Thinkpads Forum

Hi all I got a 760ed for 40bux. I have a 1.4 gig hd in it now that sounds bad. I found a 3gig ibm travelstar for 25 bux. I put it in the case and put it in and the computer never even sees it. Acts like it is not there at all. SO I partition to 2drves less that 2gig. still no go. I have current BIOS. Any Idea what is wrong or what I can do? THanks all for your help in advance. Hard drive is seen by a dell desktop when connected with adapter to add windows 95 set up files. THe same way I did the 1.4gig to get it to work.
Jimmie

This is a very old and very common issue most veterans of the 760 will know about. The addressing pins on 3gb and above hard drives are different than the ones on smaller drives. As a result, a caddy for drives under 3gb is incompatile than 3gb and more. This can be fixed by getting a new caddy or cutting the address wires on the caddy or the easiest fix, the 4 pins isolated from the rest on the drive, the address pins, bend them so they don't go into the caddys connector.

If you bend pins on the drive (which I did for my 750P), you should only have to bend one pin. WHICH one is the tricky part.

Ok I will try it
Jimmie

it worked! now if i can just get that sound card working again...

IBM used to have the mWave sound/modem drivers on their support website for quick download but IBM did away with driver support for all older and late model ThinkPads earlier this year. Your best bet is to ask around the messageboard or spend some time doing a Google search for ThinkPad 760 mWave drivers. I'll also see if II still have the install file sitting somewhere on my 760E. I'll PM you if I find it.

Another thing you can do, if you feel (very) confident in your hardware abilities is to find an ESS board for the 760 and replace the mWave board with it. You'll lost the modem but gain support from most OS's and not have to wory about the drivers slowing your system to a crawl.

I actually found a full install of the mwave for 95, so I installed it before i did the upgrade to 98se. It seems to be working ok. Thanks for the offer though. what kind of memory does the 760ed use? I only have 32 right now and would like to add a bit more

Jimmie

First off, would you mind e-mailing me that installer? My e-mail's in my profile and has plenty of space to hold files? (just rename the file from .exe to something else like .txt to bypass my spam filter.)

Next, your laptop uses 144pin EDO SODIMMs. 32 is the highest chip that can be used in either slot and you can use two of them. With that setup, you'd have 80mb RAM. As for accquireing the RAM, look on eBay or ask around the forums.

It is on its way. Ok now where is the mem slot? And is there a driver to make my screen go beyond 800x600? I mean is 1024x768 possible with this machine?

Remember to rename that file to .zip

Jimmie

Thanks alot for the mWave driver. I appreciate that.

As for resoultion, it depends. Look on the bottom of your computer where the barcode is. You should see under that barcode the numbers 9546 followed by 3 more digits. If those digits say u3a, then no, your computer's screen is maxed out at 800x600 unless you hook up an external monitor. If those digits are u9a, then your screen can do 1024x768.

The memory slot is under the computer. Flip you computer upside down (make sure the computer is off) then locate the movable tab with the lock icon above it. The tab is on the side that the pcmcia slots are on. Once you find it, move it away from the lock position then carefully slide out the small door that is on the underside of the laptop. Once you do that, remove the board that is now exposed and you'll see your memory slots.

Darn, it says U3A. Oh well I think I got a good price. Thanks for all the help.

If you have the adaptor cable, you can actually get video input on your laptop. One of the notable features in the CD, ED, XD and 765D is the MPEG acceleration and the video capture ability.

I used to have a 760ED that I had at my desk most of the time and I had my sattelite reciever hooked up to it so I could watch TV on the laptop. I could have the same on my XD except I accidently tore the internal ribbon cable inside my computer when I last changed a part and noone here seems to have a replacement.

If you have any MPEG 1 or 2 video files, your laptop would be great to play them on because of the hardware decoder on the video board.

Kewl. What about hooking up an external DVD rom to it? What about USB?

You can get USB if you buy a USB laptop card. As for the DVD rom, theoretically, it should work fine since the 760ED can decode MPEG but there's a nagging voice in my head saying that it won't work because of the age of the laptop.

Well thanks for all the help man! It is nothing like my wifes desktop but It is all MINE! I am wireless now as well with a 802.11 G card that was 10 bux on sale. Grand total for my wireless laptop= 80bux and change. Thanks again for the guidance at getting it all together.

No problem and glad to have helped. If you ever need anything else, well, I don't ever plan on leaving this forum anytime soon, but if i do, my e-mail is in my profile.

Does that MWave driver work on the 760E ? My modem isn't working either it keeps telling found unknown device, and there is no modem listed under modems, so I am guessing it is that, may I get the driver also PLEASE???????

Yeah, the driver will work on the 760E. It will also work on any other ThinkPad with the mWave modem/soundsystem.

PM me your e-mail address after making sure your mailbox can take a 3mb file and I'll send it to you.

Ok another question. Why is this 3 gig showing in win98 as 2gig?
(win98lite)

Windows normally reports a smaller drive size than what's really there because Microsoft has a different definition of the megabyte than the hard drive industry.

It could also be using a 2GB partition of the 3GB drive.

Or maybe the BIOS version only works with drives up to 2GB.

jneedles wrote:it worked! now if i can just get that sound card working again...

Dit you bend all 4 pins, or just one? If you bended only 1 pin, could you tell us which pin? Or is this different for all harddrives?

did you bend all four?

I have modded a 20gig harddrive to work in a 760. And I only bend 1 pin. If you look on the cover of the harddrive there will probably be pictures that explain how to put the jumper in order to set the drive for master/slave/cable select.

You should bend one of the pins that you have to put the jumper on for master operation.

I bent one pin to get a 12GB drive to work in my 750P. I looked up the drive specsheet at hgst.com (and I suggest you do that too for your drive), and bent one of the addressing (master/slave/cable select) pins so the machine could not short it, thereby making it always the master drive. Again: Go get the specsheet for your drive and find the correct pin.

The 750P BIOS sees it as an 8GB drive, so I suspect any old machine will use up to 8GB as well. (The new machines can use up to 138GB or so in the BIOS.)

Further, if you use an OS that does not use the BIOS for drive access (like Win9X or later, or Linux), the entire drive can be used once the kernel loads. That doesn't work for DOS.

Make a boot partition that's below the 8GB barrier, and another partition as big as you want. I've got a 2GB DOS partition, a Linux boot partition, Linux swap and a Linux root partition that's about 9GB.