T42 hand-me-down Project

[Chiddcrew]

Hello new poster here,

I have recently been given a ThinkPad T42 by my old man after clearing out our old tech, with the condition of getting all his files of it first. It charges and boots fine, so I got the first bit done no problem.

I have since taken it apart and cleaned out 15 year old dust and what appeared to be a coffee spill with some dry air and Isopropyl Alcohol. I plan for this topic to be more of a sounding board and documentation, as well as a safety net just in case theres a big red flag in my plan. I will try my best to limit the questions here to ones that have not already been answered and documented.

The main upgrades I want to make are:

the 2GB ram upgrade, by buying some secondhand SODIMM DDR1 333Hz PC2700 memory which ia bout £15 on ebay

The HDD upgrade using the IDE to mSATA method form the boards front page, there is an adapter for £12 on ebay along with various mSATA I can pick from, but will probably go for a 128GB to start.

I will also consider buying some interesting expansion cards for the two slots in the caddy, some stuff like a card reader/writer would be a interesting project to get working, considering I would like to try my hand at a lightweight and compatible linux distro. I really would like that swiss-army knife and retro feel.

I might consider GPU and WIFI card upgrades later, since I would like to take it easy to start.

Leading on to this, one of the things that fascinated me was the IR I/O module. Id love to get the thing working for some across the room downloads, TV remote sniffing and duping, and maybe even some emulation for old Nintendo DS wireless play, has anyone had experience with working with this module? I had a cursory search of the forum but couldn't find anyone working on it, (at least after I was born), any words of wisdom? if its 'Give up' don't be afraid to say it, I'd much rather hear it now, ha.

Thank you for taking the time to read!

[Glaurung-quena]

Enjoy your new project!

Be aware: the MSATA to IDE adapter I tried (in the size and shape of a 2.5" HDD) would not fit into the T42's slot. It was just barely too big. On another laptop with the usual rubber caddy it would have worked fine, but on a T4x with the friction fit slot, no dice. On the other hand, the bare adapters without a HD sized case are going to sit loosely in the HD slot, which isn't great either.

Re: recovering old data: One of the best purchases I have made was a three way USB to HDD adapter, with plugs for desktop IDE, laptop IDE, and SATA. Like most adapters from China, you see them with all sorts of different brand names on them, but they all look the same. Linking to an example so you can see what it looks like: https://www.newegg.com/p/0VN-00D1-00043. They work like a charm, they're affordable, and they have saved me so much grief in terms of getting data off/onto old hard drives that may or may not still boot.