T30 - upgrade advice please

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mind72 · #1 Post by **mind72** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 12:29 am

Hello to the great people on this fantastic forum, hope u will be able to give some advice/help! Now, can anyone tell me how to discover my hdd drive speed, as I would like to get better performance. Can not put more then 80GB, is it? Also would like to know can I upgrade my CDRW/DVD rom to DVDRW drive, as I heard that it is possible only with original expensive IBM DVD drive.Is that true? Regarding memory I have found lots of very interesting stuff here - thank u ALL for that !! Specially because when I wanted to make upgrade, people from official rep. service advised me to put 512MB x2, which now I see it is not good idea at all. I would not take risk that my T30 after few months stops showing second memory slot

Also do you recommend some other hardware upgrades besides memory & hdd to get better performance? Sorry for long post, many thanks in advance!!

Website · #2 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 7:36 am

Welcome to the Forum!!!

As far as upgrades go, the hard drive is limited to the largest 2.5" PATA hard drive available, which is around 160gb-200gb (I would avoid Seagate drives in a T30, though). To check the speed of the harddrive, you can always slide the hard drive out and take a look at it. Otherwise, you might be able to find out the model number through your device manager, and simple google the part number.

As for the memory, your system can actually hold 2 1gb sticks of ram. If you are worried about the second slot, you can always just put in 1 1gb stick.

As for the DVD-RW drive, I am not quite sure as to the answer to that one.

richp · #3 Post by **richp** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:08 am

I bought a replacement DVD burner off of Ebay from a supplier in Mendham New Jersey for $69US or there abouts, it's been a couple of months. The drive comes in an IBM carrier and has worked great for the past 3 or 4 months.
As for memory, Staples had 1 gig sticks on sale one week and I bought one, after rebates it ended up costing me $40 for the stick, they had them on sale again two weeks later with the same rebates so I grabbed another one.
I also grabbed the wireless card out of a Dell Lattitude 6800 that was sat on by an overweight executive who broke the entire housing and LCD before I threw it out [got a hard drive too

] and put that in but I need to run that fix before that will work. Until I get around to it I just run a netgear PCMCIA card when I need wireless.

If you look on ebay find the seller from Mendham New Jersey, I had a good experience from them after several bad experience on Ebay in the past.

mind72 · #4 Post by **mind72** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 3:57 pm

tfflivemb2: many thanks!
re ram: Need to upgrade bios too, is that complicated to do it alone?

richp: is it important to buy brand one (Crucial,Samsung...) mem. 1 gig sticks?

Regarding DVDRW, on some T30's u can put just IBM burners, and I don't have a clue if my T30 can use any replacement DVD burner. I heard it is something with IBM connector, so on some models you can not put other brands (this is only with DVDRW,not CD/RW burners issue)...?

Website · #5 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 7:45 pm

mind72 wrote:tfflivemb2: many thanks!
re ram: Need to upgrade bios too, is that complicated to do it alone?

No, it is very easy...in fact, it is now done through the software installer program, so it is pretty much automated.

richp · #6 Post by **richp** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 8:49 pm

The memory I put in mine from Staples was kingston, nothing fancy that I remember, the plastic container it came in had gold lettering.

I'd send you the link on the DVD burner from that supplier in New Jersey but my HD just failed in the machine I used for placing the order. I did a quick look thru Ebay and the seller is not there. I'm building a new system and hopefully I will be able to recover some of the stuff off the old drive but not until I get back from delivering one of my high end systems to a customer in monte carlo, I get back on thursday and should be back home on friday.

ronbo613 · #7 Post by **ronbo613** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:14 pm

I put a Travelstar 7200rpm 80G hard drive and an extra 512MB RAM with the 256MB stock module and the T30 is humming. Check your RAM slots before you buy two modules though. A USB 2.0 card is a nice addition.
Not sure about a DVD burner. All the ones I looked at were pretty pricey. I wouldn't buy one off eBay, that's for sure.

The Spirit of X21 · #8 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 9:13 pm

tfflivemb2 wrote: As far as upgrades go, the hard drive is limited to the largest 2.5" PATA hard drive available, which is around 160gb-200gb (I would avoid Seagate drives in a T30, though).

Why would Seagate drives be avoided?

Website · #9 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:27 pm

The Spirit of X21 wrote:Why would Seagate drives be avoided?

Read these, for starters:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=30397
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=26684
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19030
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=8018

NOTE: This last one might actually explain the problem with "heads", but to be honest, I didn't have a chance to read all the way through it, as I keep getting interrupted.

mind72 · #10 Post by **mind72** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 12:09 am

ronbo613 wrote:A USB 2.0 card is a nice addition.

Please can you tell me more ?? I didn't know it can be installed to T30. Where I can find more info about it? Thanks.

Robbyrobot · #11 Post by **Robbyrobot** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:58 am

ronbo613 wrote: A USB 2.0 card is a nice addition.

Please can you tell me more ?? I didn't know it can be installed to T30. Where I can find more info about it?

No mystery to this... you can put a USB 2.0 Cardbus (PCMCIA) card into practically any newer Thinkpad (with a 32-Bit PCMCIA connector). Just look at Ebay and search for Cardbus or PCMCIA and USB 2.0.

mind72 · #12 Post by **mind72** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:05 am

Thanks RR! How to determine does my T30 have 32-Bit PCMCIA connector?

Is that someting like this: www.computer-centar.hr/detaljnije/cjenik.php?id=430249

#13 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:04 am

That's the type of card we are talking about. It fits in the left hand side slot of your laptop.

mind72 · #14 Post by **mind72** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:11 am

Wow !! Fantastic, thanks !!! Is it important which brand it is??

Robbyrobot · #15 Post by **Robbyrobot** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:17 am

How to determine does my T30 have 32-Bit PCMCIA connector?

It does, no question. As far as I know, all the "lettered" (A, T, X...) Thinkpads have this, and even some of the "numbered" ones such as the 770E. Only the older Thinkpads like the 765s and some of the 760s still have 16-Bit PCMCIA slots, and are thus harder to upgrade.

But the easiest was to find out such things is to get the Hardware Maintenance Manual and the User's Guide at the IBM/Lenovo website. They provide a great deal of information on your system.

Is it important which brand it is??

The brand is not important as far as I know. I bought a no-name ("Made in China") card with two USB sockets at Ebay, and have absolutely no problems with it. This is a pretty standard item. Incidentally, the D-Link card you mentioned is fine too.

#16 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:52 am

The better USB cards have a NEC chipset. If you go for a USB card, you may want to look also at USB2.0/Firewire combo PCMCIA cards.
That way you can also connect a digital camcorder to it.
Pricewise there is not much difference between straight USB and USB/FW cards.
Some of those cards also come with an extra USB power cable, handy to have.
This one from eBay would fit the bill perfectly: http://tinyurl.com/ywhr4l

mind72 · #17 Post by **mind72** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:36 am

Many thanks R_B_S !! Unfortunately only this one is right away available to me currently, as it is summertime, people grab it all ... don't know yet if it has NEC chip, probably not, and without power cable (I didn't saw that kind of USB/FW here at all)... here it is what I have found :
www.mikronis.hr/shop/item.asp?itemid=5137
Price is around US $54, thoughts? It is kind of expensive, is it?

Robbyrobot · #18 Post by **Robbyrobot** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:15 am

It is kind of expensive, is it?

Sure is

. The prices for this kind of card at the German Ebay site run around EUR 12-15 plus shipping. An example is Article #330152079979, which is new and includes a Firewire cable and video software.

mind72 · #19 Post by **mind72** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:49 am

Vielen Danke Robby

I just have sent a message to them and hope to receive details...

#20 Post by **schen** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 10:23 am

mind72 wrote:Regarding DVDRW, on some T30's u can put just IBM burners, and I don't have a clue if my T30 can use any replacement DVD burner. I heard it is something with IBM connector, so on some models you can not put other brands (this is only with DVDRW,not CD/RW burners issue)...?

I've had my T30 for about a year and a half now and it's used as my main work machine when I'm tinkering with anything having to do with ThinkPads. So it's had a lot of experimentation such as 3 different HDDs (60Gb/4200, 80Gb/5400, 80Gb/7200), 3 memory configs (512Mb/2sticks, 768Mb/2sticks, 1Gb/2sticks), a variety of optical drives as well USB 2.0 PC Cards etc. I all that time, it has recognized pretty much any optical drive that I've put in it. It currently has a NEC ND-6650A Dual Layer DVD+-RW burner in it that I pick up as a refurbished special for $29. Before that, it had a NEC ND-6550 DVD burner in it. Both DVD burners were bought "bare" and than the IBM caddy was transferred over from a plan IBM Ultrabay 2000 CD-ROM drive. They recognized right away with no problems.

T30 - upgrade advice please

T30 - upgrade advice please

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