Thinkpads Forum

hello,

my old ibm tp 600x just died on me. i have an i series replacement for the moment, and i would like to put my old hard drive in the new one. the problem is, it was hard to tell what exactly caused my old computer to die - cd drive was never too great, possibly hard disk could have been bad. although it was looked at, and thought to be ok. so, do i run the risk of spoiling anything in my new computer by putting in the old hard drive?

thanks,
justin

Welcome to the Forum!

An OS or bad disk won't kill a computer unless there is a virus designed to do just that. You can download Disk Fitness Test from Hitachi and burn it to a CD, boot up the computer with that to test the disk specifically. I'd install it in your iSeries and run DFT on the disk.

I doubt that your hard drive could cause any permanent damage to the Thinkpad itself, except from possibly overheating and melting something. (Which I saw on a Dell, when it was stored with the LCD closed, while still running)

What exactly is wrong with your 600X, as in the symptoms?

what was wrong with the 600x?
well, for a while a time and date related error message would come before windows xp booted. i would go through those, reboot and then it worked. although finally not even that happened, windows simply failed to boot. after taking it to a few service places, they weren`t able to revive it. although at the same time they couldn´t offer more of a reason than a general hardware malfunction/damage or that the piece is just too old and not worth big investments.

good idea on the dft suggestion. thanks.

The date and time error points to a dead CMOS battery, one of those flat ones, probably a CR2032.
You buy those cheap in any photoshop.
Better would be to get the complete replacement unit, pre-soldered with a connector.
Look for 'cmos battery ibm 600x' on eBay, pick them up for $3-4 shipped.

Yep, like RBS said, it's the CMOS. Replace and your 600X will be back in business. Good Luck!

Yep, like RBS said, it's the CMOS. Replace and your 600X will be back in business. Good Luck!