A31p desirability?

[ajkula66]

Besides the ribs on the A31p on the side of the machine by the front, I don't see a difference.

Those "ribs" are wireless antennae BTW...

[manmanmanman]

Besides the ribs on the A31p on the side of the machine by the front, I don't see a difference.

Those "ribs" are wireless antennae BTW...

Huh, did not know that

[Thinkpad4by3]

Besides the ribs on the A31p on the side of the machine by the front, I don't see a difference.

Those "ribs" are wireless antennae BTW...

Seemed like they were a thinner part of the lid. That would explain why. Thank you for the info all-knowing ajkula66

[ajkula66]

Thank you for the info all-knowing ajkula66

Not-deserving I am of that title... ...but always willing to lend a hand to anyone exploring my favourite ThinkPad of all times...

[Thinkpad4by3]

Thank you for the info all-knowing ajkula66

Not-deserving I am of that title... ...but always willing to lend a hand to anyone exploring my favourite ThinkPad of all times...

I knew of you(well your username) years well before I joined, for plenty of issues I had toying around with old T42s and A31s and the like machines I had laying around(Not to say RBS, and plenty others weren't handing out loads of help too). For the time I have spent really on this forum, my join date should be around 2010 .

And I bet a few hundred, if not thousand others have gotten help from you, just like me. You ain't SuperUserGeorge for nothing .

[manmanmanman]

Well A31 is now for sale if anyone wants it. Price is negotiable too!
Thanks for all the help!

[TPFanatic]

I thought the ribs on my A31p are stick on / decorative.

[kfzhu1229]

I thought the ribs on my A31p are stick on / decorative.

I thought of the same when I first saw my dad's ThinkPad T43 back in 2005. Only to know that part a decade later.
My A30 came without them, and it took me some salvaging to swap the lids with a A31p unit with it and sold the A31p with custom job Wi-Fi antennae from my cousin's broken computer stuck inside the LCD screen. That A30 now has a new old stock of Intel 2200BG. Plenty fast and reliable for what a Pentium III - M is capable of today.

[CrazyTPFan]

I thought the ribs on my A31p are stick on / decorative.

I thought of the same when I first saw my dad's ThinkPad T43 back in 2005. Only to know that part a decade later.
My A30 came without them, and it took me some salvaging to swap the lids with a A31p unit with it and sold the A31p with custom job Wi-Fi antennae from my cousin's broken computer stuck inside the LCD screen. That A30 now has a new old stock of Intel 2200BG. Plenty fast and reliable for what a Pentium III - M is capable of today.

What OS do you have on the A30? Just wondering

[TPFanatic]

Well the wifi ribs on my A31p are definitely stick on.
https://i.imgur.com/mwwDCvZl.jpg

[Shredder11]

P-M == drunk kitty computer

pee'd Moggy?

** darn this swear filter! You know what the word was meant to be I hope!

[Thinkpad4by3]

pee'd Moggy?

Pentium M, Pee'd moggy, it's all the same, neither get any work done!

[kfzhu1229]

What OS do you have on the A30? Just wondering

You cannot believe me, but I run Windows 7 SP1 on it (with Windows Update disabled).
I initially did that to the 3 ThinkPads from my school back then (A30, T22, T23 and a Dell Inspiron 2650) in hope of bringing something modern and familiar to everyone in school to give them a bit more life. But then turned out they had enough laptops so instead of them going into the dump, I took these 4 laptops home with me for my own use.
For Spotify use (has to use a older version that supports non-SSE2 processors) and some light internet browsing by firefox 48.0.2 (newer versions need SSE2), its 1GB RAM doesn't give me much hiccups tbh.

[CrazyTPFan]

Thats cool how you can run a semi-modern OS on a pentium 3 thinkpad pretty smoothly.

[ajkula66]

Thats cool how you can run a semi-modern OS on a pentium 3 thinkpad pretty smoothly.

I would argue that it all depends on one's definition of "running smoothly" is.

In my book, the absolute lowest-powered ThinkPad to run W7 without me wanting to put a fist through its screen every 15 seconds - I'm talking about web browsing, not typewriter application - would be a T42 with ATi 9600 GPU.

A30/31/p are best left in the W2K/XP realm where they really shine, and kept off the Internet altogether IMO.

[CrazyTPFan]

Thats cool how you can run a semi-modern OS on a pentium 3 thinkpad pretty smoothly.

In my book, the absolute lowest-powered ThinkPad to run W7 without me wanting to put a fist through its screen every 15 seconds - I'm talking about web browsing, not typewriter application - would be a T42 with ATi 9600 GPU.

I would agree with you on that although I would go with a T60p with ATI fireGL v5250 instead of a T42 with ATI graphics. But, a maxed out T42 with a SSD would be decent with windows 7.

[ajkula66]

I would agree with you on that although I would go with a T60p with ATI fireGL v5250 instead of a T42 with ATI graphics. But, a maxed out T42 with a SSD would be decent with windows 7.

That's why I said "absolute-lowest-powered"...I own a SATA-modded T43p running an Intel SLC SSD with a *very* light W7 and it's passable but not joyful to use on today's web...

Anything dual-core - even with Intel graphics - is leaps and bounds above even the best single-core systems, now more than ever.

[Hierax_ca]

For A31p I've found Windows 2000 SP4 for offline and Linux antiX 17.1 for online are the sweetspots (although Windows 98se to Windows XP FLP are also good choices for offline and Linux MX 17.1 for online).

[ajkula66]

For A31p I've found Windows 2000 SP4 for offline and Linux antiX 17.1 for online are the sweetspots (although Windows 98se to Windows XP FLP are also good choices for offline and Linux MX 17.1 for online).

You got me curious with that *nix. Now I'll definitely have to look into it, just to find out what it's all about.

[kfzhu1229]

In my book, the absolute lowest-powered ThinkPad to run W7 without me wanting to put a fist through its screen every 15 seconds - I'm talking about web browsing, not typewriter application - would be a T42 with ATi 9600 GPU.

To be fair my copy of Windows 7 SP1 takes about 1 minute to boot with a decent-ish 5400RPM HDD from a T43 instead of its factory 4200RPM one.
But after it boots I feel like everything works just fine - provided that you knew what drivers to use - the sound driver provided by IBM have problems such as playing back music at 10 times slower speed and lower pitch after resuming sleep, and the IBM provided Radeon 7000 driver would simply corrupt to 16 colours or BSOD after sleep. Using Windows Vista driver solved sound card problem, and using a Radeon 9000 driver solved the display problem.
I hoped that SetFSB has the files for the clock generator on the A30 series laptops as those CPUs run quite cool if the fan turns on (<70C in my case)

[shawross]

Choice of operating systems for older hardware probably highlights the diversity of the age of forum members.

Some of the younger members don't want anything other than Windows 7 which is still a great OS despite it being not optimum on older hardware. They always want internet access despite the usage being problematic. Many younger members probably have barely used Win 98 or 2000 and would have limited experience with XP.

Other older members were probably initiated to computers with DOS and XT PCs. Back then many didn't have the internet until Win 98/2000 and when we did it was on slow modems which would tie up phone lines. When a phone call came in it would normally boot off the modem.

There is a certain nostalgia to these older operating systems and the software that they used which were designed to run on the older Thinkpads. YMMV

[Hierax_ca]

For A31p I've found Windows 2000 SP4 for offline and Linux antiX 17.1 for online are the sweetspots (although Windows 98se to Windows XP FLP are also good choices for offline and Linux MX 17.1 for online).

You got me curious with that *nix. Now I'll definitely have to look into it, just to find out what it's all about.

AntiX Linux (https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix- ... ntiX-17.1/) is extremely light and has a look/feel more like Win98/Win2000 (with the default ultra-light IceWM), besides light gui apps and a variety of light desktop options, it has an incredible array of command line terminal apps (antiX-cli-cc). It has an up-to-date Firefox which is a bit too heavy for an A31p but even has a version of PaleMoon specifically for single core processors that is relatively recent that can be added from the package manager and some other even lighter browsers, and slower videos can downloaded instead of streamed. (also, FYI, antiX 17.2 should be coming out soon).
Update (2018-11): AntiX 17.2 and 17.2.1 is out: https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix- ... ntiX-17.2/

MX Linux (https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-lin ... Snapshots/) is still very light and has a look/feel more like WinXP/Win7 (with the default XFCE), it is more fully featured and easier to use while still being quite quick. Hands down the easiest and best way to get Debian stability but way easier to configure/use, and access to much newer packages.

Try both : if MX isn't fast enough try antiX; if antiX isn't modern looking enough for you try MX Linux. Both are awesome, I use both!
There are other good distros too, Linux Lite was a good runner up until 3.8 which is still good for a while, and Lubuntu was also good but like a lot of ubuntu-based distros 32-bit support is being dropped from these formerly viable options. For a super-light Linux alternative, many people like Puppy Linux, I like antiX better myself. For moderately light, many people like Linux Mint or Ubuntu Mate but I like MX Linux better. There's only so much that can be done running these ancient, albeit magnificent, machines on the monstrosity that is the modern internet but these are the best I've found for my purposes, YMMV.

[CrazyTPFan]

I can still use my R31 with Windows 98SE on the internet and use it to also browse and post on this forum. In fact, this post was made using my Thinkpad R31 (one of my favorites).

[kfzhu1229]

Some of the younger members don't want anything other than Windows 7 which is still a great OS despite it being not optimum on older hardware. They always want internet access despite the usage being problematic. Many younger members probably have barely used Win 98 or 2000 and would have limited experience with XP.

I grew up with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I really liked Windows 2000 and its stable performance.
But for Windows XP I initially had it on a 2010 Lenovo Intel Atom netbook, which takes 3 minutes to start Windows XP.
Then I had it on my ThinkPad T43 but with only 1GB RAM and it was the original 2005 install of Windows XP upgraded to SP3 later due to the WPA2 requirement. Had a horrible horrible experience of it because I had no experience with fiddling with computers back then and had to stick with it.
Then I put 2GB of RAM and put a fresh copy of Windows 7 on it and it felt so, so much better.
And then I put Windows 8.1 on it, works fine but wasn't able to find the correct display driver so the graphics performance was terrible.
Then I put Windows 10 on it as an experiment and worked better than what I expected. Still has Windows 10 on it, but the Anniversary edition as the later versions have problems with that aged Windows Vista display driver and Dx9.0.
I always either run Windows 2000 or Windows 7 as a result of the pain in the butt personal experience with Windows XP SP3. Later I knew to optimise it and I did that on my ThinkPad 600 and worked great for that.
As for Windows 10 on a T43p, it's like you gain some and you lose some.
I have a pretty good experience with Microsoft Edge and the scrolling is surprisingly vsync smooth. Other animations aren't the smoothest but I can definitely live with that.
At the same time a full restart definitely takes longer to perform
(while the fast shutdown is faster, but it always creates problems with docking as the docking station doesn't allow you to remove your laptop while it's hibernating and the docking LED doesn't shut off even if the laptop is fully shut off)