Thinkpads Forum

Hi

A quick question from me: Used my day off to play around with the newly purchased 560Z. As the 6.4GB drive I ordered for it hasn't arrived yet, I decided to do a stunt with putting a 16GB CF card in a PCMCIA adapter in the 600, and install Linux Antix on it. The Antix Live-cd recognized the CF card just fine, so I partitioned it, and installed Antix on a 7.5GB partition. But the 560Z refuse to boot from it, even if I set PCMCIA as the one and only entry in the power-up boot menu. The 600 also refused to boot from it, both with and without its HDD installed.

I did a fair bit of digging back in the forum, and the consensus seems to be that certain adapters can boot in the PCMCIA, as some users report success with running an OS from some card / adapter in the PCMCIA slot in their 560 and 600 series laptops. Is there a general rule for which adapters can boot here, or does some configuration in the BIOS or the OS need to be set up in a special way?

If it's an easy configuration fix, I would like to give it a try, but if not, it's not a big deal. I will get the HDD soon, and I also see statements that CF cards aren't optimal for running an OS over time. I figured I would also try the CF card in a CF -> IDE adapter in the HDD bay, but I only have the small adapter boards that I can't get all the way in towards the IDE plug without opening the 560Z up. So I skipped that.

Thanks!

A quick update: With a pair of tweezers and a piece of string tied to the CF -> IDE adapter, I managed to push it into the IDE connector in the HDD bay. And the 560Z boots from it and runs Anitx. 64MB RAM was a little on the low side, but I am waiting for a 128MB stick to arrive. Anyway, the general experience wasn't exactly speedy, and an interesting detail is that the periods of lag/hang wasn't coinciding with 100% CPU like it generally is on the 600. CPU was only 20-40%, but instead the HDD lamp was permanently on during periods of lag. This leads me to believe there might be something in the theories that the CF card's transfer speeds aren't optimal for this use. Btw, it was indicating "No swap", but I'll anyway wait and see what 128MB of extra RAM can do.

Anyway, this proved the point that the Linux install can be made in another machine, and the HDD simply moved over. So no need to buy a 1969- cd drive, and mess with booting from that, or some boot manager.

For the booting from a card/adapter in the PCMCIA slot, it could still be interesting to know why this works in some settings. But for now, it will only be theoretical.

Nice to know it works Norway Pad, I might do the same once I have the funds.

I tried a quick experiment last night. I bought a Duracell 8GB 600X CF card. With some thought, I wanted a quick and easy way of installing just MSDOS on it to prove that the 560Z could boot from it. So I grabbed a 600E running Windows 98 and put it in a CF-PCMCIA adapter I had laying around. Windows recognized it as a disk so I ran FORMAT and SYS commands. Verified that it had all of the proper system files on the CF card and then installed it in my 560Z (pulling out the HDD), changed the boot order in Easy Setup to floppy, PCMCIA, CD then HDD and attempt to boot. No success, just that familiar animated "install a floppy" screen. I re-installed the Windows 98 HD that I used to check out your 560Z and discovered that the CF was not recognized. Neither was the Netgear wireless card I used to verify your PCMCIA slots. Windows never saw them despite an attempt to re-load the Texas Instruments Cardbus drivers. Plugged the CF into the 600E and it didn't boot there either, although it did see the card in Windows. So I believe I have a problem with the PCMCIA slots in my 560Z, possibly as a result of the "burning plastic" smell I encountered when trying to charge the battery. That it didn't boot in the 600E means either I did not prepare the CF card properly or both the 600E and 560Z can't boot from a CF-PCMCIA adapter. I'll try searching for my 1969-010 CD this weekend and see if the 600E can boot from that drive, 'tho I don't have high hopes that the 560Z will work.

I think I have one of those IDE-CF adapters as I once planned on putting it into an X41 so I might give that a try in the 560Z (if I can find it ).

That's quite some experimenting on our part here. I meant to write to you later and tell how it went, but you saw it here. Let's hope your 560Z didn't get any permanent damage, even though it seems like the PCMCIA slot has a problem.

Based on my experience, where the Linux install on the CF card is verified to be working, it seems like neither the 600s or 560s are able to boot from the CF/adapter in the PCMCIA slot. A theory is that cards like the IBM IDE PC Card (I got one with the defective 1969 drive I bought) has firmware / hard coding in them that makes the BIOS recognize them. If I find a floppy drive in my shelf, with a connector that fits the cable, I will try to boot it from a Win95 boot floppy through this IDE card.

Some card adapters for PCMCIA might also have that code/firmware in them, others not. Just a theory, that's why I was a little curious on exactly what PCMCIA adapter people have used for this to work.

Update: I wonder if this one would work: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-2-5GB-C ... 3362de62fa I was wondering so hard that I actually bought a cheap one of these just now, so we'll see in a weeks time when it gets here.