Thinkpads Forum

I found this 701 being sold in a gold recovery auction, for super-cheap, and me being me and wanting a 701 no matter what... I bought it.

I got what I paid for though... in some respect. It's probably in the worst condition I've ever seen a Thinkpad. There's gashes and scratches everywhere on the corners on the outside, and there's residue, the rubber feet are missing, the corners by the hinges are chipped off, the latches are busted, and the battery's leaking acid... it's an absolute mess.

The inside does look good though-and the keyboard... is so cool. It's way cooler to see it for yourself than to see pics or even watch a vid. It's friggin awesome. And it works perfectly.

I may need to ask some 701-savvy peoplez about maybe seeing if I can get this thing to boot up and maybe install an OS... from my understanding this has a pre-P5 processor in it so I don't have a chance at Win 98... Win 95 maybe. I'd probably end up installing Win 3. There also might be hardware issues... I mean, this thing was sold in a gold recovery auction.

It didn't come with a power adapter, so I might get lucky. But is it safe to use a 770/T2x power adapter with it? I know the amp rating on the 701 is lower(1.9A) than the 4.5A the T2x adapters I have put out. And I do have some 760 hardware I can use to boot floppies on this machine.

i wouldn't bother with Win 3.x, just go for 95. Mine is happily running 95 and every now and again i fire it up just to keep it happy. Sometimes i use the adaptor that came with my 701, ( the original) sometimes i use the one from my 770, depends which happens to be on hand at the time. Never had any problems.

Hmm... alright. I've taken the liberty of plugging the thing into my 770 adapter before heading off to class, and it booted right up. Beeped once, then asked for a floppy. So I think it's good.

I've actually done some more looking into it... this thing has a Intel 486DX processor, and I remembered that Windows 98 actually does allow to be installed on such a machine-even though performance my be a tad slow, I might just try it out. See how well it does.

I'll have to see if I can get Windows 95 installed-I checked the HD, it works perfectly, and it's 720MB.

I also saw on ebay a base and a lid... just exactly what this computer needs cosmetically. So I went ahead and bought that. This thing needs a little TLC.

Stick with Windows 95.....max RAM is 40 mb and that is just not enough for Windows 98. I have a basement full of 701 parts so if you need anything let me know.