Thinkpads Forum

Ok I still think my 701c thinkpad has potential for simple email and web surfing. Who can recommend a performance motherboard upgrade for these unique laptops? Or does anyone work on these anymore?

There was only one such performance upgrade that I ever heard about: a 133MHz board that also increased the amount of memory you could install. However, I've been casually looking for such a board for a few years, and they have become very rare, esoteric items. The upgrade involved replacing the entire motherboard with one that had a 133MHz CPU installed directly onto it. I recall reading posts where people felt that these boards gave a very significant performance upgrade from the max OEM install of 75MHz. And the memory upgrade also must have helped.

Phil.

There is also some debate as to wether or not you can 'throw' a 64 mb edo sodimm into the normal 75mhz motherboard. My 701c has only 16mb and it works very fast 'for what it is' but i imagine the internet of today is out of reach, even with the 133mhz AMD board. for example, Using a 233 p1 system, the internet is truly awful.

The eBay handle of the seller who used to have the 133 mhz upgrade boards is now rfguys out of Canada. I recently refurbed a bunch of 701Cs (still have 2 of them I am keeping for me) with their standard 75mhz 701C boards (a steal at $19.95 on ebay still). I had to have some communication with them about one of the sales and struck up a conversation. I have been buying from them off and on since about 1999. They said they were thinking about making some more of the 133 mhz boards. You might get in touch with them. My suggestion on the 701C is to upgrade it to 40 megs of RAM, install Windows 95, install Mozilla Firefox 1.5, which is the only "modern" browser that works at all with Windows 95, and use something like an older Eudora for email. It will work slow but will be useable as you suggest. Using a direct pcmcia ethernet card and a fast cable modem connection is the best way to go. Wi-fi can be made to work with Windows 95, but it is difficult and buggy at best.

A few years back I did have a 701C with the 133 mhz board and installed a 64 meg EDO 72-pin SO-DIMM in it. It would actually run Windows 2000, but slowly, and was pretty snappy with Windows 98SE. It was way way faster than the DX-4 (486) 75 mhz standard CPU since the AMD 133 mhz is a true Pentium class 32 bit processor. Windows 2000 will not run at all on a 486, I seem to recall.I sincerely wish I had not sold the 133 mhz 701C, although at the time I got about $500 for it.

hwattys wrote:My suggestion on the 701C is to upgrade it to 40 megs of RAM, install Windows 95, install Mozilla Firefox 1.5, which is the only "modern" browser that works at all with Windows 95, and use something like an older Eudora for email.

Are you familliar with Dillo? It is "more" "modern" than Firefox 1.5. With that said, I love Fx 1.5. It is the very best version of Firefox!
http://dillo-win32.sourceforge.net/dillo/

i just bought a new motherboard from RFGUYS and it is working perfectly. This is the 3rd board i have tried in my 701c and finally i have a working 701c. It has a massive 16mb ram and runs win95 really well. The internet is truly awful with either firefox or opera. Sure, extra memory might help but it's not as if i use it every day.

If you guys want a 133MHz motherboard, why not buy a whole collection of 701 machines, including such a mobo?
The Forum owner - Bill Morrow - has his collection for sale: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=97793
Make him an offer he cannot refuse!

mnowell69 wrote:i just bought a new motherboard from RFGUYS and it is working perfectly. This is the 3rd board i have tried in my 701c and finally i have a working 701c. It has a massive 16mb ram and runs win95 really well. The internet is truly awful with either firefox or opera. Sure, extra memory might help but it's not as if i use it every day.

try the "lynx" or "w3" webbrowsers. Even then you may need to swap heavily...

Thanks for the advice. I installed OPERA 9.x on the machine and it works well enough. The main thing was to get the 701 working perfectly as it did all those years ago. It is such a pleaseure to use such a responsive machine, as long as i don't try to do too much.

I have one of these AMD-X5-boards - running at 133MHz up to 100% faster than the 75Mhz because of the frequency itself an the Write-Back-Cache (introduced by Intel on the Pentium-CPU´s)

My 701C is slowly dying - CMOS battery failed, on-board memory giving errors, ...
Would you please tell me where you got the improved board from?
Thank you,
ADJ

This board is from HANTZ & PARTNER - they have cleared their stocks years ago. It´s in an original IBM spare-part-packaged, which was upgraded in 1998.
If you do not find one on eBay (board or hole computer), there won´t be anyone who is offering parts like this, I guess.

adj wrote:My 701C is slowly dying - CMOS battery failed, on-board memory giving errors, ...
Would you please tell me where you got the improved board from?
Thank you,
ADJ

Thank you for the reply.
I guess that the hunt goes on.

I have one - you might have seen it an other POST.

adj wrote:Thank you for the reply.
I guess that the hunt goes on.

I have sent you a PM
Regards,

Badaboom,
Just checking.
Did you get my PM?
Thanks,

No, I did not receive anything yet - just got messages, that you send a quote ...

Is there an other way to get in contact?

adj wrote:Badaboom,
Just checking.
Did you get my PM?
Thanks,

Have seen a working 701c available for sale on ebay in Germany.. http://www.ebay.de This has the AMD processor but the seller is asking way too much for me. Looks very nice too

Good news!! I have managed to source a new board for my aging 701c for $17!!! The shipping costs to the UK were considerably more than this.

Now looking forward to having my Butterfly back in operation as my tribute to John Karidis, the inventor and designer of the keyboard.

Thank you to the board members who have helped me get to this point.