom for a bit of nostalgia. They were certainly built to last.
I was given a $5600 Thinkpad several years ago. It came with Windows ME which I promptly upgraded to WinXP. It is basically useless, but it looks cool.
Wow the Price of that lappy can buy you 6 iPhone 14 Pro Max 1 TB in my country. (Inflation adjusted of course) it's amazing how technology advanced and the products being sold become cheap overtime. I wonder what would the future of phones and all our common household appliances will become
I think it would be interesting to do modern day comparisons in terms of value/remarkability for these old devices. Like for example I guess getting a 720p display OTG back then would be like getting … an 8k 21inch laptop now? Idk lol can someone older than me chime in and give an example?
Some of the Psions also got that weird coating and it's quite okay underneath. Awesome to see the old Thinkpads, however, I won't buy any before they are T/X60+
Big thanks to Brilliant for sponsoring this video :) I also hope you enjoy this video! brilliant.org/PSIVEWRI
What usb do you use? And if you use Time Machine on mac what would you recommend?
On some older monster Beats by Dre headphones, I’ve used dryer sheets to get off the sticky rubber coating but seeing as those are black and white leave some white marks that’s just a warning if you try my way I haven’t only watched about halfway through the video though at this point.
Please do more Car fixing ... I want to know how to fix my car using Eucalyptus spray 😁😁
M and N could mean morning and night
lame for accepting sponsors are you that desperate for money in sacrifice of viewer experience
I see they have sticky keys enabled
Lmao
Oh!
Ok you got me! 😂
Mine rn
Ba-dum-tss
So like if I use eucalyptus oil I can spam the shift key when running in GTA without interruptions ?
These ThinkPads have a standby NiMH battery that allows sleep-swapping batteries inside the keyboard assembly. This battery WILL leak and kill the keyboard if it isn’t removed. You should really get that battery out of both units if you want them to stay working. I really enjoyed the video!
Good to know, I'll have to sus that out sometime soon!
@@psivewri hi
@@psivewri awesome! Those batteries unfortunately ended up in a ton of laptops from that time. Dells, Toshibas, Compaqs, VAIOs, Apples and more. They’re beginning to become a real pain. Luckily they went out of use by around 2004.
@@psivewri These batteries are probably already dead and you're running on borrowed time ;) just a heads-up: the palmrest is tricky to get off; be careful not to use too much pressure or it might bend and not sit flush after reinstalling. The first symptoms of a leaked battery are dead/intermittent working keyboard and TrackPoint buttons and crackly/dead right speaker. They can run just fine without the standby battery btw.
Some more info for ya:
Extra BIOS settings in the "Test" tab:
Ctrl + A - additional options, such as a looptest
Ctrl + K - keyboard test (works only after pressing Ctrl + A first)
Ctrl + D - CMOS editor (forgot if it was to be pressed in the Test tab, or not...
and some more info:
- Use the IBM Fuel app to change the LCD battery display method (percentage/estimated time left)
- the hard drives can be extracted from their caddies with relative ease - but be wary of the HDD limit;
- if you ever want to archive the hard drives, some common 44pin adapters might not cut it - these hard drives require an additional +5V signal (pin 43 on the 44-pin connector)
- the 765's Mwave sucks for gaming
- 760/765: the keyboard latches, the rubber/plastic "bar" behind the screen (with 2 LEDs) and the PCMCIA slot buttons are notorious for being brittle and breaking + dust gets into the speaker slider and creates cracking noises, beware;
- 380/385: they don't like any IDE->SD adapters. You might have more luck with a IDE->CF adapter though. And be ultra-careful with the keyboard & HDD ribbons;
- if you do enough digging you can upgrade the screens for all of those systems, BUT look up IBM's reference guide if you want to. The graphics chipsets are the biggest problem here; that 380 can be upgraded, but only with a screen that came with a laptop with the same graphics chipset;
- you can get original recovery media for those laptops - even ones with the Select-a-System option (so WFW 3.11 + PC DOS + OS/2) online, but most of vintage Thinkpadders are incredibly secretive and don't want to share the media. I think I have some for the 760 and 380 series somewhere.
These are lovely and durable machines. One I bought (760EL) was beat to hell, but had WinXP installed and chugged along! If you ever find a docking station (especially the one with PCI/ISA slots), you can have truly one of the most amazing machines to ever come out from the 90s.
@@kiki6713 the 38x machines don’t have these, right? I’ve got a 385XD…
"Did you delete all company files?" "No worries, I put them in the recycle bin" "Great!" :D
“Yeah! The trash PC will come to take it anyways!”
PC’s recycle their own files
You need to empty the recycle bin man
@@samholdsworth420 sarcasm.........?
@@6QG2P9X77W life hack
Seeing the worn N and M keys reminds me of working at a loan servicer that was using a software from First Data that was originally meant for credit cards, their graphical front end didn't pull all the information we needed for all occasions so some times we had to go straight into this software, that was probably designed in the late 70s or 80s, I think it was to find the regular payment amount on accounts that were paid ahead, I had to type the loan number, then hit f5, the type "nm cl1" to get to the screen where I could find the fixed payment amount, and then you'd have to do that again for each individual loan and it was always the customers with tons of loans that needed this information.
@@ahoyrobi I don't know what the actual software was, they just referred to it as "FDR," which I don't think was the actual name for the software, it just stands for "First Data Resources," We only ended up with that software because the company was originally going to get into issuing credit cards but then decided not to but still had the contract with First Data, so they converted all the loans onto it and it was a clusterf**k, all the loans still had some data store in the old servicing system because ancient credit card software isn't exactly meant to do things like keep track of 1098E eligible interest. There was a guy in upper management that used that same exact software at a certain major credit card issuer/servicer/processor (that's not AmEx,) and that was as far back as in the early 90s and while he was at that company he actually worked as the middleman communicating between the developers and end users on the graphical frontend they were making in the late 90s or early 2000s. The software the loan company originally used was internally purpose built and they never should have abandoned it, it dated as far back as the late 80s, at one point I found an old ComputerWorld or InfoWorld article about the system from the mid 90s, explaining that it was built to work on some Amdahl mainframe and that it was pretty much the best education loan servicing platform ever made at that point and that's part of the reason the government was still giving them FFEL Program loan contracts and hadn't went to doing all Direct Loans like they did after 2010 because at that point in the 90s there was really no other servicer that could do what we could as efficiently as we could, and that was in the early 90s, that software was still in active development until they stopped primarily using it about a decade ago, it was so well designed and built for the purpose that they should have never stopped using it and I think now I heard they may have actually sold that software to First Data/Fiserv.
As an old fart in his 60's who has enjoyed buying a lot of tech over the decades. I have had had first hand experience of these horrible rubber coatings disintegrating on many products. The worst part is some of my tech made of plastic, such as Psion organisers and a few other items. The actual plastic has become brittle and just breaks away.
The tech of the 70's and 80's was much better built than the tech built today. I expect in another 50 to 60 years from now most tech of the 1970's and 1980's era will most probably have turned to dust. Unless it is enshrined in some form of hermatically sealed case and not touched.
Fart?
Daddie gimme iPhone 👉🥹👈
@@camion__ saying hes an old dude
@@camion__ Old people let off wind from their rear more often than younger age groups, hence the English phrase "old fart".
Rubber coatings from 90s laptops hardly qualifies as “tech today”. Modern laptops are built out of solid aluminum chassis…. Pretty durable
The graphic design on the removable modules (and their overall industrial design) is really something.
I currently own a thinkpad laptop, similar to those, thats over 17 years old and it’s still a everyday-use laptop. Very impressive product!
That rubber coating was used by VW group on their cars in the late 90's and early 2000's and has the same issue now. Mainly used on switchgear where scratching really shows up due to the backlighting.
Common VW L
The handbrake on my 2004 Fabia feels like it is also starting to melt
Got out of retro games collecting 2020-2021 and it’s wild how quickly 90s stuff is starting to age the last few years. It’s gone from merely collecting and storing to full on preservation work
Retro is becaming very expensive and the 90s stuff starts to show its age. People need to take care of stuff, old hardware needs care, needs to be powered on from time to time and used, not just stored in a box. Batterys leak, caps leaks, cdrom belts become loose etc. Some people that only collects and store and not take care of hardware, someday they will try to turn on the device and does't work and some maybe beyond repair.
It's pretty incredible how modular these machines were built... how much we've regressed.
Do not remove the rubber coating. Rub it down with corn starch. It will last another 20 years before it "melts" again.
1:54 Always delete your files when you sell on your computer! You never know who may be buying it, so you don't know what will happen to your data.
At the very least, clear everything that can be seen as "personal information" - including the wireless networks, etc - though ideally, reinstall the OS or (even better) take out the hard drive, put another compatible hard drive in and clean install the OS.
Makes buying old stuff much more interesting though ;)
Where is spotify94?
Dang I store my personal details on my personal PC 😂
I remember when LGR got his Monorail AIO PC, and there was straight-up hardcore porn on it.
@@romella_karmey What I meant is, when you sell your PC on (when you no longer need it), make sure to remove everything personal before you sell it on, so that personal documents and stuff don't go to the new owner.
You know sh!t's getting real when Psivewri brings out the full strength eucalyptus oil
Is he from Australia? Eucalyptus oil doesn't seem to be available anywhere else.
@@Art7220 Yes.
Eucalyptus oil is an Aussie staple!
My eyes started watering at the idea of the stuff. You aussies are built _different._
I thought the video sponsor was going to be Eucalyptus Oil…
IBM Thinkpads are great laptops from that era. Still, Thinkpads are made today, but for modern operating systems like Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The rubberised coating is used on a LOT of stuff and it starts to melt REALLY quickly. I have a Lenovo USB DVD drive and the rubberised coating started to go sticky after only a few years. I ended up covering the case in sticky backed plastic because every time I handled the drive, my hands got sticky. But it's not just electricals. I've even had ball point pens coated in that stuff and it's really unpleasant trying to write with a pen that leaves all that stuff on your hands. It also makes you wonder how toxic the chemicals can be?
Some car interiors also have that rubberized coating that melts quickly
7:55 ah the sound of nostalgia... I didn't have a Thinkpad but I rememeber booting up my old PC with Win 98 and playing HoMM 3, Fallout 2, Abe Oddysee, and Rayman 2 among many other classics.
At 5:42, you can see a small label with a Canadian flag on it. It say "Industry Canada" in French and English. These tags were placed in IT products and telecomunication devices provisioned by the Government of Canada to their employees.
It's odd that there was a UK modem card and an old UK dial up ISP (freeserve) installed and the laptops had those stickers, yet they ended up in Tasmania!
The keyboard also has the British currency symbol which makes me think the computer is originally from UK. I have a Toshiba T5200 I picked up locally in America that is also from the UK somehow...
@@epic_paul27 tbh all the multinational banks, insurance firms, etc that operate out of London mean a lot of businessmen pass through periods living there and then go on to a branch in NY, Sydney, Frankfurt, or what have you. But often keep the laptop, since after all you're not leaving the company. Er, they're not leaving the company.
Always nice to see that some 1997 laptops have thinner screen bezels than my old asus laptop from 2016...
My Asus X409U Has a fricking thin bezels, and My Lenovo S10-2 Ideapad Is THIEECK...
I love the modular way these ThinkPads are designed - a Framework laptop ancestor. Great machines and a great video.
I have an old T500 and I'm also 65++. First thing I did was open it up and clean out the cooling system. Second thing was ditch that miserable 5400 RPM SATA hard drive in favor of a bigger SSD. This cut the cooling load and helped both read and write access. Added more RAM and then Linux Mint just rocks on it. Love those old ThinkPads!
I have a 365XD which are a year or two earlier. They are straight black plastic, so no gunk. I do love how easily they open and you can get at the inside from the keyboard lifting up. Neat design...they are definitely the size of a thick textbook.
I have a 365X and it’s great other then some hinge problems
the 560 and 380 are the same way, no rubber crap, my 760ED though sticky surprisingly
I remember I had to do repairs on a Thinkpad 7-series during my voced in high school and was mesmerized by the fact that every major LRU had color coded tabs, latches, and instructions and component information on the protective housings. This was in 2009 so it wasn't super old at the time, but it was huge departure from electronics back then when iMac G5s were big. It was incredibly simple because the parts were on hand. IIRC it had a CD-ROM drive click and required a new installation of Windows 95SE. The latter was fine because there were no super valuable data that was stored on the laptop.
Still blows my mind thinking about how based this boy was back in the day.
I liked your video so much I "blanked" almost all the way through it.
Was going to thumb up but broke the mouse "blanking".
Just about managed to tab through to the comments and tell you how much I liked it.
You can remove the rubber coating with brake fluid. Fully disassemble and let the panels sit in brake fluid and gently scrape with old bank card. 24 hrs usually works. Don’t let them sit too long as brake fluid can make plastic brittle.
You can then paint. I had a 600E i did this to. I painted it candy apple metallic red. It looked like a million bucks. 2k clear.
I’ve got a few older Thinkpads and what I do for the rubberized coating is: wipe down with PB Blaster Silicone lubricant and let soak in- followed by a few coatings of Meguiar’s Ultimate Black plastic trim restore. Both can be found in auto parts stores
I enjoy seeing vintage laptops that are still fully functional despite their age.
would be lucky if any of the china made crap now last more then a few years
Electronics can get hot if left running for a long period of time. In fact, planes have crashed due to overheating electronics that literally melted during the flight. There was a Swiss Airlines flight that had an experimental IFE system in first class that was similar to the seat back screens you see on modern planes but it was only available in first class. The electronics controlling this system got so hot that they started melting wires that were part of the electronics in the cockpit, causing crucial instruments to fail. In the end, the plane crashed into the sea with no survivors
I have a 760XL that I bought about 10 years ago. Keeping a vintage laptop running is quite a challenge: the original 2.1 GB died, so I change it to a 6GB. Then I forgot to remove the NiMH backup battery, you MUST remove those, they will leak and damage your precious old laptop, I had to repair the small board under the keyboard where the battery was connected. Then the screen started to rot, first black spots and then finally died. I managed to find a new old stock LCD, but now is showing some white background stains. Yikes!
I have two of these in my "repair" pile.
They are so sticky, I couldn't convince myself to fix them. Never thought I could just remove the rubber coating :)
This easy-to-maintain design is fascinating and was the main reason I've bought them.
This model is a middling Win98 machine at most... but makes for a beast of a DOS machine if you care to downgrade. The MMX chip with the setmul utility is perfection.
I removed the rubber off of my dead 600X the similar way. Worked great. At least you have a working ThinkPad!
If you want to clean the sticky gunk off an old laptop/camera - don’t use a solvent. Use a microfibre cloth dampened with water to gently wipe away the surface layer of grot, over and over and over again … and it will eventually slough off.
I think the companies knew that the rubber coating would eventually break down, and we're okay with it. I don't think they ever thought someone would collect their products, and that they would just go to e-waste after a while.
That rotten stuff was put on a number of high-end consumer products, stuff like portable radios that weren't going to be obsolete in a couple of years. I think they just didn't test it properly, especially in humid climates. It did feel really nice when it was new, though.
@@michaelwright2986 I have an electronic pen from 2006 coated with this stuff. I'm not using it anymore but when I checked it recently the coating had turned into goo
@@timbermicka Frustrating, isn't it. Do you know what happens?
@@michaelwright2986 it's rubber reversion, and it's been a known problem for many kinds of rubberised coatings. It's possible that, a lot like with certain painkillers, they thought that This Time They'd Solved The Problem... but I kinda doubt it. As a rule of thumb these things just only ever have 20-30 year lifespans.
It also seems time away from oils accelerates the degradation, as devices which sit unused degrade faster (sometimes even just 5 years) and some people have reported using olive oil or mineral oil to rejuvenate some of them. I've even seen it begin to happen with some older spare silicone cooking utensils when I use my wooden ones.
Yea, rubber parts from that era, i.e. coatings, rubber feet, etc. turning to goo on laptops is quite common actually
Man, my family had one of these, a bit of a later model, and I remember just how premium they felt compared with our beige desktop PC of the late 90s.
i worked and sold hundred and hundreds of these IBMs i used to buy stuff at auction and fix it before every one started doing it on there
own like online most places now keep the good stuff and put it online for sale so cant do that any more but it was fun i sodl thousands of pcs
and gave away a few hundred i miss it i still cry sometimes i really did love it
I had one of these back in the day and used it to demonstrate I could our code everyone. My laptop was quite limited vs the servers our software ran on but my code would always run 10x to 100x faster than others 😁
You want a cookie?
UGH. I had one of these laptops in college; it had a mobile Pentium II 233. Everyone hated these. The hard drive made weird noises after a couple of years and the video chip (NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD) would crash the system all the time. Sometimes the system would freeze up so bad that the power button wouldn’t work and you had to unplug it from the wall and remove the battery to make it turn off. I don’t miss this at all.
That rubber coating really is a bane! I have a boxful of small devices (Mostly MP3 players) which have it, and they are in the _very frequently postponed_ process of being seen to. ⏳
My approach is to remove the plastic shells from the devices, then either soak them in a solution of regular bathroom soap and water for 24-48 hours, or apply a moderate coating of soap directly to the decayed rubber. After a good soaking (Which can be seen by the rubber noticeably becoming lighter in hue) the coating can then be removed quite easily with a soft plastic spudger, guitar pick, or strong fingernail. 👍
I remember seeing these in brochures and thinking someday when I can afford it I'll buy a strong laptop like it. Here I am almost 40 and still cant afford anything at that price
I recently found my dads 2000 lenevo. As expected the battery was dead and no charger. I took the battery apart and made a 3 stage divider then powered bms board with 12v from bench power supply and shorted the fets briefly to enable output and it worked. The laptop powered on and the harddrive was still running. I got into windows me and after discovering it still has a lot of files i shut it down and removed the hdd , and plugged into my pc with a usb to ide adapter and made an image of the drive.
I found a lot of sus meterials in the download folders. Including some really low quality 18+ things 💀💀
Some things are better left not found
@@liammccauley9380 that's right but i also found a crap ton of child hood pictures and videos. My dad was a camera guy and he had a huge sony camera in 2003 that used to record in dv tapes at 1080i. And a bunch of those were in that laptop cus it was the only one with a fire wire port & it had svideo , tv tuner and separete left and right audio line in , optical toslink digital out. These features can not be found in any new laptop. Specially a builtin svideo and tv tuner. 99% laptops do not include separete line in but atleast they have a software defined port so u can make it line in but not have line out at the same time. No chance of getting digital spdif or optical in any laptop made in last 10yrs.
My great grandpa has a Thinkpad similar to one of these in his garage, I pulled it out and checked it out at one point. And YES I noticed it melted!
"the force is with you" is the only reason i keep coming back to this video
Funny how I got to watch this video, I'm not even a tech enthusiast, but it made me realize once again that I lived on a different planet once, I'm old enough to remember a time before all this stuff we take for granted today. It also made me remember I have an even more ancient laptop than the ones in the video lying around somewhere. Back in 2000 or 2001 I was working on my masters thesis and I got to use a laptop that used to belong to my then girlfriend's dad. That laptop was already old and obsolete by that time, I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was an early 90s machine that ran on DOS, which suited my purposes just fine at the time. That thing must have cost a fortune when new, I completely forgot about it for years but I still have it tucked away somewhere. Last time I tried to see if it still worked must have been at least 10 years ago and by then it already had given up the ghost..
I used a startup sound changer on my W10 machine to use the 98 startup sound. It still lives with me.
im glad we're no longer using those older rubber coats, hopefully modern methods will hold up better
I think the Windows 98 startup sound is the most futuristic, and best, Windows startup sound.
Yup. Microsoft said it also was quite expensive. Also the Welcome to Windows 98 program that launched on first run and blasted on the speakers.
Oh
That was a really nice overview of these machines! I'd personally keep the one with the upgraded 5GB hard drive - hopefully that was the one that you cleaned up!
I must say, I don't like rubberized coatings on laptops either, since they tend to break down. Even some Dell Studio laptops that I've bought not too long ago (~10 years ago?) have started to have their rubber surfaces melt. :(
@@robertszujo9528 Had to work with a new Dell Laptop recently too, also had a rubber coating, sadly.
A lot of lower end android phones have rubberized backs. Im not looking forward to the shenanigans its going to bring to my phone stash.
@@qwertykeyboard5901 Not only low end ones. My Samsung Galaxy S5 also has a molten rubberized back
DONT GET RID OF THE COATING!!! if you don't have to remove the coating and it doesn't look melted and is just sticky, then put baby powder on the surface of it. it sounds ridiculous but it works. i did it with the coating on the palm rest of my dell precision and it hasn't been sticky
Yup! Did exactly the same with that terrible coating on my 755, not fun at all…funny thing is, they still use that same coating that gets sticky after just a few years on modern tech even now!
I am bit surprised that the warning labels had finnish language on them
Finally! Especially love the episodes with ThinkPads included, we need more ThinkPad content from you!!
Great video. When I was younger I always wanted a IBM ThinkPad.
opening up to expose components to replace makes me cry. The serviceability is nuts! :o
I've had good luck using a multisurface polish and magic erazer on those sticky coatings on cameras, rather than remove it it sands it back down into a consistent rubberised coating again that lacks that sticky grease texture, it still has the grippiness to it, not the smoothness from factory but going heavier with the MSP did help, if you wanted to keep the other original of course.
I have had success with normal Armor All wipes and significant scrubbing - it removes the soft touch coating but leaves the underlying plastic clean. You'll want gloves (the soft touch stuff will stain as it's removed), but once it's gone, there's no residue.
1:58 AYOOOOOOOOOOO THAT IS THE MOST SUS THING PSIVEWRI HAS EVER SAID 😂😂😂
When this thing was released, it was so prohibitively expensive here in Brazil, that rich people would go into the US for vacation and bring a bunch for at least half of the price...
Still have one with me , fully working surprisingly .
Keeping your porn in a 1997 Thinkpad is a top notch sigma move.
A couple of really lovely units. Nice pickup! You inspired me to grab an old Compaq Preasrio 2100 notebook just like my Dad had back in the day.
Nice ThinkPads! I've got a selection too, the closest to these being a 770 - that cost $6,999 when new!
I have a 770X, bought it from a guy in Germany, the shipping costs were expensive (I live in Colombia) but totally worth it. awesome machine with 1028x1024 screen, that would be amazing in 1999.
The rubber coating is such a nightmare. Even on devices nowadays, I cannot believe manufacturers still use that crap.
Most smartphone charging cable also still using the smooth rubber coating. It's fine until 2 years of use, after that the rubber feels sticky, and after 4 years, the rubber are starting to crack and crumble. Fortunately, some charging cable are now using braided style which has slightly more durability
I got an 380d still in the case and original install of 95, like you said the screen isn't the best, but on an external monitor it's great
You should do a collection video, it would be neat to see how you display/keep your retro tech
Hey, Nathan. Great video! I would love to see you get some iPod Classics and go all out by flash modding them, putting a bigger battery, etc. I think you would enjoy it, and it is relatively simple to do. I’m sure you know who DankPods is. Cheers!
you see you see this is why even a laptop needs new thermal paste from time to time to keep it running cool it will burn it self out and melt it's case even from heat build up
@@raven4k998 what does that have to do with this comment?
and here I remember thinking the raised up keyboard on whatever gaming laptop that had it a few years ago was so slick.
“Dirty Daffy” “Dirty Bugs” OH NO
I had a 760E years ago. Great little laptop. I took out the floppy drive and replaced it with a handgun.
"n" and "m" was also SAP r2 next/previous record buttons. Could've been that idk.
Bruh is there a connection between 90s Thinkpads and questionable images? My 760EL from 96(?) had them too lmao
i have the ED which is a more fancier version of that with a 1024x768 TFT screen, i did swap the mwave with a ESS audiodrive in mine.
A bunch of my devices have this issue of sticky rubber, even recent ones. Not sure what causes it, but it was nice to see how you removed it. Just goes to show, I'll probably not be able to fix this easily until I can find a way to dissolve the rubber more easily.
It’s caused by the natural decomposition of the polymer chains that make up the rubber,
If you can submerge the part in isopropyl alcohol, the rubber should peel off after a few hours.
Alternatively wrapping the parts in a wet vloth/kitchen paper could help as well.
Otherwise it's gonna be qtips+alcohol +lots of rubbing.
On my 2015 HP laptop, the rubber joint around the screen became solid and is now slowly eroding away
Great video as always. Keep them coming. What about some retro PDA’s? Those are fun too
i had a p2 thinkpad at one time and i donated it to the tech building at my local college. i do however have an old thinkpad leather bag with the multi colored ibm logo on it in amazing shape.
You can pretty easily remove this soft-touch (rubberised) coating with solvent 647. But be careful: under it sometimes could be gray and/or ugly plastic so first try on hidden place. In this case i'm painting it with tranperent nail varnish, but it's also a bit ugly. You can also try some spray varnishes, but i'm not sure if it's safe.
if you can find out what the plastic is, then you can find out what can be applied. i would imagine a good clean and almost any paint would stick, they used to use alot of abs plastics back then.
@@jasonstalder5208 yes but there is still a lot of new soft touch stuff, and i have variable sucess cleaning it - a lot of times you don't even have to paint it
@@crapasanya you just said you were painting it, that's probably the cause of my confusion
Fun in a museum kind of way, but working on those old laptops was hell compared to today's.
Those old IBM Thinkpads were bricks. They lasted way longer and we’re just iconic. I still have an old R52 that works just fine, except for some screen weirdness. We use “Lenovos” at work, but they don’t capture the same feel or quality.
I have a t40 and it’s really well made. The keyboard is also the best keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop. Better than even the unibody MacBook Pro keyboard.
Hey not sure if this helps at all but if you need to transfer files between these old windows boxes you can use the serial port much the same as you would FTP. Back when I needed to do this I would just keep a variety of DB9 and DB25 converters. The amount of times i'd plug a USB into windows 98 only to remember it would prefer a CD was annoying, love the videos the classic tech space is awesome
As you discovered, isopropyl alcohol and rubbing can remove all the rubberized coating. Soaking the pieces for a while helps as well (a wet cloth could do the trick).
Alternatively corn starch or baking soda could be used to temporarily make the surfaces non sticky, until these wear off.
What surprised me the most was the thin screen bezels. Even a few years ago 'modern' laptops had thick af, ugly bezels.
That price tag made me gag, I have a L15 and my brother a T15 Gen 3 both of which we got below 1500 dollars (815 for mine, 1400 for my brothers) it really sucks when one laptop starts to have issues and you replace it, and the another computer dies.
I have 2 of these 760 something, I bought them in 2000 for just $50 or so. Government second hand. I used them for a couple years, I loved them! In fact they are still functional and I occasionally use them to drive teletypes. But they both have rubber rot 😞
That rubberised coating is a real pain. I have it on a DVD-RW portable drive and tried to clean it using an alcohol based cleaner. This made it far worse. Now it is so sticky.
I have a 390X running Win 95 and still in good working order, apart from the battery. I use it to run old games like Doom for a bit of nostalgia. They were certainly built to last.
i used something called Sumo multipurpose cleaning agent to remove the rubber coating, after rubbing the bare plastic is left.
I was given a $5600 Thinkpad several years ago. It came with Windows ME which I promptly upgraded to WinXP. It is basically useless, but it looks cool.
My lower end model 310E has problem with disintegrating plastic everywhere
Disrespectful to even look at his "deleted" files.
Wow the Price of that lappy can buy you 6 iPhone 14 Pro Max 1 TB in my country. (Inflation adjusted of course) it's amazing how technology advanced and the products being sold become cheap overtime. I wonder what would the future of phones and all our common household appliances will become
When he busts out that 100% eucalyptus oil, we know this guy is not messing around.
I think it would be interesting to do modern day comparisons in terms of value/remarkability for these old devices.
Like for example I guess getting a 720p display OTG back then would be like getting … an 8k 21inch laptop now? Idk lol can someone older than me chime in and give an example?
Psivewri: Eucalyptus Oil
Cat and Andrew: 98% Isoprophyl Alcohol
In 15 years Psivewri will unbox my nice ThinkPad T530 from 2015 and test it for retrogames of 2022.
Some of the Psions also got that weird coating and it's quite okay underneath. Awesome to see the old Thinkpads, however, I won't buy any before they are T/X60+
I absolutely love my ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu 22.04LTS now 💪🙏
Manufacturers still use awful soft rubber coating these days. And it’s still melting 🤦♂️
Don't worry.. 99% of modern electronics will be in the landfill long before it's a problem!
Excellent video! ThinkPad is my favorite retro laptop brand. You mentioned you may be selling one of them? I may be interested in buying it!
Does it have crankshaft position sensor issues 🤔🤣
All jokes aside you make great videos 👍👍👍👍
Wow it looks like it works really well
There is nothing better than a Thinkpad. Especially the IBM years.
2:02 “Maybe thats why the case is sticky” 😂😂 if yk what im talking about…