Hello everyone, awhile back I bought a used R40 from the surplus sales office of a university. The hard drive had been removed, no OS. At one time it had apparently been set up to boot from a network. I was able to get into the bios and change the settings to allow booting from CD, but I cannot get it to do so. I've used a live CD with a Linux distro (Puppy) and a WinXP disk, changed the boot order to try booting from a USB flash drive, but all I see is a message saying "Operating system not found", or just a blinking cursor on a blank screen. I've tried everything I know to try, and am stuck. I'd be grateful for any suggestions. Thanks!

IBM Thinkpad R40
1.3 GHz Pentium M
512 MB RAM
Intel 830M chipset, ICH3-M southbridge
DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive

Welcome to the forum!

Press F12 once you see the IBM logo on boot to choose the CD as a temporary boot device.

Good luck.

Thanks ajkula66 for the reply. Tried it, but the blinking cursor is all I see. I can hear the CD spin up for a few seconds, sounds like the drive is trying to read it, but it soon stops.

A little more info: the computer is an R40, type 2724-6XU.

Just wanted to say thanks to those who host, and otherwise contribute to this forum.

Do you have another media drive you could test with?

I did try booting with Puppy Linux from a flash drive, no go.

Flash drive might not be the best idea with a ThinkPad of this generation...too many small things that could make the process difficult to troubleshoot...

What I was referring to was another CD or DVD drive....

try hitting the Access IBM button on the keyboard when its at the IBM screen,it should pop up asking what you want to do,pick from a list,enter setup,or continue booting,press whichever one it wants you to press for the list. It's probably F12,but my t42 says to press ESC.

I have various drives from desktop computers, but this is the only IBM laptop in my inventory. I suppose I could head back to the surplus store and see what's on offer there...don't want to spend too much more money on it if it's a dud. But, the bios comes up no problem, I see the IBM logo, just not much happening after that.

This machine seemed to be configured to boot from a network when I first got it. Took me awhile to figure out how to change the boot order. Would it be possible to boot from my home network?

Thanks again for the help!

You can always pick up an UltraBay 2000 media drive for around $10 shipped in the forum's marketplace...

Good luck.

I live in Fort Collins, and have extra drives laying about in my parts stash. PM me if you still need one...

I'm late to the conversation, but thought I'd chime in.
I just found my R40 after it had been sitting in the garage for 4+ years.
It was there because it had locked up -- almost no signs of life.
Anyway, now when I try to boot, there ARE some signs of life,
but it seems to not recognize the hard drive or the optical drive.
It ends up attempting to boot from the network --
even though I never had it configured that way before.
So, I think this is just its default behavior.

In the setup menu, I don't even have the hard drive or optical drive listed as things that can be configured.
The hard drive makes an ugly clanking sound, about 1 every 2 seconds, even after I re-seated it,
and the optical drive spins up for a bit and flashes its light. But I can't boot from a knoppix
cdrom even when I use F12 to choose the optical drive for boot.

I'll need to buy an IDE external adapter to check out the hard drive itself.

My only theory at this point is that the power supply voltage is drooping a bit so that the drives
are not fully functional.

Welcome to the forum.
Don't waste any money on that oldie, which is probably oxidized/corroded after such a long storage in a probably dirty/musty/damp garage.
The HD is on the way out by the sound of it, and to get the CD drive going, you may need to remove/insert it a few times to clean the contacts.
Don't think the power supply is failing, but you could measure it (should be 16V) with a multimeter.

If no CD-ROM and/or HDD gets recognized by the R40, the southbridge flexes. It either needs be be reflown oder the board needs to be replaced. Some vendors offer replacement boards.

Replacement only is senseful for ThinkPad-enthusians.

check the bios, it should show up as device 0 and 1, if there is nothing there, remove the drive and clean the contacts with a q-tip. Check again, if still not there, try another drive, they're cheap. If it still does not work, you've got a bad board. I personally do not see it being worth replacing, the working penitum m/ati 7500 boards are around $30, and I picked up a R50 Type-1859 for $40 with some missing screws. I have a 15" laying in a box with no board, and I'll probably never fix it because it will just die again.