Thinkpads Forum

Hey everyone -
I just picked up a 760LD in pretty great shape!
I have two questions about it though.

1. What are the two ports on the left of the machine (top of this picture)? The extremely wide one and the one that looks like a D-Terminal next to the VGA port.
http://i.imgur.com/NsRlIJc.jpg

2. After the boot screen it shows me this. Does this mean it just needs a floppy to boot from or is something missing/messed up?
http://i.imgur.com/UtbPSsu.jpg

I am able to get to the easy setup screen so I am going to try and run some diagnostics on it and get some install media together for it.

I'll crack it open and see if it's missing a HD or just needs a system installed to it when I have enough time but it could be a couple days before I get to that, unfortunately.

Nice Thinkpad you got there!

1- According to the HMM (Hardware Maintenance Manuals), those ports are the expansion connector (the big one) and the external diskette connector.
2- It's asking for a boot diskette I think, I had a similar issue in one of my 600 when the HD was un-formatted

The HMM is a must have document IMO, you can pick it from here

Cheers!

D'oh, I was searching all through that exact document, but I didn't see where it had those ports listed. Thanks for the hint! I figured I had to be missing something.

Oh, I can't seem to get this to boot from the CD drive. I read somewhere else that these don't support CD booting and you need to have a boot floppy. Is there any way to do this if I don't have the external floppy drive for it?

I think you'll then need to remove the hard drive, connect it to another laptop/pc, do a boot format (you can then copy the OS you plan to use to the drive as well) and put it in the TP again

Alternatively you could buy the diskette drive that can be swapped with the CD ROM drive or buy an external diskette drive, I'd check here in the MP.

Cheers