need original recovery CD set ISO specifically for IBM ThinkPad A20m in English

[courtneycomputerrepair]

Hello, I recently acquired an old IBM ThinkPad a20m with the 2626 machine type. I was wondering if anybody knew where I could get the original system recovery CD set ISO(s) specifically for the IBM ThinkPad A20m in the English language. If anyone either has the ISO(s) or knows where I can get the ISO(s) for free, please contact me though Personal Message

Peace out for now,



Sean Courtney

[saperkus]

Windows NT and Windows 2000 recovery images are available on the Internet Archive.

[Shredder11]

A quick search on the Internet Archive brought up no exact results for Thinkpad A20m, but there is this entry:

IBM Thinkpad T23 Recovery (2002)

I had a look on a site I have used for more than ten years, and found this:

IBM Thinkpad T23 2647 Recovery CD Win2K (2x CDROM) P/N: 32P7176

Contains the following info:

•IBM ThinkPad T23 Graphics - S3 SuperSavage IX C SDR Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Human Interface - Microsoft Notebook Optical Mouse Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Modem - Agere Systems Mars 2 (L56xM S WinModem 56k) Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Multimedia - Intel 82801CA CAM AC97 Audio Controller Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Network - Intel 82801CAM PRO 100 VE (LOM) Ethernet (ICH3) Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Network - Ralink RT2500 Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 PCMCIA - Texas Instruments PCI1420 PC Card Cardbus Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Storage - Intel 82801CAM IDE U100 Driver
•IBM ThinkPad T23 Intel- NEC Chipset Drivers

[saperkus]

I just wonder what keyword you've used, as "A20m" displays two recoveries and Software Selections disc.

[courtneycomputerrepair]

it's an Original IBM ThinkPad a20m with the machine type 2626, a Windows 98 COA on the bottom of the case, an AMD Radeon Mobility graphics card and an Intel Pentium III processor running at 600 MHz, I tried to google search it with those exact keywords but could not find anything.

[gehx75]

I have an IBM ThinkPad A20m type 2628

I downloaded the restore discs (2 of them, 1 is bootable the other is not [disc 2]) from https://archive.org/search.php?query=IB ... 20Recovery ....I tried to restore and ran into an error (there are 2 options for restore 1, win nt and 2, win 2000)...both options yield the same error:

Code: Select all

error #4 Bad argument/parameter

any suggestions on resolving this error??

[theterminator93]

Based on the previous status messages on the screen it might be having a hard time formatting the hard disk. What OS was installed on it previously? Do you have a different HDD you could install to test with?

[gehx75]

hmm....i had win 2000 installed on it, then I found the restore discs so I wanted to restore it w/ the discs to get all the drivers, etc....had that error...so I downloaded dban and nuked the drive...now when I try the restore discs (it took about 8 or so hours to get this far...i'm assuming the restore does a low level format??) I get error #49 write fault.



do you think the hdd might be faulty?? I don't have another IDE drive but I can find one on ebay....

TIA for your reply!

[theterminator93]

Well, it's not doing a true low-level format so much as a full disk zeroing (semantics ) - but I think that's a good conclusion given the behavior and errors. If it took that long to do the format, then there are probably a lot of errors that slowed it down.

On a side note, are those original W2k restore discs for the A22m? If so would you be willing to share them?

[gehx75]

Well, it's not doing a true low-level format so much as a full disk zeroing (semantics ) - but I think that's a good conclusion given the behavior and errors. If it took that long to do the format, then there are probably a lot of errors that slowed it down.

On a side note, are those original W2k restore discs for the A22m? If so would you be willing to share them?

I linked them above but here's the inet archive link again....i'm assuming they're legit....

https://archive.org/search.php?query=IB ... 20Recovery

[theterminator93]

Ahhh, OK - I do have that set. Seems the set specific to the A22m is a unicorn!

[saperkus]

I remember, that I had a similar issue with T21 Windows 98 recovery. It simply didn't want to cooperate. After a lot of debugging, it turned out, that recovery expected disk to be formated in a "proper" way. Basically, I've used 600X WinNT recovery and let it format the disk. Afterwards, I've stopped the recovery process and booted T21 recovery again. This time it worked correctly.

[gehx75]

Ahhh, OK - I do have that set. Seems the set specific to the A22m is a unicorn!

sorry i misread what you were asking for...yeah those are for a20m

[gehx75]

STATUS UPDATE: so restore has two options; restore Windows 2000 or Windows NT.....i went the NT route and it restored no problem...WTH??? Windows 2000 refuses to restore....

[Shredder11]

I don't have another IDE drive but I can find one on ebay....

I needed some hard drives for some of my IDE based Thinkpads recently, and in the end it made more sense to buy some 128GB mSATA SSD drives + mSATA to IDE adapters from Aliexpress. I'm in the UK so it cost a total of £20 shipped, and took just over a week to arrive (things take way longer then they do to the USA, so this was very fast). If I had stuck with old used mechanical drives from Ebay, it would have cost £10+ for a 60GB drive.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3298222 ... 4c4daUfUYC * mSATA SSD

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3284782 ... 4c4daUfUYC * mSATA to IDE adapter

[theterminator93]

The thing you need to be careful of with SSDs on an IDE bus with an older OS is the fact that garbage collection (TRIM) can't be triggered or supported by the OS. So the drive will eventually get a lot slower past a point, because it will need to erase each cell before it can be written to again, which takes a lot of time (relatively speaking). I ran into this trying to do the same thing with my T42p... it was really fast for a while but slowed down to an abysmal crawl after that, and nothing I did (aside from a complete format and reinstall) would fix it. I eventually gave up and just left a platter disk in it,

[olex126]

theterminator93:

I have an IBM Recovery Disc for the A22m in W2k if you require same.

"Product Recovery CD-ROM for IBM Thinkpad A22m MT 2628"

"English/W2K-DT/Bootable"

"March 2001 IBM P/N 23P8966"

Let me know and I can burn an ISO and post it somewhere.

Regards.

Dave

[gehx75]

theterminator93:

I have an IBM Recovery Disc for the A22m in W2k if you require same.

"Product Recovery CD-ROM for IBM Thinkpad A22m MT 2628"

"English/W2K-DT/Bootable"

"March 2001 IBM P/N 23P8966"

Let me know and I can burn an ISO and post it somewhere.

Regards.

Dave

Yes! That would be FANTASTIC! Thank you

[olex126]

GEHX75:

A22m Win2K ISO sent to your Dropbox.

Regards.

Dave

[gehx75]

GEHX75:

A22m Win2K ISO sent to your Dropbox.

Regards.

Dave

Thanks!

[theterminator93]

theterminator93:

I have an IBM Recovery Disc for the A22m in W2k if you require same.

"Product Recovery CD-ROM for IBM Thinkpad A22m MT 2628"

"English/W2K-DT/Bootable"

"March 2001 IBM P/N 23P8966"

Let me know and I can burn an ISO and post it somewhere.

Regards.

Dave

Yes - that would be marvelous! If you don't mind sharing with me, I would love to add it to my recovery set repository.

[olex126]

theterminator93:

Check your mail!

Regards.

Dave