Thinkpads Forum

I've seen several people refer to different software that came with their Thinkpad. I bought a used 600e (2645-4AU, IIRC) that had the hard drive wiped. It's got the max amount of memory at the time (just under 300MB, I think 294MB total -- I'm at work and the TP is at home), 366MHz processor, and the standard 5.7GB (think that's right!) hard disk. I've installed Win98SE on it and got the correct video and sound drivers from the IBM website. Is there any other software that I really need? I'd rather download what's needed than an entire package. I did download the IBM manual also. I have it connected to my cable model through a USB port LAN adapter.

Other than Win98SE I have installed a memory defragger that seems to help performance and DiskKeeper (trial version for now), which works MUCH better than the Win98SE defrag program (took over an hour to defrag a 5.7GB HD that just had W98 and Open Office installed!!?? DK does it in half that time anyway so at least that's an improvement!

I plan on upgrading to a P3/450 (didn't want to go any faster because of possible heat problems in the future). Is this an exceptionally slow HD in this thing, or is W98 defrag the only problem? I don't mind upgrading the HD but size isn't a big problem. I could put XP Pro on it (minimal installation), but am afraid that would slow it down to much. If anyone is running (or has run) XP on a standard 600E I'd like to hear your impressions.

Any inexpensive upgrade recommendations would be appreciated also! I bought this thing for a female student in the Phillipines that I met while recently stationed in Korea. I sort of "adopted" a "neice" while there -- mcuh to my wife's displeasure!! ;> During a conversation she mentioned that she wanted to learn more about using a computer, and I volunteered to send her my old P133 HP laptop. She didn't want to accept it at first, but after explaining it only sat on a shelf and was no use to me she changed her mind. After playing with it a bit I decided it would be way to slow to do anything useful and went shopping for an inexpensive but better machine. I lucked upon this 600E complete with external floppy and docking station (even the part with the extra PCMCIA card slots) for $200 + $16 to ship. Now I'm caught in the "if I just add this for a few more $$ it will be so much better!" routine!! Paid $30 including shipping for a P3/450 module. What next??!!! Oh, I'll trade the docking station for some 256MB memory modules that will work, or if someone wants to donate to the cause... I'm already in it about $300 after buying some inexpensive software -- so much for not costing me anything, but I hate to give something away that isn't really useable, like the P133...

Sorry for the long post, but had to add a little explanation as to why I'm messing with this thing so much!

Ok Hard Drive,

Anything goes pretty much, as long as you have flashed the BIOS to the highest revision INET36WW (1.16)

You should have no problem installing any modern 2.5” IDE drive; I have it on good authority that 80 GB 7200RPM drives work fine. I personally opted for a 40 GB 8 MB cache Segate Momentus 5400RPM. The only possible concern I’d have with 7200RPM drives is heat dissipation.

For your purpose I wouldn't recommend installing a P3 CPU as it would require both BIOS hex editing and installation of a third party app to enable the Level 2 Cache. Its fine for a very competent user to do, but once its out of you hands its may cause issues.

I'd recommend either a PII 400 or Celeron 466 these are the two fastest chips with native compatibility. They are MMC-2 format.

Get a pair of 256 SODIMMS, they must be Low Density 16 Chip PC100 - this means they are made up of 16 chips per module. I got mine cheap off eBay for £60

As for software nothing that great came with it. My advice just install XP and some office apps. Choose PowerDVD (early version if poss V4 is good) To play DVDs (it has got a slim dvd hasn't it, if not cheap off eBay.

I'd leave it there to be honest.

Katch wrote:I'd leave it there to be honest.

All very good advice! Especially WRT the CPU upgrade.

Regards,

James

WinXP has been suggested but I found that Win2K is the sweetspot on these machines. I guess it's preference but I have had absolutely no issue running Win2K but WinXP seemed s/w sluggish to me.

On all the computers I've put XP and 2000 on, older and newer, I've noticed that one, if it can run 2000, it can run XP, XP tends to boot faster but take a few seconds longer logging in and once logged in, they run the same.

Some people may disagree, but I actually find 2000, despite being a great OS, to be pointless since XP will run just as fast on most computers (I've run everything from Pentium MMX's to Athlon XP's) and Microsoft isn't in the process of dropping support for XP like they are with 2000.

Thanks for the advice all! I downloaded Diskeeper and bought that since it actually WORKS -- unlike Win98SE Defrag. Now that the disk is properly defragged it seems to be quite zippy with Win98SE. Because of the memory issue I think I'll leave 98SE on it. I'm already into this thing more than I'd intended to be, and the cheapest I've found SODIMMS that will work is around $90 USD each. I might think about it at half that.

I do have the latest BIOS -- that had already been done before I got it. I checked the CD drive (not DVD!) BIOS as well. Will check on a DVD drive though. Will any "SlimBay" drive work?

Katch -- as to the PIII upgrade... I can do the hex edit and install the third party app to run automatically with no problems. I followed the thread on your upgrade before considering the upgrade. That's why I bought a PIII 450 instead of something faster -- mainly heat concerns. As far as I can tell from your thread once the machine is set up to run it should be fine. I know there could be problems later, but that's with any computer!

Now if someone has a working Celeron 466 MMC-2 they would like to trade for the PIII 450 I'm willing to talk! I have the 600E docking station and the external PCMCIA card "extender" for it that we could work with also since I don't really need them (part #12J2468 and #11J9013).

My main concern with it going out with a PIII is we are very much still testing and tinkering with PIII compatibility.

The Hex editing and third party app could cause problems in a number of ways. In the Easy System config there is an option to Initilize the system. This acts like a master reset and will undo the error 127 work around.

Also the powerleap control panel is not bomb proof at the moment. It still intermitently fails to load, I'd say >10% of the time on my Pad requiring a second execution to load properly.

Stick that 450 PIII on eBay recover your money and get a PII 400 (IMHO better than the 466 Cel as it has double the cache)

As a side note to XP - I used to hate this POS untill I realised you have to tweak it hard to get it nippy. Go check out blackviper's service configuration guide at http://www.blackviper.com for details on how to disable uneeded and insecure services. (Worth a look regardless of your choice) EDIT - seems to be down at the momment - Sure it'll be back soon http://web.archive.org/web/200411280945 ... viper.com/ for an archived version.

I'd definitely get 98SE off it and Use either 2000 or XP.

Pretty much any Slimbay drive will be ok, you will need to take the caddy off the current drive and fit it to the new part. eBay for an IBM part to be absolutely sure of compatibility, there are loads fairly cheap, an 8X DVD should be fine and is what I am using atm (My 24X having become noisey and unreliable).

Will probably take your advice on the PII/400 vs PIII/450. I checked E-bay for CDRW drives -- they seem to be going for a good price still. May get a cheap DVD drive though. I'll search here for the software to use. I can always get an external USB CDRW if desired later. I know the USB 1.1 port isn't very fast, but should be sufficient for burning an occasional file or a few MP3s at a time. If it becomes a problem will just get a USB 2.0 PCM card. I don't think burning CDs is in the agenda anytime soon for a new computer user though! I'll probably send a 64MB thumb drive along with the computer for file transfer duties, that will be much easier to explain!

Update on progress: I now have a stable copy of Win98SE running on the 600E! The whole hangup was the darned defrag program that comes with SE not working right. I bought a home version of Diskeeper and have it set to keep the drive defragmented. Unbelievable how snappy the computer is now compared to before! It wasn't running any faster than the HP P133 I passed on sending because of low performance! I've been using the 600E for e-mail and searching through some CDs looking for some files. It's working fine!

The only exception if the battery. It peters out at 35-40 minutes depending on CD useage. Well, its used! I might have to get a new battery. The machine came with two though, and I just cracked the case on the other one (which was stone cold dead and won't charge). There are six Panasonic CGR18650HM cells in there. Google the part number... which says 1800mAh @ 3.6V. The AAs wouldn't last long, and not be enough voltage. I found some replacement cells, best price was here: http://www.batteryspace.com -- $5.95 for some 2000mAh cells. Might be worth looking into...

I am going to check e-bay for a DVD drive and forget a combo DVD/CDRW since they are so much more. Burning might be overkill for a newbie anyway!
Looks like I've swapped the Selectadock and PCMCIA card extender for a PIII 400, so will do that upgrade when the chip gets here. Anything I should know about opening this thing up (600E) that's not in the IBM service docs? Don't know how much of a speed increase will be realized over the 366 that's in it, but it's only costing postage. Gee... think I'll wait to buy that DVD drive until after the upgrade -- in case I break something unfixable!
If anyone has a copy of PowerDVD version 4 I'd appreciate hearing from you! Will buy/trade/whatever for a copy. The current version doesn't work well with these old machines or I'd go that route.

That's about it for now. Sure am glad I found this forum, has made working with this thing MUCH easier, and even a pleasant experience despite initial problems.

I could probably find you a copy for backup purposes. It would be up to you to ensure you have a valid licence of course pm me youe email addy or msn addy.

I've got everything running nicely under Win98SE, thanks to help from this forum! I even figured out how to make a disk image, but there is a problem! I made a Linux based boot CD (see http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities ... mage.shtml, scroll down to RescueCD) with drive imaging software. The problem is I can't make an image on a 6GB HD even with 72% free space! All the cloning/imaging software I've found (even commercial like Acronis) is really designed for desktops cloning from one HD to another. I have a USB drive (12GB) that I can use, but nothing seems to support using a USB HD or CDRW (I also have a USB CDRW drive) to make an image to. Anyone know of imaging software that will recognize a USB drive? I might be wrong with Acronis TrueImage, but can't find anything in on-line docs/ads that state it WILL work with a USB drive. Could be I just don't know enough about Linux -- the free software (Partimage) apparently recognizes the USB port during boot. I've thought about backing up to my other computer over my home network connection, but I'm using a Belkin USB network adapter on the 600E! No Linux recognition of that either. Looks like I need to get a Windows based drive image program. I've e-mailed Farstone DriveClone tech support asking about USB drive support, but I doubt it will work. DriveClone is a DOS based program that boots from a floppy (or can be booted from HD in real mode).

farna wrote:...The problem is I can't make an image on a 6GB HD even with 72% free space! All the cloning/imaging software I've found (even commercial like Acronis) is really designed for desktops cloning from one HD to another.

I'm a Linux newbie too, but you it sounds like you are trying to image a partition to itself. You would need to partition the drive into two separate partitions (Windows and Backup or some such) and then image to the second partition.

You should be able to mount other devices in Linux, though I'm not sure how the USB support is on that machine. The basic principle is to create a mount point in the /mnt directory (mkdir /mnt/whatever) and then use the mount command to mount something there (i.e. mount something /etc/whatever). There are a bunch of options for the mount command to specicfy the file system, user name, password, etc. Spend some time in the man pages for mount and you should figure it out. Note that if the drive you are trying to mount is using a file system like ntfs that is not supported by Linux natively you will need to get Samba running before you can talk to it. If your live CD doesn't include Samba you can make a script to install it after booting or find one that does.

Ed Gibbs

farna wrote:I have a USB drive (12GB) that I can use, but nothing seems to support using a USB HD or CDRW (I also have a USB CDRW drive) to make an image to. Anyone know of imaging software that will recognize a USB drive? I might be wrong with Acronis TrueImage, but can't find anything in on-line docs/ads that state it WILL work with a USB drive.

In theory Acronis does support USB drives, but it seems that a number of users have had problems with them.

egibbs: you hit the nail on the head! I didn't think it would matter much since Partimage is supposed to only copy the used portion. There is a partion sizing program on the rescue disc also. I will look at that and maybe try partitioning the drive. I've used Partition Magic under Windows and will have to resize the partition after restoring anyway, since Partimage restores the original partition size regardless of the size of the drive. So you either use the partitioning software to resize the partition or use fdisk to make another partition in the larger space. As long as my second partition is larger than the first I should be fine.

I'll take a look at the mnt command also. Since linux is recognizinf the USB port that might be easier. Thanks!

Thanks for the tip on Acronis. $50 is more than I want to spend for "theory". If anyone has direct experience on a 600 series TP I'd buy though.

The only thing I'd suggest is to visit www.ibm.com and download all the proper drivers (if you have not already done so) The THINKPAD 600 line has some really neat features.

I had to download a number of drivers though, audio, video, modem, USB and others... one interesting "Driver" is the log on personalation.

When you turn on MY computer it tells you who it belongs to, (I set a BIOS password, this is a requirement for this to work) and till you prove you know Jack, and I don't mean that Jack, it don't work, All you gonna see is my name, address and phone number and a suggestion that if I'm not the one who presented this computer for service the police should be notified

I DID IT !! I got the System Rescue CD to recognize my USB drive as a second drive!! Now to remember what the heck I did... Seriously, it just took a little reading up on Linux commands. It's been SO long since I messed with a unix-like system (OS-9 on a 6809 computer -- the Tandy Color Computer)!! Now everything is humming along! I guess I'll go ahead and bite the bullet, make a change or two on the system, then try to restore it. I decided at the last minute that the little 6GB HD isn't enough though, and ordered a 20GB, otherwise I'd be ready to send this thing off.


wa8yxm: I think I'm going to set the BIOS password on this one with an address to. Would hate to see it stolen, and it's going to the Philippines. I won't do this again!! How did this happen? I started out giving a P133 HP Omnibook 5500CT away and now I'm about $350 into PII 366 IBM ThinkPad 600E with enough extra stuff to make most of you guys happy! 294MB RAM (came with it though), 20 GB HD, DVD drive, external floppy, PS/2 optical mouse, hard side case, 12V auto adapter w/socket and clamps to connect to a car battery (I've since discovered that car batteries for radios and such is common in rural areas of the Philippines -- recharging is a going business on the outskirts of major cities), external battery charger complete with extra power supply, and a refurbed computer battery (the one I got with it would only hold for 40-45 minutes, the second was completely dead -- I shelled it out to use as a cover). If I tell my wife what I have in this thing to give to some young lady I met while in Korea she's gonna think we became *REALLY*close friends!! Throw in some software too, but I've been picking simple/older software up at yard sales and discount stores as I see it, about $20 worth with the most expensive piece an older version of "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" for a whopping $5!! And it will cost at least $50 to send it and hope it doesn't get tossed around so much that the HD gets trashed!

I hate to give something to someone who doesn't know anything about computers that is a bear to work with though. They'd struggle with it a bit then give up. I do like the young lady (kid -- half my age!) though, reminded me a lot of my two girls as I reminded her of one of her uncles. Hopefully learning some computer skills will get her into a decent job -- that was my idea anyway. Got to remember not to do this again!! Maybe I should just keep the refurbed battery and get my kid a 600X... I do like this 600E, one reason I haven't minded playing with it to much. Will hate to see it go!

farna wrote:Thanks for the tip on Acronis. $50 is more than I want to spend for "theory". If anyone has direct experience on a 600 series TP I'd buy though.

I think the Acronis demo is full-featured and lasts 30 days, so you could give it a real workout before committing if you wanted. I love it, myself.

Have you tried mounting an external USB hard drive? I've heard mostly good things about Acronis and might give it a try since the RescueCD requires a bit more work. The one thing I REALLY don't like about it is it's an ISO disk image and when you burn it to CD it closes the disk. The utilities and Linux kernel only take up 109MB, but you can't burn an image file to the same disk. It comes with instructions on burning the kernel/utils to a DVD and burning the disk image files on the same DVD though. I might look at that and see if I can make it work with CD, but I do have a DVD drive on the sutdent's laptop and a USB DVD burner. So I can do it that way. Still requires a bit of hand work to restore though. Time to read more on Acronis!

I've got the rescue CD thing down as far as backing up the hard drive now. 1.3GB of used space on a 5GB HD takes up three CDs using 500MB files. I used medium compression. I thought this a bit odd since PartImage doesn't copy unused space. The disk image is about the same size as the used space on the drive and took 58 minutes (according to the PartImage software) to create. Yes, it took around an hour! I haven't burned the files to CD's yet and tried restoring from them. The System Rescue CD has to be booted differently to put most of the files in RAM so that the CD can be unmounted and used for the restoring process. I've been creating the images on a USB hard drive, and successfully restored from the USB hard drive when the image was in one 1.3 GB file. Takes about an hour to restore from the HD, probably longer from CD. I probably should have imaged the drive before all the software was installed, just OS and drivers since I'm sending at least copies of most of the software CDs just in case, or keeping copies for myself in case it needs to be sent back -- will keep a copy of the images as well. But I'm going to leave it alone now!

The only thing that has me worried is the USB HD. I formatted it using FAT32 from WinXP on my HP laptop. The Thinkpad and Linux refused to read it. When I tried to mount using Linux it gave me an invalid file system error -- couldn't find a valid FAT32 system. When I created a FAT32 file system from Linux the XP machine wouldn't recognize the drive, said it was all unallocated space the size of the free space on the drive (minus the file size), and didn't recognize the file that was on the drive at all. Puzzled, I formated on XP again and again Linux wouldn't recognize the drive. So I rebooted the TP and tried reading the drive from it. Same thing -- wouldn't recognize the drive. Formatted with the TP (running 98SE) and Linux recognized it with no problems! I didn't try it on the XP machine again, was to frustrated by this time! I had a different drive a couple days ago and everything worked fine on both machines. That drive was marginal, had failed in another laptop but worked okay 75% of the time. Finally tossed it before I tried to save something on it (had been using it to transfer large files from one machine to another on the same desk, so no big deal if it lost the file) and got a new drive for the USB enclosure. The only thing I didn't do was reboot the HP laptop and try again, which will likely solve the problem. Anyone else run into something similar?