funny, @4:50 what seems to be the wifi card with the blue sticker says ministry of traffic and watermanagement. it is an old laptop of the dutch government, that is why it was probably erased badly, as is custom to completely destroy the device. and it would explain the black felt marker on the chassis
I didn't realized how dramatic the energy density improvements in lithium batteries has improved. A modern battery with that capacity would be well under half the size of this one.
I think that kind of happy "accident" happens because while in general terms these machines will only include what is required for their intended purpose, being pricey ones there's no desperate pressure to hit a price point seeking the absolute cheapest parts.
@@christophermorin9036 that's a very accurate description of it! i knew it reminded me of something i've heard before but i couldn't remember what exactly
That MIDI file was great. I worked at small town radio station in the mid to late 90's and toward the end of my career there, they invested in a PC for the production studio which did basic audio tracking. We had a library of MIDI music files to use as background for commercials, bumps, etc. I can definitely imagine some commercial for a local dentist office being read with that music in the background.
Very cool laptop. Congratulations on fixing the USB port! While lenovo has done a great job of continuing the Thinkpad line, i think the IBM branded ones look and feel more durable.
I like all of your videos but really love the ones with ThinkPads. I have been a long-time TP owner and user. In fact, I would like to see if you can get your hands on the first ThinkPads, which were Microchannel bus architecture. The 700 (black and white), the 700C, then 720C. Great little systems and of course the Microchannel modularity was great! Keep up the great work!
it can also be some sort of oxidation or loose connection. i once had an X40 not power up, with the power connector being my first instinct, and after reconnecting the keyboard (which in this case also includes that button), the laptop powered up. that was a few years ago and it still works fine. it could also be a bad button, though somewhat rare i reckon
Interesting note: This Laptop was actually used by the Dutch Government. At 4:47 you can see the sticker that indicates that it was from the "Ministerie van van Verkeer en Waterstaat", so basically it served at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
@@AffidavidDonda So what you are saying is that at 4:47 you do not see a very clear, bright blue sticker that states "ministerie van verkeer en waterstaat"?
@@Joshuadrooney I see this sticker clearly, but it does not mean it was used by ministerie van verker en waterstaat - it just means the modem is OK to be used in NL. Same with the Canadian sticker to the left.
This form factor needs to come back now that we have the hardware to enable it to overcome the shortcomings of these old ones. I just bought the upcoming 10" GPD Win Max 2 with an AMD 6800U, 16GB DDR5 6400, and 1TB NVMe. Closest thing to a true successor to these old netbooks that finally delivers on their promise.
If it does they need to make the keys with proper size & have a nice crisp travel to them. That's what really makes these enjoyable. Although my gf does have something similar from lenovo with win10 on it.
I seriously don't get why laptop keys are so far apart as a standard. It's annoying just from that alone but having no feedback is a let down as well. It looks like they have mechanical keyboards now on gaming laptops but they're still placed way far apart. You'd think they could make a really nice 10" to 14" laptop that would be the ultimate portable rig with a standard desktop key layout that thinkpads had until 2011.
@@mookitty2396 it starts at $999 USD for the spec I outlined. The $1,299 version has the 6800U with 32GB RAM and 2TB. Yes, it starts shipping in September.
Totally agreed, we need more of those tiny form factors. I would love to have a phone with a flip out keyboard. There was one that Samsung made some years back that was really cool. It had a clicking slider mechanism that was just fun to play with. I remember seeing an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the 90's where there was a clam shell style computer that ran Windows, and it was small enough to fit in your pocket. I miss the days when manufacturers were adventurous.
Ultimately, the problem with those PCMCIA-based CD ROM drives is that they require the proper driver to be initialised before they’ll work. I have one of these 240s and also have had the same problem. The original restore floppy works with the drive though. Installing Windows on there can be a royal pain in the backside.
Your USB port repair reminds me of a MBA trackpad repair I did last year. I had one part with shattered glass and another with a bad PCB. So I transplanted the glass. There was a grounding strap which I accidentally tore, but it was easy enough to replace from the donor.
It's because the Windows driver uses the custom ESS general MIDI patch set, which takes advantage of the added features of the ESS variant of FM synthesis (20x 4-operators voices where each voice can output stereo sound, I think by assigning 2 combined operators to each stereo channel). By replacing the ESFM.DRV file in the Windows' system directory with the one took from an ES688 card's driver, where the FM part was usually handled by a genuine OPL3 as the ES688 chip doesn't have any FM synth by its own, the ESS FM synthesizer will be put in OPL3 compatible mode and will play the standard Windows OPL3 sounds. The ESS FM synthesizer is quite faithful to the original OPL3, is one of the most accurate clones actually. If you keep the ESFM.DRV files from both the native driver and the ES688 one, by means of a batch file you can swap them to switch the FM mode in Windows whenever you want.
I'm surprised none of ThinkPads you've came across had the BIOS password lock in place. It's kinda fun shorting pins at the right time to clear the password.
Could you figure dell latitude dseries how to short them out they were good laptop just to get stuff done and optional dock my dad have i want those laptops and run linux mint use it for basic work.
On that first machine, they were just running DOS 7.0. It shows the Windows loading screen even if you never had Windows. Also there are USB mass storage drivers for DOS in case you ever find yourself in this situation again 👍
Funny how you mentioned installing Windows from the hard drive as a trick as I always used to do this. Copy it on, install and leave the setup files there for being able to add and remove features without the CD. These are nice little Laptops. The older Thinkpads just have some sort of aesthetic appeal to them.
Hi Colin. I have mine 240x with a bulky battery. it makes laptop to sit on an angle which makes typing more comfortable. And it works! Overall it is a beautiful piece of engineering! Just forgot to say I love your channel!
I still have two 240Xs from the time we configured up PLCs on site back in the day. One suffered a fall from the top of a ladder which broke a hinge and smashed the casing, so with the help of eBay I rebuilt it; this video brought back fond memories of that time although I do recall having the official IBM 240X service manual to aid the disassembly. Great video, keep them coming!
That is a lot of work and time to save one laptop from the recycling center. But I'm not into restoring old machines just to restore them, they have to be currently useful or off to the recycling center they go.
I ended using a 32GB MSATA SSD with a 2.5 inch PATA to MSATA adapter when restoring the X32 last time. So much faster and most importantly, reliable for daily use.
I was thinking the same while watching the video. I have a few older macs I’ve upgraded to msata cards within a pata 2.5” enclosure. Plenty of supply on Amazon!
I bought my ibm 240x while on holiday for less than £10 as spares and repairs. I repaired it and I still have it. I took the modem out and fitted a WiFi card and shoe horned a pair of WiFi antennas into the lcd display. It works really well.
Recently got a X61, am going to max out it's ram to 4gb, install a 128gb SSD and a new battery. It's going to be way enough for me, except for playing GTA V
It'll take 8GB if you can find the sticks online. Also the modded BIOS download unlocks SATA2 speeds for the hard drives etc. I did this and performance for even Win 10 is fine, depending on which CPU yours has installed (mine has the T7500).
@@EgoShredder You're right about the 8GB RAM and I have managed to find a few reasonably-priced 4GB DDR2 SODIMMs that I have put into a couple of Thinkpad T61s that I have. Unfortunately I don't share your enthusiasm for Windows 10 - 8GB is a minimum for Windows 10 these days because of the masses of privacy-hating telemetry that Microsoft has going on in the background. I rid myself completely of my Microsoft abuser when support for Windows 7 ended, and good riddance to them. On the other hand, Linux is made for these older Thinkpads and runs better in 4GB than Windows 10 would with any amount of memory on these older machines.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 I'm no fan of Win 10 and I used a modded thinned down version for better results, with all the telemetrey taken out and unnecessary bloat etc. On my daily drivers I am on either Win 7 or XP. Tried various flavours of Linux in the past 20 years and although some are ok, they are not prime time for me yet.
@@EgoShredder I just don't understand the concept of "fighting against my OS". You turn off things in Windows 10, and next time it forces an update on you, it turns them back on again. You're constantly going back and re-checking your configuration and therefore cannot trust it. And I don't understand why anyone would let an OS they can't trust anywhere near their computers in the first place.
I have had my trusty X220 for 11 years now and it's the best all-round computing device I have ever owned. I run Gentoo Linux on it, it goes everywhere with me and I will never be another "phone zombie" walking around, peering down at a tiny screen and bumping into all the other phone zombies for not looking where I am going. "Civilised" mobile computing is done sat down with an X220 and a coffee out of everyone's way, whilst occasionally looking out the coffee shop window to laugh at the phone zombies.
The X220 is the real deal. Probably the best Thinkpad ever. It's sad that Lenovo dropped the ball after the X240 with those underpowered CPUs (The X230 is still fine though). I'm still using a T420 and it's a great laptop ever after 11 years.
IBM's little notebooks are great machines. My first laptop was a new X20 with Windows 2000 on it. I got it brand new at an IBM employee sale for $200. That was over 20 years ago and last I tried it thing thing still worked (I need to pull it out again). That was replaced by an X60. You CAN but more than the listed maximum amount of RAM in those things, but it's not a good idea as while they will report the RAM accurately they actually run more slowly.
At: 12:18 you mention that you installed a set of disposable Lithium Batteries, I take it you meant Alkaline Batteries as they have 1.5v instead of rechargeable’s 1.2v?
I own one of those and put Windows 7 starter back in the day was a cool little laptop love them I recycle old PCs and donate them to autisitc kids for education and social skills
That Inudstry Canada sticker you see a few times in the teardown is indicative that at some point, this device was owned and provisioned to end users by the Government of Canada. Today, simmilar stickers would say "Shared Services Canada"
Hello !!! I'm super happy to find your youtube channel because your videos are extremely interesting. I would like to ask you if you can make a video about ALTERNATIVES TO THINKPAD CHARGERS mine is a BIG BRICK and i hate it !!! My thinkpad is a T470s. I would appreciated your attention
I scored a 240 off eBay in early 2000s for $150-ish, which despite its poor battery served well as a basic portable Linux machine (with PCMCIA Wifi card), and as a handy serial terminal for configuring switches, PBXes, etc. I used a silent CF card w/adapter in lieu of a hard drive. Eventually its LCD went bad, probably the flex cable, so I removed that, and the 240 then had a 3rd, sedentary life as my home router, automation controller, weather station, Asterisk phone system, solar power logger & mini-server. It happily ran for years from ~12-14V DC solar-bank power straight into its battery terminals, pulling only 7W. I swapped the internal modem mini-PCI with a 10/100 Ethernet card as second NIC (NIC1 being Cardbus), but had to solder a Cat5 cable directly to the card's transformer due to lack of a pass-through port, passing this out through the Kensington lock port. Had to do some BIOS hack also for those to coexist, but can't remember details. The VGA output was split 3 ways (R, G, B each going to a different small mono CRT, with sync's paralleled), and under Linux the PS/2 port could accept two separate keyboards, one into the 5th & 6th DIN pins normally meant for a mouse. When those 100Mb NICs became a limitation, this was replaced with an ARM-based SBC, but then put in another 2 or 3 years at a friend's place in a simliar utility role before finally being retired. Nice little machine!
I'm about to rejuvenate my former office laptop, a DELL Latitude E6520, and upgrade it to 8GB of RAM. I ordered a 2x4GB DDR3 laptop RAM package, and I hope, they will fit. THAT's enviromental care, not what these protesters of FFF do. Greetings from Austria.
Please DON'T feed the marketing stupidity by saying 1400mAh battery capacity especially when it CLEARLY STATES 1.4AH on the label. The RAM industry is bad enough with that silliness that we don't need this from battery manufacturers.
Thinkpads have always been overpriced and offered little more than there competitors at a cheaper price. Other than the IBM brand name. I'm currently using an IBM thinkpad edge 11 with Intel Celeron U3400 1.07GHZ and 4gb ram. Which I picked up for free as someone was throwing it out. Probably because it was used for education use and locked down with passwords. Though that was easily fixed as I learned from the internet by opening the computer and shorting out a few pins on the bios/cmos chip and turning it on. To easily clear all the passwords and reset the computer.
Nice machine, I actually have a version of that Toshiba Libertto but with awider screen running win 98 SE, Still works with 2 PCMCIA card slots and has a Unique Docking port to the rear, though I have nothing to Dock to it sadly. And keyb too small for any real work though usable for the odd document to put together on a train to work if that is your thing. The Thinkpad has a near real size keyb and bigger screen so much more usable. Great to see old hardware minded and kept working. Win 98 will still run Office 97 which is not that much changed for basic work from office 21. Some will totally disagree.. but a Word doc, Normal Excel sheet of general Powerpoint Presentation can a least be started and winished later on your main PC if need to.
If you have a junkyard near you, Chrysler infotainment systems from 2008 all the way to 2012 or so with the touchscreen and buttons on either side of the screen use a bog standard 30GB IDE laptop drive. I got one myself and while the OS is custom, you can reformat the drive as a totally normal IDE drive and it will work in older laptops, like the Latitude S500GT I still need to get a replacement keyboard for sadly.
2:20 Guilt free scavenging of parts, I feel the same way when I get a good used machine, I have several but sometimes you have to scavenge to make a good one better.
Hey @This Does Not Compute, you can use plop boot manage from a floppy, and get around the CD drive thing; just download the zip file for it, extract the bootable image, write to a floppy, boot from that; from there, you can boot from a flash drive (or anything else, really) even if the internal BIOS of that computer doesn't support it.
I have a question about the frame. If you hadn't had the donor machine to transplant the bezel from, how would you had gone about repairing the crack in the bezel? Is the plastic ABS, and if so would have using acetone to melt it back together worked? I'm asking this because I have a Thinkpad 390 which has some cracks in the back case close to the LCD hinges which I want to repair; I have no donor machine for the plastic parts so I'll have to fix the cracks somehow.
If you are doing this with many machines of this vintage you may find a floppy with PC DOS and USB support and/or a PCMCIA to CF card adapter quite useful.
Love these little Thinkpads - have a Pentium III 240X version. Unfortunately the screen back light has died although works on an external monitor. Pity you are not in the UK in would have made an offer on your spares laptop screen.
I was born in 94 so I don't remember much other than the Iconic N64 days, it sounds similar to Oingo Boingo's, home again, just synthesized, it feels like 90s hold music which doesn't sound too bad, I wouldn't mind hearing now on hold actually but we got stuck with Cisco's Default music instead still in 2022 none the less , props to cisco for the icon but the tone of that it makes being on hold feel dragged out longer than it needs to be. With this I be can reminded of similar catchy snes music at least, like Paperboy 2
There was a post this week on Hacker News about how much someone loves their GPD Micro PC, which is a little 6" laptop. So anyway, I bought a GPD Micro PC 😄
Now throw Linux on it, a modern distribution designed to be lightweight and compatible with such old hardware. It is really amazing that Linux gives you the possibility to run a modern OS with modern security on such old laptop lol.
I really want to donate a ThinkPad 755cx to him, I've spent money on it to try and fix it but I can't, I live in Minnesota at least so it would be cheap shipping but would really like emailing just to confirm he actually would like it
Question: shouldn't you be able to install ANY OS whatsoever by just writing a raw image into a disk drive and then resizing the data partition? Just saying as you mentioned it as if it was a Windows 98 feature - reinstalling it could have been done that way as well.
Putting baking soda in superglue instantly cures it, not really good for breaks like that. BUT it's very good for adding reinforcement around a break like that. Put superglue on there and dust baking soda over it, let it sit for a couple seconds and then clear out the excess. Becomes basically like an instant "plastic" weld.
That's funny I had somebody with a laptop USB port like that. I offered to fix they compromised and I filled it with glue hot glue to keep it from shorting out they were fine with the lack of one of the ports. and hot glue can be removed easily with alcohol FYI.
I have an Lenovo T61 modified to use window 10 lol 😂 I love using it Unfortunately the battery is cooked but if I kept the charger on it will work just fine
Anyways I used to be able to borrow a buddys newer ac power cord and brick from a hp dvd laptop and I have a cd player Dr,, anyways it worked fine that way I don't know about it now though have not messed with it since 2012 and I don't remember which one but one of the buttons by the mouse pad didn't work so I used a serial connector ide mouse with it
I was given this laptop back in 2006 when I was an I.t apprentice, used to take out the hard drive out to reinstall the os had windows 2000 running on mine. Good old days little money though, was a good little laptop in its time.
i got one a few months back but i tought the sound was broken hardware side cos it looked fine in the device manager but watching your video i realized the driver it had installed was completely diferent, located the one you mentioned there and it works now, thanks! mine didnt came with the cd or floppy drives, any idea if i can find a generic one with that same conector that works? i found one thats a diferent brand but i couldnt get it to run, for now im relying on usb drives and virtual drives to have it run stuff that need cds but id like to have the real thing in case the hdd gives up and i have to reinstall
I truly wish that my soldering skills were as intricate as Collins. I just make a mess with the solder when trying to cap and uncap and other small jobs on boards. I'm fine with wiring but I wish I can learn how to get better at smaller stuff like Collin is.
youre cadence and and annunciations reminds me a lot of Patrick Bateman especially when he's taking you through his morning routine. odd comparison i know but its also rather comforting sounding
I've restored a bunch of 240s. I love the 240s, although some of the plastic can feel a bit light and brittle. The portable drive bay only works on very specific thinkpads. I think maybe the 755 or maybe 560 series. I have a couple of new ones and used them in specific circumstances, but generally they're not compatible with most thinkpads. The portable drive bay 2000 was much more compatible. The reason the Win98 splash screen shows up briefly is because someone has reformatted the hard drive using a Win98 SE boot disk. This is a useful disk to partition and format for FAT32 and get a basic bootable system on a hard drive but it does somehow copy over the Win98 splash screen which always shows briefly on a machine that's been reformatted using this disk. Finally, in my experience the weak part of the 240s was the LCD screen. I think only SVGA and all the ones I've seen are aging badly and going a bit dim in places - the CCFL tubes must be wearing out. Great video!
Ah, the dead thinkpad has a sticker of a Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and water management, I think that's the reason they used a marker to hide something.
I think the neatest thing about ThinkPads is that at a glance, a Thinkpad from 1998 wouldn't look that much out of place next to modern Lenovo ThinkPads, aside from the ports and overall thickness. Talk about a design that just works! The only giveaway is the quality and aspect ratio of the display
I do not want to know how slow it would be trying to install an OS from a 1.1 USB. It took so long for me to transfer less than 10 songs in .mp3 format.
I absolutely adore Brickpads of all vintages, the oldest and first one I had was a Z60m Brickpad and the newest one is a Thinpad E560. None of them were gaming or production laptops but I'm surprised that the 560 is able to support some light gaming of Fallout 4 and New Vegas considering it's running on an i5 and Intel's 520 graphics. It also was the first used Thinkpad that had both a working battery and CD drive, it was like winning $3 from the lottery.
The holy grail of the 240 line is the ThinkPad i1124 - it has a silvery-gray finish and very similar to the standard black 240Z models, which are almost as rare. It was Japanese-specific though, unlike the other 240s.
funny, @4:50 what seems to be the wifi card with the blue sticker says ministry of traffic and watermanagement.
it is an old laptop of the dutch government, that is why it was probably erased badly, as is custom to completely destroy the device.
and it would explain the black felt marker on the chassis
Saw that also, just right now 😊 Agree.
Heh! Good eyes. Must of been used for a while before it was wiped.
I didn't realized how dramatic the energy density improvements in lithium batteries has improved. A modern battery with that capacity would be well under half the size of this one.
I bought an almost perfect ibm 240 for 15$, one of the best purchases in my life. Too bad even HOMM 3 does not run smooth enough for me.
One of my favourite games also - perhaps it's time to dig out HOMM 2 and run it in MS-DOS on the 240. (I have one of those also.)
Really? I played HOMM3 on a Thinkpad 380XD (P-233MMX/96Mb RAM) with no problems
@@xfragboix Was that on Windows 98? I am trying to remember what the earliest OS HoMM3 supported... I know it was Windows only.
@@xfragboix I got 380XD as well, For some reason 380xd runs HOMM way better, not 100% smooth but way better
@@lezoriq 380XD has a Pentium 233 MMX with 32 MB and 380ED has a Pentium 166 with half the RAM. that's probably why
I really like these old/retro laptop videos, even the other ones are really high quality! you deserve a lot more attention!
the sound chip in that thing is actually really nice! way better than other business laptops from that era that you've shown on your channel
I think that kind of happy "accident" happens because while in general terms these machines will only include what is required for their intended purpose, being pricey ones there's no desperate pressure to hit a price point seeking the absolute cheapest parts.
Reminds me of a Sega Genesis lol. I like it.
@@christophermorin9036 that's a very accurate description of it! i knew it reminded me of something i've heard before but i couldn't remember what exactly
That MIDI file was great. I worked at small town radio station in the mid to late 90's and toward the end of my career there, they invested in a PC for the production studio which did basic audio tracking. We had a library of MIDI music files to use as background for commercials, bumps, etc. I can definitely imagine some commercial for a local dentist office being read with that music in the background.
Very cool laptop. Congratulations on fixing the USB port! While lenovo has done a great job of continuing the Thinkpad line, i think the IBM branded ones look and feel more durable.
I like all of your videos but really love the ones with ThinkPads. I have been a long-time TP owner and user. In fact, I would like to see if you can get your hands on the first ThinkPads, which were Microchannel bus architecture. The 700 (black and white), the 700C, then 720C. Great little systems and of course the Microchannel modularity was great! Keep up the great work!
Did you check the power socket on the dead board? The most common fault is that connector getting damaged or the soldering falling.
it can also be some sort of oxidation or loose connection. i once had an X40 not power up, with the power connector being my first instinct, and after reconnecting the keyboard (which in this case also includes that button), the laptop powered up. that was a few years ago and it still works fine.
it could also be a bad button, though somewhat rare i reckon
Interesting note: This Laptop was actually used by the Dutch Government.
At 4:47 you can see the sticker that indicates that it was from the "Ministerie van van Verkeer en Waterstaat", so basically it served at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
no... this is just a homologation sticker on a modem... possibly more stickers like this from all countries this machine was offered...
oh, there is a Canadian one below :)
@@AffidavidDonda So what you are saying is that at 4:47 you do not see a very clear, bright blue sticker that states "ministerie van verkeer en waterstaat"?
@@Joshuadrooney I see this sticker clearly, but it does not mean it was used by ministerie van verker en waterstaat - it just means the modem is OK to be used in NL. Same with the Canadian sticker to the left.
@@AffidavidDonda The Ministry of Waterworks and Infrastructure licenses technology in your mind?
This form factor needs to come back now that we have the hardware to enable it to overcome the shortcomings of these old ones.
I just bought the upcoming 10" GPD Win Max 2 with an AMD 6800U, 16GB DDR5 6400, and 1TB NVMe. Closest thing to a true successor to these old netbooks that finally delivers on their promise.
If it does they need to make the keys with proper size & have a nice crisp travel to them. That's what really makes these enjoyable. Although my gf does have something similar from lenovo with win10 on it.
its 1200 and wont ship until next month
I seriously don't get why laptop keys are so far apart as a standard. It's annoying just from that alone but having no feedback is a let down as well. It looks like they have mechanical keyboards now on gaming laptops but they're still placed way far apart. You'd think they could make a really nice 10" to 14" laptop that would be the ultimate portable rig with a standard desktop key layout that thinkpads had until 2011.
@@mookitty2396 it starts at $999 USD for the spec I outlined. The $1,299 version has the 6800U with 32GB RAM and 2TB.
Yes, it starts shipping in September.
Totally agreed, we need more of those tiny form factors. I would love to have a phone with a flip out keyboard. There was one that Samsung made some years back that was really cool. It had a clicking slider mechanism that was just fun to play with. I remember seeing an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the 90's where there was a clam shell style computer that ran Windows, and it was small enough to fit in your pocket. I miss the days when manufacturers were adventurous.
Ultimately, the problem with those PCMCIA-based CD ROM drives is that they require the proper driver to be initialised before they’ll work. I have one of these 240s and also have had the same problem. The original restore floppy works with the drive though. Installing Windows on there can be a royal pain in the backside.
Yes I agree. I had one back in the 2004 or so and it didn't work till I installed Windows and some drivers. I guess under DOS it would be the same
The old IBM Thinkpads were really good, I used them back in college! Too bad IBM sold their PC line to Lenovo, hate that company!
Your USB port repair reminds me of a MBA trackpad repair I did last year. I had one part with shattered glass and another with a bad PCB. So I transplanted the glass. There was a grounding strap which I accidentally tore, but it was easy enough to replace from the donor.
i love the percussion on that midi chip. that slap bass is something else entirely, though, lol.
It's because the Windows driver uses the custom ESS general MIDI patch set, which takes advantage of the added features of the ESS variant of FM synthesis (20x 4-operators voices where each voice can output stereo sound, I think by assigning 2 combined operators to each stereo channel). By replacing the ESFM.DRV file in the Windows' system directory with the one took from an ES688 card's driver, where the FM part was usually handled by a genuine OPL3 as the ES688 chip doesn't have any FM synth by its own, the ESS FM synthesizer will be put in OPL3 compatible mode and will play the standard Windows OPL3 sounds. The ESS FM synthesizer is quite faithful to the original OPL3, is one of the most accurate clones actually.
If you keep the ESFM.DRV files from both the native driver and the ES688 one, by means of a batch file you can swap them to switch the FM mode in Windows whenever you want.
I'm surprised none of ThinkPads you've came across had the BIOS password lock in place. It's kinda fun shorting pins at the right time to clear the password.
Could you figure dell latitude dseries how to short them out they were good laptop just to get stuff done and optional dock my dad have i want those laptops and run linux mint use it for basic work.
@@WilliamHollinger2019 man I don't know. I just found guides on how to do it on some Thinkpads I had.
That battery is 1/5 of the capacity of the battery in my 13" MacBook Pro. What a nugget!
I’m a simple man. I see a ThinkPad, I click Like! 👍🏻
I recognize 0:52 as Philscomputerlab's DOS Starter Pack.
On that first machine, they were just running DOS 7.0. It shows the Windows loading screen even if you never had Windows. Also there are USB mass storage drivers for DOS in case you ever find yourself in this situation again 👍
How well do the DOS USB drivers work on different chipsets?
@@zoomosis I've had success on every machine I've used them on. I haven't tried anything newer than about 2002 though.
Came for the repair, stayed for the Passport!
This channel always impresses when it comes to video quality, those 4K macro shots ❤️
Funny how you mentioned installing Windows from the hard drive as a trick as I always used to do this. Copy it on, install and leave the setup files there for being able to add and remove features without the CD. These are nice little Laptops. The older Thinkpads just have some sort of aesthetic appeal to them.
They really do
Hi Colin.
I have mine 240x with a bulky battery. it makes laptop to sit on an angle which makes typing more comfortable. And it works!
Overall it is a beautiful piece of engineering!
Just forgot to say I love your channel!
I still have two 240Xs from the time we configured up PLCs on site back in the day. One suffered a fall from the top of a ladder which broke a hinge and smashed the casing, so with the help of eBay I rebuilt it; this video brought back fond memories of that time although I do recall having the official IBM 240X service manual to aid the disassembly. Great video, keep them coming!
Love your videos Colin! Please come to Australia in the near future!
That is a lot of work and time to save one laptop from the recycling center. But I'm not into restoring old machines just to restore them, they have to be currently useful or off to the recycling center they go.
I hate to disassemble and re-assemble these old ibm and lenovo laptops, because each screw is different
I ended using a 32GB MSATA SSD with a 2.5 inch PATA to MSATA adapter when restoring the X32 last time. So much faster and most importantly, reliable for daily use.
I was thinking the same while watching the video. I have a few older macs I’ve upgraded to msata cards within a pata 2.5” enclosure. Plenty of supply on Amazon!
I bought my ibm 240x while on holiday for less than £10 as spares and repairs. I repaired it and I still have it. I took the modem out and fitted a WiFi card and shoe horned a pair of WiFi antennas into the lcd display. It works really well.
Recently got a X61, am going to max out it's ram to 4gb, install a 128gb SSD and a new battery. It's going to be way enough for me, except for playing GTA V
It'll take 8GB if you can find the sticks online. Also the modded BIOS download unlocks SATA2 speeds for the hard drives etc. I did this and performance for even Win 10 is fine, depending on which CPU yours has installed (mine has the T7500).
@@EgoShredder You're right about the 8GB RAM and I have managed to find a few reasonably-priced 4GB DDR2 SODIMMs that I have put into a couple of Thinkpad T61s that I have.
Unfortunately I don't share your enthusiasm for Windows 10 - 8GB is a minimum for Windows 10 these days because of the masses of privacy-hating telemetry that Microsoft has going on in the background. I rid myself completely of my Microsoft abuser when support for Windows 7 ended, and good riddance to them.
On the other hand, Linux is made for these older Thinkpads and runs better in 4GB than Windows 10 would with any amount of memory on these older machines.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 I'm no fan of Win 10 and I used a modded thinned down version for better results, with all the telemetrey taken out and unnecessary bloat etc. On my daily drivers I am on either Win 7 or XP. Tried various flavours of Linux in the past 20 years and although some are ok, they are not prime time for me yet.
@@EgoShredder I just don't understand the concept of "fighting against my OS".
You turn off things in Windows 10, and next time it forces an update on you, it turns them back on again. You're constantly going back and re-checking your configuration and therefore cannot trust it.
And I don't understand why anyone would let an OS they can't trust anywhere near their computers in the first place.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 For me that is down to specific hardware and software I use.
I recall reading about the Toshiba Libreto 120S in 1996 and how amazing it was for it’s time.
watched this video using my x220, glad to see the 240 still has some life left in it ^^
I have had my trusty X220 for 11 years now and it's the best all-round computing device I have ever owned. I run Gentoo Linux on it, it goes everywhere with me and I will never be another "phone zombie" walking around, peering down at a tiny screen and bumping into all the other phone zombies for not looking where I am going.
"Civilised" mobile computing is done sat down with an X220 and a coffee out of everyone's way, whilst occasionally looking out the coffee shop window to laugh at the phone zombies.
The X220 is the real deal. Probably the best Thinkpad ever. It's sad that Lenovo dropped the ball after the X240 with those underpowered CPUs (The X230 is still fine though). I'm still using a T420 and it's a great laptop ever after 11 years.
@@marciomaiajr I have a T420 also (and quite a few other Thinkpads!), another good machine.
IBM's little notebooks are great machines. My first laptop was a new X20 with Windows 2000 on it. I got it brand new at an IBM employee sale for $200. That was over 20 years ago and last I tried it thing thing still worked (I need to pull it out again). That was replaced by an X60.
You CAN but more than the listed maximum amount of RAM in those things, but it's not a good idea as while they will report the RAM accurately they actually run more slowly.
Stop, you’re making me miss my X40
At: 12:18 you mention that you installed a set of disposable Lithium Batteries, I take it you meant Alkaline Batteries as they have 1.5v instead of rechargeable’s 1.2v?
I own one of those and put Windows 7 starter back in the day was a cool little laptop love them I recycle old PCs and donate them to autisitc kids for education and social skills
You have the magic touch, I have never had any luck removing the screen bezels without cracking them, amazing work!
Ooooooooo yes, anything ThinkPad related is gonna get a watch from me
That Inudstry Canada sticker you see a few times in the teardown is indicative that at some point, this device was owned and provisioned to end users by the Government of Canada. Today, simmilar stickers would say "Shared Services Canada"
Hello !!! I'm super happy to find your youtube channel because your videos are extremely interesting.
I would like to ask you if you can make a video about ALTERNATIVES TO THINKPAD CHARGERS mine is a BIG BRICK and i hate it !!!
My thinkpad is a T470s. I would appreciated your attention
I scored a 240 off eBay in early 2000s for $150-ish, which despite its poor battery served well as a basic portable Linux machine (with PCMCIA Wifi card), and as a handy serial terminal for configuring switches, PBXes, etc. I used a silent CF card w/adapter in lieu of a hard drive. Eventually its LCD went bad, probably the flex cable, so I removed that, and the 240 then had a 3rd, sedentary life as my home router, automation controller, weather station, Asterisk phone system, solar power logger & mini-server. It happily ran for years from ~12-14V DC solar-bank power straight into its battery terminals, pulling only 7W. I swapped the internal modem mini-PCI with a 10/100 Ethernet card as second NIC (NIC1 being Cardbus), but had to solder a Cat5 cable directly to the card's transformer due to lack of a pass-through port, passing this out through the Kensington lock port. Had to do some BIOS hack also for those to coexist, but can't remember details. The VGA output was split 3 ways (R, G, B each going to a different small mono CRT, with sync's paralleled), and under Linux the PS/2 port could accept two separate keyboards, one into the 5th & 6th DIN pins normally meant for a mouse.
When those 100Mb NICs became a limitation, this was replaced with an ARM-based SBC, but then put in another 2 or 3 years at a friend's place in a simliar utility role before finally being retired. Nice little machine!
Audio quality with its song sounds exactly like a 1990s television show outro.
I'm about to rejuvenate my former office laptop, a DELL Latitude E6520, and upgrade it to 8GB of RAM. I ordered a 2x4GB DDR3 laptop RAM package, and I hope, they will fit. THAT's enviromental care, not what these protesters of FFF do. Greetings from Austria.
Please DON'T feed the marketing stupidity by saying 1400mAh battery capacity especially when it CLEARLY STATES 1.4AH on the label. The RAM industry is bad enough with that silliness that we don't need this from battery manufacturers.
Thinkpads have always been overpriced and offered little more than there competitors at a cheaper price. Other than the IBM brand name. I'm currently using an IBM thinkpad edge 11 with Intel Celeron U3400 1.07GHZ and 4gb ram. Which I picked up for free as someone was throwing it out. Probably because it was used for education use and locked down with passwords. Though that was easily fixed as I learned from the internet by opening the computer and shorting out a few pins on the bios/cmos chip and turning it on. To easily clear all the passwords and reset the computer.
Nice machine, I actually have a version of that Toshiba Libertto but with awider screen running win 98 SE, Still works with 2 PCMCIA card slots and has a Unique Docking port to the rear, though I have nothing to Dock to it sadly. And keyb too small for any real work though usable for the odd document to put together on a train to work if that is your thing. The Thinkpad has a near real size keyb and bigger screen so much more usable. Great to see old hardware minded and kept working. Win 98 will still run Office 97 which is not that much changed for basic work from office 21. Some will totally disagree.. but a Word doc, Normal Excel sheet of general Powerpoint Presentation can a least be started and winished later on your main PC if need to.
If you have a junkyard near you, Chrysler infotainment systems from 2008 all the way to 2012 or so with the touchscreen and buttons on either side of the screen use a bog standard 30GB IDE laptop drive. I got one myself and while the OS is custom, you can reformat the drive as a totally normal IDE drive and it will work in older laptops, like the Latitude S500GT I still need to get a replacement keyboard for sadly.
2:20 Guilt free scavenging of parts, I feel the same way when I get a good used machine, I have several but sometimes you have to scavenge to make a good one better.
Hey @This Does Not Compute, you can use plop boot manage from a floppy, and get around the CD drive thing; just download the zip file for it, extract the bootable image, write to a floppy, boot from that; from there, you can boot from a flash drive (or anything else, really) even if the internal BIOS of that computer doesn't support it.
I recognize that screen at 0:52. The previous owner must have been a fan of Phil's Computer Lab.
I have a question about the frame. If you hadn't had the donor machine to transplant the bezel from, how would you had gone about repairing the crack in the bezel? Is the plastic ABS, and if so would have using acetone to melt it back together worked? I'm asking this because I have a Thinkpad 390 which has some cracks in the back case close to the LCD hinges which I want to repair; I have no donor machine for the plastic parts so I'll have to fix the cracks somehow.
If you are doing this with many machines of this vintage you may find a floppy with PC DOS and USB support and/or a PCMCIA to CF card adapter quite useful.
Love these little Thinkpads - have a Pentium III 240X version. Unfortunately the screen back light has died although works on an external monitor. Pity you are not in the UK in would have made an offer on your spares laptop screen.
I was born in 94 so I don't remember much other than the Iconic N64 days, it sounds similar to Oingo Boingo's, home again, just synthesized, it feels like 90s hold music which doesn't sound too bad, I wouldn't mind hearing now on hold actually but we got stuck with Cisco's Default music instead still in 2022 none the less , props to cisco for the icon but the tone of that it makes being on hold feel dragged out longer than it needs to be. With this I be can reminded of similar catchy snes music at least, like Paperboy 2
Colin, I've been asking for a a while the name of the music used in your intro, can you tell me please. 😁
There was a post this week on Hacker News about how much someone loves their GPD Micro PC, which is a little 6" laptop. So anyway, I bought a GPD Micro PC 😄
Now throw Linux on it, a modern distribution designed to be lightweight and compatible with such old hardware. It is really amazing that Linux gives you the possibility to run a modern OS with modern security on such old laptop lol.
I really want to donate a ThinkPad 755cx to him, I've spent money on it to try and fix it but I can't, I live in Minnesota at least so it would be cheap shipping but would really like emailing just to confirm he actually would like it
Question: shouldn't you be able to install ANY OS whatsoever by just writing a raw image into a disk drive and then resizing the data partition? Just saying as you mentioned it as if it was a Windows 98 feature - reinstalling it could have been done that way as well.
Putting baking soda in superglue instantly cures it, not really good for breaks like that. BUT it's very good for adding reinforcement around a break like that. Put superglue on there and dust baking soda over it, let it sit for a couple seconds and then clear out the excess. Becomes basically like an instant "plastic" weld.
That's funny I had somebody with a laptop USB port like that. I offered to fix they compromised and I filled it with glue hot glue to keep it from shorting out they were fine with the lack of one of the ports. and hot glue can be removed easily with alcohol FYI.
For DOS games MIDI is much less of a concern as what DOS gamers are looking for is good OPL2 or OPL3 emulation. Or of course a real Yamaha OPL chip.
Nice repair work!
Don't forget that NT didn't support USB until Windows 2000, so your newly-fixed USB port is useless in NT4. 😀
Why don't you look at the Toshiba Portege of a similar generation, I think they where in a similar market segment
That’s a Phils Computer Lab boot config. The drive was probably formatted with a Windows 98 boot disk.
I have an Lenovo T61 modified to use window 10 lol 😂 I love using it
Unfortunately the battery is cooked but if I kept the charger on it will work just fine
Anyways I used to be able to borrow a buddys newer ac power cord and brick from a hp dvd laptop and I have a cd player Dr,, anyways it worked fine that way I don't know about it now though have not messed with it since 2012 and I don't remember which one but one of the buttons by the mouse pad didn't work so I used a serial connector ide mouse with it
I don’t even bother with mechanical drives on my builds anymore. M.SATA In an IDE enclosure is my go to for something like this.
And they complain about an ethernet & Headphone jacks on the latest devices taking up to much room, try incorporating parallel, serial & VGA!
I was given this laptop back in 2006 when I was an I.t apprentice, used to take out the hard drive out to reinstall the os had windows 2000 running on mine. Good old days little money though, was a good little laptop in its time.
Installing 98 from HDD was way faster than installing from CD, even when considering the time to copy cab files...
...but...but...why? I hear you say you like them, have a soft spot for them but what do you actually do with something like this?
i got one a few months back but i tought the sound was broken hardware side cos it looked fine in the device manager but watching your video i realized the driver it had installed was completely diferent, located the one you mentioned there and it works now, thanks!
mine didnt came with the cd or floppy drives, any idea if i can find a generic one with that same conector that works? i found one thats a diferent brand but i couldnt get it to run, for now im relying on usb drives and virtual drives to have it run stuff that need cds but id like to have the real thing in case the hdd gives up and i have to reinstall
I truly wish that my soldering skills were as intricate as Collins. I just make a mess with the solder when trying to cap and uncap and other small jobs on boards. I'm fine with wiring but I wish I can learn how to get better at smaller stuff like Collin is.
15:50 ohh my, i havent heard this sound since 2004 I guess, I had windows95 and lot of childhood memories are opened in my mind now, thank you!
All of this = IBM = garbage. Same as I tried to tell everyone thinking about buying a ShitPad in the late 90s. Useless.
250 bucks? Could get some money for old toshiba, to pay some gambl.....uh medical bills.
youre cadence and and annunciations reminds me a lot of Patrick Bateman especially when he's taking you through his morning routine. odd comparison i know but its also rather comforting sounding
Dont forget the 570 ... sure it was THE ultrabook by this year. Impresive.
It was intergraded with OPL3 if this might sounded different.
I've restored a bunch of 240s. I love the 240s, although some of the plastic can feel a bit light and brittle. The portable drive bay only works on very specific thinkpads. I think maybe the 755 or maybe 560 series. I have a couple of new ones and used them in specific circumstances, but generally they're not compatible with most thinkpads. The portable drive bay 2000 was much more compatible. The reason the Win98 splash screen shows up briefly is because someone has reformatted the hard drive using a Win98 SE boot disk. This is a useful disk to partition and format for FAT32 and get a basic bootable system on a hard drive but it does somehow copy over the Win98 splash screen which always shows briefly on a machine that's been reformatted using this disk. Finally, in my experience the weak part of the 240s was the LCD screen. I think only SVGA and all the ones I've seen are aging badly and going a bit dim in places - the CCFL tubes must be wearing out. Great video!
Hey Colin, you should have a paypal donate link don't you think so ?
I've just realised for the past few months I've whatched this he's said his name at the start I've just known him as Mr compute 😂
Imagine using Compaq Presario V2000s in 2022..... I wonder how usable it is in 2022.
Ah, the dead thinkpad has a sticker of a Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and water management, I think that's the reason they used a marker to hide something.
I think the neatest thing about ThinkPads is that at a glance, a Thinkpad from 1998 wouldn't look that much out of place next to modern Lenovo ThinkPads, aside from the ports and overall thickness. Talk about a design that just works! The only giveaway is the quality and aspect ratio of the display
They are pretty sexy though. I miss that old IBM logo. They gave me a t15 gen2 for work.
I do not want to know how slow it would be trying to install an OS from a 1.1 USB. It took so long for me to transfer less than 10 songs in .mp3 format.
Looks like it would be pretty decent for DOS Games -- just needs a PS2 mouse!
I absolutely adore Brickpads of all vintages, the oldest and first one I had was a Z60m Brickpad and the newest one is a Thinpad E560. None of them were gaming or production laptops but I'm surprised that the 560 is able to support some light gaming of Fallout 4 and New Vegas considering it's running on an i5 and Intel's 520 graphics. It also was the first used Thinkpad that had both a working battery and CD drive, it was like winning $3 from the lottery.
The holy grail of the 240 line is the ThinkPad i1124 - it has a silvery-gray finish and very similar to the standard black 240Z models, which are almost as rare. It was Japanese-specific though, unlike the other 240s.
I just kept looking at that battery, definitely would have changed it as it was in pieces already.
Ah the 240 (and 570) - last ones before the X Series :D
1:02..
Is the dust on the close-up supposed to add more of a RETRO vibe?? ;-]
I use to own a nice tough 1994/1995 thinkpad … I miss those days 🥲🥹‼️
Meh. I've heard worse midi playback from more powerful machines.
There are SSD adapter for pata drives it should have been perfect for this kind of computer to have a huge boost.
When your hard drive sounds like LEGO bricks, you're in trouble.
It sucks that we don't get laptops in this form factor anymore. I want one of these but with a modern chip.