Dug my x60s out of storage, it needs a lot of love

[kythri]

Greetings!

I recently dug my minty x60s and dock out of storage and it's hurting.

The 8-cell battery is dead, I can't locate either of the 4-cell packs. I do have what looks to be 3 or 4 of the flat battery deals that connect to the docking port, honestly don't remember ever getting those, and I haven't yet tried any of them, instead concentrating on the primary battery.

The cheap aftermarket replacement that I bought from eBay was a wash, it was DOA.

I'm wondering if I should just pop the shell of the pack open and replace the cells myself. I would assume they're something common like an 18650?

Moving on from the battery, the original spinny SATA drive sounds like a popcorn popper. It's toast, so no hope of using the recovery partition to refresh it. Replacing the drive itself seems the easiest part of this, I plan on putting a SATA SSD into it, just need to determine the max capacity. I haven't popped the drive out (and, I'm assuming due to the HDD being flaky, I can't get into the BIOS), but I think it was a 60GB. I'd imagine a 128GB wouldn't pose any issues, perhaps even a 256GB? I've got a line on some inexpensive 512GB drives locally, and I have a couple 2TB enterprise SATA drives - the idea of putting a 2TB drive in this amuses the hell out of me, but would certainly be massive overkill.

I had a pair of Micron 2GB PC2-5300 SO-DIMMs sitting around, so I swapped out the two 1GB sticks that were in it. I have a vague recollection that either it, or WinXP will only see/use 3GB of that?

Anyhow, I'm hoping to find recovery disc downloads for this beast so I can restore it to it's former glory. I have read the post about membership/posts, so I'm hoping to participate more here. I also have a T61p out in my shop that was running Vista and I was using for automotive diagnostics. I haven't booted it up in at least 2-3 years, so I'll undoubtedly be participating in the respective sub-forum for that model, too.

Thank you!

[kythri]

Well, it turns out it wasn't the HDD crackling, but the system fan. Haven't had a chance to tear into it deeper, but sadly, it has bigger issues than a bad drive.

[dr_st]

Fan / heatsink replacement is not that big of a deal, and in many cases noise can be reduced and life prolonged without replacement, just by some lubrication. Therefore, I assume you refer to something else when you mention 'bigger issues'.

These systems aren't getting any younger, that's true.

BTW, yes - you are correct - 3GB is the maximum usable physical RAM in this generation, regardless of OS. It is a chipset+BIOS combo limitation.

[Medessec]

The 8-cell battery is dead, I can't locate either of the 4-cell packs. I do have what looks to be 3 or 4 of the flat battery deals that connect to the docking port, honestly don't remember ever getting those, and I haven't yet tried any of them, instead concentrating on the primary battery.

Holy cow! 3 or 4 slice batteries? Those are pretty desirable, I'd definitely be interested in buying them from you whether they work or not.

I'm wondering if I should just pop the shell of the pack open and replace the cells myself. I would assume they're something common like an 18650?

The main batteries are, as long as they have ridges on the bottom like most X6x batteries. There was a 4-cell prismatic battery for X60s/X61s, which uses 103450s... very hard to obtain new ones of those cells. The slice batteries always use prismatics.

As for opening the packs up and recelling them... it's quite an involved procedure to do properly. There's a BMS microchip that manages the cells, and if the cells go far enough out of balance or the voltage goes too low- the chip can eventually register a non-volatile PF (Permanent Failure) which pretty much permanently locks the battery out. A recell won't fix that, the chip would have to be reset with a programmer tool. Not to mention- to wire up new cells, you would need a spot welder, and likely also some new nickel strip, some replacement wire, kapton tape, paper insulation and soldering skills.

I can recell these batteries but it's quite a bit of money to ship back and forth depending on where you're at.

Moving on from the battery, the original spinny SATA drive sounds like a popcorn popper. It's toast, so no hope of using the recovery partition to refresh it. Replacing the drive itself seems the easiest part of this, I plan on putting a SATA SSD into it, just need to determine the max capacity. I haven't popped the drive out (and, I'm assuming due to the HDD being flaky, I can't get into the BIOS), but I think it was a 60GB. I'd imagine a 128GB wouldn't pose any issues, perhaps even a 256GB? I've got a line on some inexpensive 512GB drives locally, and I have a couple 2TB enterprise SATA drives - the idea of putting a 2TB drive in this amuses the hell out of me, but would certainly be massive overkill.

I'm not sure what the X60s' HDD size limit is, but I have heard of people using both 1TB and 2TB SSDs in them with no issues. Albeit with Linux, and mostly with X61s which have 64-bit CPUs, not sure if MBR and 32-bit will have some limitations. X60s will max out at SATA 1 speed, so any odd name brand SATA drive will be fine. But yes, SATA SSD will be a very good upgrade to make it usable.

I had a pair of Micron 2GB PC2-5300 SO-DIMMs sitting around, so I swapped out the two 1GB sticks that were in it. I have a vague recollection that either it, or WinXP will only see/use 3GB of that?

Yes, X60s will unfortunately only be able to see up to 3.5GB of that RAM iirc. But this will definitely also help make the laptop much more usable.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to find recovery disc downloads for this beast so I can restore it to it's former glory. I have read the post about membership/posts, so I'm hoping to participate more here. I also have a T61p out in my shop that was running Vista and I was using for automotive diagnostics. I haven't booted it up in at least 2-3 years, so I'll undoubtedly be participating in the respective sub-forum for that model, too.

There's definitely recovery images out there that can bring it back to OEM state, but honestly imo just installing Win7 and using one of the newer versions of Lenovo Power Manager is perfectly suitable, on top of using the original wallpapers. Be aware though that X60s is the lower spec, 32-bit CPU model between that and the X61s, which is guaranteed to have a 64-bit CPU. X61 and X61s are much more usable for actual modern web browsing and media consumption, so if you plan to attempt to use your X60s for that... you may end up craving one of those- fair warning!

Either way though, if yours is as cherry as you mention- it would just be cool to refurbish it a little bit and let it be enjoyed for occasional tinkering. X6x and slim variants are super cool old machines.