My "new" 600E project machine

[lewellyn]

Many years ago, when it wasn't so outdated, I had a fully loaded 770ED I really enjoyed. So I got the idea recently that I'd like to soup up a sibling machine, albeit one that has a video card that wasn't so unfriendly to DOS games (SimAnt sticks out in my memory as an unplayable game on my 770ED). So... I settled on the 600E and found one (2245-5AU) for an excellent price.

Of course, an excellent price always means "it needs some love". And I thought it probably is wiser to ask for advice before I make this project a bad idea.

Here's my current list of woes that I would like some advice on: (ordered approximately what I suspect is easiest to answer to hardest)

• One of the first things I did was open all the port doors to ensure the ports didn't have any suspicious damage that would warrant ripping the machine apart before anything else. Unfortunately, each and every one of them fell off immediately. This wasn't too much of a surprise to me. But all that comes to mind to repair them is electrical tape. Is there a better option that is less likely to collect grossness when using the ports?
• The CMOS battery is dead. I'm still waiting for a replacement for it, but in the mean time, is there a piece of magic for being able to get into the BIOS without it? F1 doesn't work when it wants me to set date and time. The next boot makes me power it off and back on again. After that, I get a 174 that I hit Restart on. Then the boot after that seems to ignore F1 and instead tries to boot the hard disk. The hard disk needs to be installed onto, which I need to make sure the DVD drive is bootable for. (The floppy drive I ordered is also still somewhere in the USPS maze, so optical boot is the only thing available to me right now.)
• On the topic of the hard disk, I opted for an mSATA drive in a PATA case. These days, that is the cheapest and easiest option. However, the best price I could find was on a 240 GB SSD. As the 600E does not do 48-bit LBA (or does it? ), I should be good to just partition it as far as the ThinkPad sees it, and then never modify partitions from Windows or use the disk in another machine, correct? Or should I just get myself a 128 GB SSD and avoid any problems, and repurpose the 240 GB elsehow?
• I have a SelectaBase 600 for it. However, it's somehow locked (without a laptop in it, naturally...), and no key. While that's currently not much of a problem (I basically lose PS/2 keyboard port, 2nd USB port, and game port), I hope to get a SelectaDock III for it at some point. What is the best move here? Drill it out and manipulate the innards to unlock the hooks? Is it feasible to impression the lock and get a locksmith to create a replacement key? Can it use a relatively common blank? I remember my old SelectaDock III had a very "suspicious" looking key, but I don't remember if it was relatively normal of a blank.
• The CCFL is obviously dying: it looks like an amber screen when powering on (though after a moment, whites becomes white). Is it a better move to try to replace the CCFL or to try to find a whole replacement panel in 2025? If a whole new panel, any tips on finding a compatible one? The FRUs obviously aren't overly helpful these days.

I, of course, have various other project bits to handle with it. Like finding an LS-120 drive (either UltraslimBay, or UltraBay II once I get the Dock). Re-celling a couple batteries. Probably trying to find a 400 MHz CPU since my research indicated that the -5Ax came with a 366 MHz. Perhaps increasing the RAM to max. Figuring out how I want to get it to do WPA2 for WiFi. So on and so forth with the usual suspects.

Any input is appreciated, even if it's "dunno, report back" on a couple of them.

[panips]

No big deal if the port door is broken or missing. If you really need one, try 3d print one.
Sometimes a bad COMS battery prevents it from working correctly, maybe you can remove the CMOS battery and try again?
128G mSata with adapter works well, try it?
No comment...I've successfully opened and disassembled the locked SelectaDock I, but I don't know if you can do that on your SelectaBase 600 without breaking it.
13.3 inch tft fitting 600E would cost you 25~50 plus shipping. If I were you, I'd mod it with LED.
LS-120 IS available...I just checked the company in FL, and they *DO* have (the last) one.
Very few PCMCIA wlan cards are compatible with WPA2, and if you're installing a Win98, a WPC54G might be good enough.

[lewellyn]

Oh, I have all the doors. They're just no longer attached to the machine. It seems they were attached with the rubberization? In any case, whatever it was disintegrated for each of them into flakes of black grossness.

Removing the battery doesn't change the behavior. It's testing at 0V anyhow, so I think it's a former battery now. I've just got to be patient and await the replacement's arrival, I suppose. The seller insists they gave me the correct tracking number, but USPS says otherwise. So.... patience. However, the floppy drive did arrive today. So once I can get a floppy made, hopefully I can figure out a way to get the CD to boot as it eventually does seek to the floppy drive. I do think I'm out of luck for doing anything "useful" with the machine until it arrives, though.

I ordered a 128 GB mSATA today. It should be here sometime between tomorrow and Saturday. I'll get a USB enclosure for the 240 GB and use it as a flash drive. Only about $15 all told for a 240 GB flash drive isn't a terrible outcome for that SSD.

Yeah. The SelectaBase is just going to sit there until I either figure out what the best approach is or I decide to grab a drill. If I could figure out which blanks were compatible, that would open options, honestly.

As for the display, I found this Toshiba LTM13C420 on eBay for about $40 shipped (and also delivered from the next state over, so should be speedy enough). I've been struggling to figure out if it might or might not be compatible though. Honestly, for $40, it will be about half of what I paid for the machine if it's compatible, so I'd still be ahead of the current going prices that I'm seeing and I wouldn't have to worry about the problems associated with modding the current screen. And image quality certainly cannot be worse than I have now.

I'm not sure who "the company in FL" is, else they'd have none left now.

I'm thinking I'm just going to go EtherJet 10/100 to a USB-powered travel router to use as a bridge to do WPA2. That would let me do network things in DOS with little hassle, while giving me true futureproofing. Also, I do not foresee myself generally using the USB port for anything else. If that changes, there are options like a USB power bank or something.

[RealBlackStuff]

This is what a Selectabase 600 key looks like:

https://blog-imgs-29-origin.fc2.com/p/a ... /tpsb4.jpg

[lewellyn]

I couldn't find a good pic when I searched the googs before. And your link gives an error when I click it. Hm...

Also, I futzed with things enough and got my recovery CD to boot. It successfully partitioned the 240 GB SSD as I would have hoped. And, as I expected, no 48-bit LBA, so I'm very hesitant to actually try to use the thing since I don't know how likely it is I'll mess things up if I mix 48-bit aware and unaware systems on the same disk. The most likely scenario I can think of is eventually forgetting the limitation and going "oh why do I have so much free space!?" then formatting it and causing data corruption when I try to write to it from an unaware OS since the LBA would wrap around.

BUT getting it booting is great. That means I can, at least, do the first few installs that are likely to botch because multibooting is hard. I just have to be careful to not let the battery die. I really need to bother re-celling that soon!

[lewellyn]

@panips Thanks for your PM. I'm not established enough yet to be able to reply in private. I appreciate the links.

I take it that means the screen I found actually wouldn't work, based on a couple of key things I noticed from your link that random pictures I had found previously didn't quite clue me in on. I'm kind of curious about the LED mod, but I suspect it has the same potential issues as the CCFL replacement. And my past experience with those sorts of things is that I mess something up enough to end up buying a replacement screen anyhow, honestly. :S In fact, I have a replacement screen for my other currently-working ThinkPad, just in case. I have another ThinkPad in storage whose model number immediately escapes me, but it has enough problems to be a real project: I think the previous owner dropped it in a dirty fish tank and there are side effects of that and their cleanup attempt, including what seems to be a flake of fish food between the screen and its backlight... I do not know how it functions at all, but I don't use it for long since it gets a really strong stench when parts of it get too warm! So replacement screens are definitely territory I'm used to...

I found that drive link interesting since the description does not quite match the photo or FRU. That is definitely not your average floppy drive that IBM offered in that era, even if the description and front plate might imply otherwise!

And I appreciate your concern about my CMOS battery. I was originally going to solder the wires onto a holder and make it replaceable (and still eventually might...). But I found through the grapevine someone who happened to have one sitting around for the price of priority mail, since they apparently bought the wrong one for their own more-recent ThinkPad somehow. That's why I'm being patient over it, though I'm being grumbly still because it's irritating that I can't track it while it deals with winter weather delays!

I would have just edited my previous post to amend with this, but I guess that's an earned feature here too.

[RealBlackStuff]

Scroll up for the key picture.

And you have enough posts to PM and edit.