What would you do? Five T60's

[carshinebob]

Hello everyone. My first post. I've been reading the threads here for almost a month now. Here's a little back round. I'll be 60 this year, so I'm from a generation that had to learn computers later in life. I also have two girls (7 and 8 ) So "later in life" is my specialty. My first laptop was my T60 15.4", bought used. Six years of great service until recently the screen failed. I replaced it with my W510 which I'm typing on now.
Then out of the blue I found a local auction with a lot of computer stuff up for bid. Well like the newbie I am I thought "I'll just put a low bid and see what happens". Well I got five T60 15.4" laptops with T5500 and no HD's for $60 for all. they're all in great shape.
Now I'm thinking I'll play, build and learn on these and maybe come up with a couple of laptops my kids can use without a lot of money invested. In my past I was always too afraid to mess with my more expensive machines for fear of turning a nice machine into smoke. So now I'm looking forward to getting as least two of these up and running with no fear.
It seems with all the experience on this forum you folks would be the best advisors one could hope for.
With a low budget and five T60's to play with, What would you do?
Thanks in advance. ~BOB

[brchan]

First, you will need some HDDs or SSDs (if you have a higher budget) so you can install operating systems on them. Other than that, Windows 7 tends to run well on these systems. I would avoid XP, becuase it has no support and has become bloated after so many updates. Another option, is Linux. Some easy to use and good distributions are Linux Mint, Lubuntu, and puppy linux. A nice benefit of Linux is that you don't need antivirus software since it is already very secure.

[Neil]

Hi Bob...welcome to the forum. You've only got a couple of years on me, so I'd probably do just as you have in mind doing...swap parts around among the machines until you get familiar with them, and come up with a couple (or more) working machines. Then you can sell off the remaining working parts.

Download a copy of the "Hardware Maintenance Manual" for the T60, and have a "hands-on" learning experience.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I don't own any T6x stuff so you'll have to wait around for one of the experts to chime in on the particulars of your systems. It would help to post the model types of each so that we will know what you're starting with. Just the 7 characters (i.e., 1951-xxx or 2007-xxx); no need to post the serial numbers (S/N). You can get a head start by plugging those model types into the search site that was set up by some kind people in Germany:

http://sm.krelay.de/tp/index.php (Link is also at the top of each forum page, labelled MTM)

This way you will know how each was configured when it left the factory. If any model types end with -CTO, then you'll get a generic description as those systems were Configure-To-Order (custom builds).

As none of your systems have hard drives, what you'll be looking for are SATA laptop drives that are a maximum of 9.5mm high. If you intend on restoring the original operating systems (Windows XP most likely, possibly Vista on some systems), you might want to post a WTB in the Marketplace forum for a set of restore/recovery disks. If you are more daring, you could even try installing Windows 7 or some version of Linux.

One of the first things I would do, assuming that your "new" T60 systems have memory installed, is download a copy of memtest86+ and run it on each system. This will verify that the memory module(s) is(are) working properly. It might be that the systems were tossed because they were having problems, or they may have simply outgrown their usefulness to their original owners. Along those lines, if you can find a copy of PC Doctor for DOS, you can run that diagnostic and see if there's anything that fails. That program is hard to locate but it can be done; Lenovo dropped their contract with PC Doctor some years back so you won't find it at Lenovo Support.

ref: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso <-- download page for several different bootable options for this program; floppy, USB or burnable image to CD

[MisterB]

I've been refurbishing T60s on a very casual basis the last two months.

320gb is the sweet spot in used 2.5" Sata hard drives at the moment. I've bought several for between $16 and $23. 250gb drives sell for around the same price so I've ended up putting in the bigger drives.

I have one T60 that is already sold waiting for the hard drive to arrive in the mail, I've finished 2, one 15" T60P for myself and one 14" T60 I sold to a friend. My customer showed his T60 to another friend and now I have another one on order. I'm selling them locally for about what a fully functioning one sells for on eBay which means I have to source the T60s and parts pretty cheaply to make anything at all on them. 1gb memory sticks are also pretty cheap and most people seem to do fine on a 2gb T60 but it is not that much more to get them up to 3gb if necessary.

They are great machines, true workhorses. I find them much easier to disassemble and work on the the much less powerful T4X series. I'm happy to find that others appreciate them as much as I do.

[carshinebob]

Thanks everyone for responding so quickly. All five T60's are model # 637174U. Thanks Ray K. for the link to the look-up page. Tonight I took the 60gb hd from my original T60 (model 6370 ) and the two 1gb memory sticks and installed them in the first of the five T60's. I then loaded win 7 from a boot disk (btw. first time I've ever loaded an os) I had from another computer keeping this one off line. Wow this one looks and works like a new laptop! Pretty cool. I think next I'll make a Linux boot disk and try my luck with that. thanks again. ~BOB

[Brad]

Now that you have experience its really not that hard to move the entire lid from one of the 5 T60's that may not work on to your first T60. Then the ole gal will continue to provide you with excellent service.

Happy ThinkPadding!

Brad

[FryPpy]

Tonight I took the 60gb hd from my original T60 (model 6370 ) and the two 1gb memory sticks and installed them in the first of the five T60's. I then loaded win 7

You can simple plug memory and HDD from "old" T60 and PLAY. If you was satisfied with OS and environment on "old" T60 - you can work with it in "new"
I have observed MTM database and find out that 6371-74U and all line of 6370- like twins. They differ in memory, CPU and screen resolution but have the same mainboard - so there are big probability that OS from "old" T60 even didn't feel the difference. May be sometime in future you can swap something else from your "old" T60 (CPU or may be complete LID assembly / LCD panel if problem wasn't in LCD). To understand how to do it - find link to HMMs on top of this site and download HMM for your T60. There are step by step description of disassembling and assembling process for thinkpads there.

PS
Once upon a time... i have won ebay auction for thinkpad palmrest (mine have been cracked and touchpad button have dead) and... when the parcel arrived i have discovered not one but three palmrests. Maybe this was the beginning of new ThinkPadder

[MisterB]

They differ in memory, CPU and screen resolution but have the same mainboard - so there are big probability that OS from "old" T60 even didn't feel the difference. May be sometime in future you can swap something else from your "old" T60 (CPU or may be complete LID assembly / LCD panel if problem wasn't in LCD). To understand how to do it - find link to HMMs on top of this site and download HMM for your T60. There are step by step description of disassembling and assembling process for thinkpads there.

PS
Once upon a time... i have won ebay auction for thinkpad palmrest (mine have been cracked and touchpad button have dead) and... when the parcel arrived i have discovered not one but three palmrests. Maybe this was the beginning of new ThinkPadder

I've swapped the LCD panel on one of my T60s with an LCD from an R60. It wasn't all that difficult but a lot more so than swapping the whole display lid which takes all of 10 minutes. The first time is always the most difficult but once you know the hardware layout, swapping parts on a T60 is fast and easy. If you have an OEM installation from original restore media or restore partition on your old disk, it will work on any Thinkpad that has a compatible BIOS. That is one of the things I like about Thinkpads. I can move an installed system from one machine to another without any activation hassles. Even on a totally different machine, it just needs to have some drivers updated and it is good to go.

I had a similar eBay experience once. I bought two ancient Atari ST MIDI programs that had been listed for months with no bids. When the package arrived, it was a huge box filled with other Atari ST software in addition to what I had paid for.