I bought an A30 for $50

[FrankM]

I'm glad I found this site, tons of useful information. I know only the basics about computers and have literally spent 20+ hours on the web trying to figure out what's best for my application with the A30, hopefully someone will be able to help, it will be greatly appreciated.

My company replaces their Thinkpads every 3 years, then they sell the older ones for $50. I was lucky enough to get one this time. It's an A30 2652 13U in perfect condition, it looks brand new. It has a CD in the Ultrabay Plus bay and has XP Pro.

I'm into Astronomy and have several telescopes which I image with, this laptop will be perfect for my Astronomy software for guidescopes/tracking, focusing, Image Stacking, and Photoshop.

I need a larger HDD 60 to 80 GB to download the images, I can take a couple hundred 10 MB raw images a night. Plus I need a DVD/CD-RW, most of my Astronomy Software is on DVD. I have found a lot of devices for the Ultrabay 2000 bay, (DVD's & HDD's) but I'm having problems finding one of these 2 devices to put in the ULtrabay Plus bay. I don't care what device goes in either bay. I've looked at the IBM website for hours but since I'm a novice I can't figure out what is currently being made to work in the Ultrabay plus bay. Can someone please tell me what to look for so I can tell it's compatible with this bay?

I'm also planning on adding a card to make the 1.1 USB to a 2.0, because all of these images will eventually need downloaded to my home PC. I am also going to add memory, it has a 128 MB chip now. Can I add a 512 MB chip in the other slot, or do both chips need to be the same size?

Any other advice on Mods that I can do to the A30 to enhance the laptop for my application would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Frank

[daeojkim]

Any device that fits in the Ultrabay 2000 will fit in the Ultrabay plus. So you do not need to try to find DVD/CDRW for specifically for ultrabay plus.
You can find a bunch of them on ebay for pretty good price.

As for upgrades, I would suggest upgrading the hard drive to more recently released hard drives, at least a 5400 rpm and 8MB cache. There are some 7200 rpm that will improve the performance significantly. I am using seagate 5400.2 100GB HD and it performs excellent and very quiet.

Also if you need to always insert a DVD disc when you have to use your astronomy software, I would get a virtual drive ( or equivalent ) software. So that you can make an image on your HD and use the software without the hassle of inserting the DVD and constant whirl from the DVD-ROM. This is what I do for all of my softwares that I use often and requires inserted disc. Plus your software will much faster as well due to much improved access time to the data.

As for RAM, you can add a 512 MB on the other slot. Two RAMs do not have to be of equal for DDR RAMs. I am not sure but AFAIK you can upgrade to max of 2 X 1GB for T30 if you have the latest BIOS. It probably says that your machine can support max of 1 GB, but this is because back then there were no 1 GB sticks and you could only put 2 x 512 MB sticks that were available.

[FrankM]

daeojkim
Thank You for the help, I've spent a lot of time researching this and with your answers I'm confident I can start looking for the correct items. I do have a couple of questions about your reply:

I am getting, probably, the IBM 09N4273 80 GB HDD or equivalent, which is pretty much what you recommend. To put this HDD into the Ultrabay Plus bay do I need the 08K6068 2nd HDD Adapter for UltraBay 2000, or do you just need the adapter if you put it in the UltraBay 2000 bay? I looked at the HDD you talked about, is this your primary or secondary HDD, can it be put into one of the UltraBay's? I like it.

The virtual drive is a great idea, I've never seen this software before, most of the time, it's dark and cold when viewing, not messing with CD's or DVD's would be great. I am probably going to get the IBM 22P6991 CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo IV or equivalent.

I'm also just going to get two 512 chips, and upgrade the USB to 2.0.

This thing will end up costing me $1050 by the time I'm done.

[daeojkim]

Hi Frank,

A lof of the items that you are trying to get you DO NOT have to get them through IBM. The HD and RAM can be purchased elsewhere for half the price IBM will charge you. You can try zipzoomfly, newegg, etc to get the HD and RAM for half the price that IBM will charge you.

You will need an HD adaptor for ultrabay 2000 if you plan to have another HD in the bay. Again you do not have to get this from IBM if you can find it cheaper somewhere else. There are some good sellers on ebay for about $40 for each adaptor.

IBM charges you an arm and leg for parts.

As for USB 2.0, if you are getting a PCMCIA card just for the purpose of transferring file to your computer at home you can always set up a network to transfer the files between them.

[FrankM]

I just checked our E-Bay, amazing prices, almost too good to be true. SIB-USA has everything I need at half of IBM's price and they say it's all new. I might try them out.

[FrankM]

I think for now I will just get a 2.0 card to boost the USB. Is there anything special I should look for or avoid when buying a card for the A30? The card just gets inserted into one of the 2 PC card slots, correct? Thanks Again, sorry for the basic questions I'm very new at this.
Frank

[carbon_unit]

I bought some 570 batteries from SIB-USA and I was very happy with the transaction.

[NipplesTheCat]

Frank is there any way I could get one or two of those things from your company?

[FrankM]

Sorry, they sold out in less than 5 minutes, I was lucky I was sitting at my desk when the e-mail came. I've missed the sales for the last 5 years or so.

[NipplesTheCat]

Lucky lucky