Thinkpads Forum

Ijust bought a ibm thinkpad 365ed for 3 dollars at a tag sale--and it still works!
I have never owned a laptop before and thought that i could possibly upgrade thiso one to make it a bit better. What kind of harddrive do i need--i see many ibm drives on ebay 30 gb for cheap but don't know if they are compatable (size etc) also, other than installing 16mb more of ram, is there anything else i can do to improve performance?
thank you for any help you could provide
What hard drives are compatable/how large can they be
What version of microsoft word can i install without blowing it up
thanks

According to the IBM PC reference book, the maximum RAM is 24mb. The RAM type is 72 pin SODIMM. I don't know the maximum hard drive capacity but since the CPU is a Cyrix 5x86c (repackaged 486), I'm pretty sure you can't go above a few gigabytes.

As for Microsoft Office, I'd see if Office 97 works on it, that's probably the best version that will run fine on your laptop.

I probably would not go later than WIN95 on that machine. I have a 365x (with a P120) and WIN98SE is pretty pokey on it.

The hard drive bay in my 365x accepts a 12mm high hard drive (or thinner). I think yours has the same physical space. The biggest hard drive that came with your machine from IBM was 1.08GB. I personally would probably not go above 2.1GB because: Some of the earlier BIOSs don't support more than 2.1, WIN95A doesn't support partitions greater than 2.1GB, and 2.1GB is plenty for WIN95. (WIN95B doesn't support drives over 32 GB.)

The prime difference between the 365E and ED and 365X and XD is that the 365E series has an ISA bus architecture powered by a Cyrix 5x86 which is a repackaged 486. The 365X has a Pentium powered PCI bus. I'd follow leoblobs advice as anything that his ThinkPad won't handle most likely won't run on your ThinkPad either.

My recomendation for software is Win95B and Office 97.