Thinkpads Forum

Was there ever a naive floppy solution for this and or its ultrabay?

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Not really...although any USB floppy drive should work just fine with a T6x. And, of course, you can boot from a USB floppy drive also should the need arise.

Ultrabay FDDs were not part of the Ultrabay Slim or Enhanced device set, so the last T-series that can fit an FDD inside is a T30

I suppose it's conceivable that a past series floppy option could be modified to fit the UltraBay Slim, but there's little impetus for such a project aside from using the Hardware Maintenance Diskette on a regular basis (who needs that?).

Besides that, the HMD is available nowadays in a version for use from a USB stick

FYI - for those who would prefer a DOS Bootable USB Flashdrive (over other media e.g. CD, DVD, or diskette)...
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http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 9&p=649896
If you ever grow tired of 1.44MB diskette...

I purchased a 2GB Sandisk SDCZ36-002G and made it DOS bootable using...
http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-St ... 74082.html

I don't see any reason why the USB Flashdrive couldn't be made to run Linux.

The only problem that I've encountered so far is that I am not able to find a DOS Mouse driver that works with the new Intel iCore based machines. The resulting problem is that all programs after Mouse.com will lock up and hang the machine.

The old vaudeville line...
Patient: Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Stop doing it.

I removed Mouse.com from autoexec.bat and no longer have mouse support for DOS programs.
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Remember FAT16 will not support disk partition sizes larger than 2GB
Remember FAT32 will not support file sizes larger than 4GB

RealBlackStuff wrote:Besides that, the HMD is available nowadays in a version for use from a USB stick

Of course, but even the latest version of the HMD (v1.83) can still be run from a floppy, unlike BIOS updates (traditionally the last holdout for floppies) which can be burned to optical discs or run from an HD.

I don't see any reason why the USB Flashdrive couldn't be made to run Linux.

It's done often.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Does anyone know if the advanced dock has the small connector on the back that the Dock II has? If it does, then a UltraBay 2000 FDD with the special cable should be able to be used. I guess I'll find out when i get my Advance dock from TuuS later - IF i brought one of the special cables with me.

Stupid battery on the back of the T61 takes up the space for serial and parallel ports, otherwise the cable with the extra parallel end could possibly be used there.

No, I'm afraid not. Pics and vids abound with views of the back, too.

First two vids show the back:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... rch=Search

Also, the T61 relegating I/O ports to the UltraBay is a good idea considering the reduced need for those ports as time goes on. It's rare that I need to connect a parallel or serial device.

Well, I have several USB FDDs including some IBM originals, so no worries from my end.