Just added to collection - 750Cs

[fultontech]

Do any of you guys have experience with restoring an image like this through a IDE->USB adapter?

I've always used file copy vs. bit-for-bit drive copy so perhaps that's why I'm putting myself through this. I am going to be connecting the hard drive of a 701 to a USB adapter then using the drive from a virtual machine next week to perform the factory restore of the drive. Or at least cause my blood pressure to raze.

[Norway Pad]

Yes, restore to internal disk is my method too when I deal with 600/770-series computers and newer that are able to boot Clonezilla from CD or USB. But with these older ones that's naturally not an option as long as I use Clonezilla. Or basically anything that won't run off of a 486 processor.

Feel free to continue this thread for information. I might have a go at restoring the 360Cs' image on to one of my old drives through the IDE->USB adapter and check if the 360Cs boots from it. I will post the result, at which point we know if Clonezilla can handle this or not.

Good luck!

[Kasm279]

When we bring up the subject legacy batteries; do the two of you by any chance recognize the other batteries I have? All these came along with the 750 when I bought it. One of them is similar to the 360 battery, but no idea what the two other battery types belong to. They don't fit in any of the Thinkpads in my signature. 755? 760?

The top faces with the labels:https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kjrX ... 320_165707

The connectors:https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-sJ_X ... 320_165947

Upper left looks like the 755C's, it has huge contacts . The upper left one looks almost like the 760ED's except yours has a corner taken off, but the blade connectors in the middle are the same. As for the drives, yes they are standard IDE drives inside the caddies. I've been warned that later BIOS versions of the 755C blacklist third party drives, but I've yet to test this myself.

[Norway Pad]

Upper left looks like the 755C's, it has huge contacts . The upper left one looks almost like the 760ED's except yours has a corner taken off, but the blade connectors in the middle are the same.

You mean upper right one looks like 755? That's the one with the huge contacts. Upper left is actually two batteries stacked on top of each other. Now that I look at it, it does look like one single battery with a corner taken off, like you say. Thanks for confirming that these are 760 batteries, I will make sure to keep these two.

[Kasm279]

Upper left looks like the 755C's, it has huge contacts . The upper left one looks almost like the 760ED's except yours has a corner taken off, but the blade connectors in the middle are the same.

You mean upper right one looks like 755? That's the one with the huge contacts. Upper left is actually two batteries stacked on top of each other. Now that I look at it, it does look like one single battery with a corner taken off, like you say. Thanks for confirming that these are 760 batteries, I will make sure to keep these two.

Yeah, I meant upper right for the 755, upper left for 760ED. There's a 755CX at work I'll look at.

[fultontech]

LL5 750Cs -> T30 Win98 DOS mode.... WORKS!
Next steps:
T30 -> USB
USB -> VMware

[fultontech]

Just in case someone else wants to create a VM of your really old ThinkPad:

I ended up having to create a second hard disk partitioned and formatted using PC DOS 6.1 in the 750Cs target VM and then mounting the disk in a Win95 VM that I had dragged and dropped all the files from USB to. Once all the files were copied to the drive, I was able to use 'xcopy d: c: /s /e' in the 750Sc clone and have everything move over.

Don't expect all programs to work in the VM though (750DEMO for example). This was done mostly for quick access to files or to create floppy images as needed.

[fultontech]

AIX 1.3 (PTF0024) Installs just fine. Won't boot due to NVRAM errors 173 and 163. Read this as 'BIOS battery and standby battery are not supplying voltage necessary to keep the correct date and time'.

I am no going to disassemble the unit with a meat tenderizer to get at the batteries.

[Kasm279]

AIX 1.3 (PTF0024) Installs just fine. Won't boot due to NVRAM errors 173 and 163. Read this as 'BIOS battery and standby battery are not supplying voltage necessary to keep the correct date and time'.

I am no going to disassemble the unit with a meat tenderizer to get at the batteries.

It shouldn't be too difficult to get to, it's just under the floppy drive.

[Norway Pad]

I might have a go at restoring the 360Cs' image on to one of my old drives through the IDE->USB adapter and check if the 360Cs boots from it. I will post the result, at which point we know if Clonezilla can handle this or not.

I decided to have some Thinkpad-time this Saturday, and had a go at the above mentioned task. But the 360Cs only threw the 174 error at me when I tried to boot it with the restored drive. I tried to restore the drive both through the IDE->USB adapter connected to the T60, and even in the main bay of my 390X, but the same error came both times. But if the restore hadn't worked, shouldn't the laptop normally have complained that no OS was found, couldn't boot or some similar message? The 174 error is a configuration error of some kind, so I am wondering if the drive might be too big for the 360. The drive that's normally there is a 1.4GB drive, while the drive I restored the image to was a 2.1GB drive. That's the closest in size I have, my smaller drives are 340 and 172MB ones. I might buy a 1.4GB drive from eBay and try this one more time.

As I had the 360's HDD out anyway, I plugged in one of the spare HDDs that came with the 750C I bought last year. It booted to DOS, and I started Win3.1 from it. So this became a pure retro night where I played around with Win3.1. This was apparently an IBM preload, as it had all the Thinkpad utilities, Fuel, Screen, Power, Thinkpad Help, etc. I also copied out some IBM Thinkpad backgrounds and patterns in case someone here wants them for their old Thinkpad. Let me know.

[fultontech]

Newer system bios accesses the larger drive at address locations different then the older systems. That might be the configuration error you're running into.
You could try blowing away any and all partitions on the disk, then try fdisk from the oldest system with no large disk support (LBA).

[Norway Pad]

That can be a reason. I assume you mean that I should partition the 2.1GB drive with fdisk before I try to restore the image? But won't the restoring of the image wipe that formatting away, or is some basic part of if kept no matter what? I have an image of the entire drive and not just the partition. I also have the option of just imaging a single partition, which would do the same job on this drive, as it only has one partition. Lots of questions for you here, just not sure how this would work.

I could of course try this, if I find time for it. It would be an interesting approach.

[fultontech]

Yeah, that is exactly why I went the file transfer route rather than disk image.

[Norway Pad]

Ok, what software do you use for that? And how is such a transfer done?

I will probably do some more attempts with the imaging though, before I give it up.

[fultontech]

I did it with LapLink V (1993) and I ended up using the parallel cable (yellow).
I think the serial cable (blue) had a bad wire that cause the connection to drop after the transfer started (it's just a null modem).
LL5 is DOS or DOS mode only - WinXP command window won't work (at least not easily).

Traveling Software stopped selling licenses and downloads for LL5 just a year or so ago.

I copied the original 750 install to a Win98 install then off that to USB drive (then into a VMware install).

[Norway Pad]

Ok, so after some input from hwattys in another thread here, I opened up the caddy for the 1.4GB drive, and realized it had slipped my attention that pin 2 was bent on the 1.4GB drive. So I bent pin 2 on the 2.1GB drive, installed it, booted up, and now the 360 showed me the "no system disk or disk error" message that I expected the first time. So the configuration is now correct, but it fails to boot form the image.

So at this point it seems like Clonezilla isn't able to restore this image in a bootable way through any other machine. That means I probably just give up this project and accept that this install is gone if (when) the drive dies. It's no big deal, nothing valuable on there. It's just pure sentimental value as this was the first Thinkpad I got back in 1999, and it still has the same Win95 install, with the tools I used back then. Unless there are tools in DOS or some other floppy based software that can be run on the 360 to make this drive bootable(?) The LapLink route described above is unfortunately over my skillset..

[fultontech]

You might be able to save it if you can boot from floppy of the same DOS version and issue "fdisk /mbr" to recreate the boot record on the harddisk.

[Norway Pad]

Thanks a LOT for that tip and mentioning of DOS of the same version. I plugged the original 1.4GB drive in and created a Win95 boot floppy, then I plugged the 2.1GB back in and ran the fdisk /mbr command. That didn't fix it, but it changed the error message to "Invalid system disk". So I did some research, and tried to remember what I've done with this before. I ended up running the command sys c: and it worked!

So now the 360Cs boots from the 2.1GB drive with the Clonezilla image restored onto it. I suddenly got my old desktop background back, so I realize it's some years ago that I created this image.

Thanks for the input, and I hope this gave some useful input to others as well.

[fultontech]

Very cool!

[Kasm279]

Alright, I ended up taking that 755CX home from work, turns out it has no sound hardware! Anyway, here's a picture of the three batteries together. In order from left to right, 755C, 755CX, and 760ED.
http://i860.photobucket.com/albums/ab16 ... mmhmzw.jpg

[Norway Pad]

Thanks! Interesting to see. So my batteries seem to be an early 755 battery and a 760 one. The interesting fact is that the 755 battery seems to have changed somewhere in the 755 lineup, from a 360/750-style battery to a smaller one. I will definitely keep the 760 batteries for parts, as a 760 is a possible future member of my Thinkpad collection.

Btw. for the battery with the On/Off switch, they also seem to work in the 360. I have the user manual for the 360, so I spent some time reading it when I did the image restoring. And the On/Off switch for storing over an extended amount of time is described there. All my 360/750 batteries are dead, though, so no chance to verify this.

[Kasm279]

The interesting fact is that the 755 battery seems to have changed somewhere in the 755 lineup, from a 360/750-style battery to a smaller one.

Btw. for the battery with the On/Off switch, they also seem to work in the 360.

I found it quite odd when I lifted the keyboard, too. Also, the only battery with that switch is the 755CX's. Unfortunately the battery had leaked but I managed to clean it up with some vinegar followed with alcohol on the motherboard contacts. Also, the 755 is the flat spring terminals while the other two use blade terminals.

[fultontech]

The 750 smart battery will work in the 360 but the 360 doesn't have the circuitry to do use the "smart" output provide by the battery. According to the documentation, the 360 dumb battery won't work in the 750, but I haven't had one (dead or alive) to try with.
The 750 draws off the battery if installed, so if it's smart / recharge circuit is tripped, just like an old Christmas light string, the 750 won't power on.
I had a couple of sealed in the box 750 smart batteries and tried to charge them in the quick charger a month ago, but the charging circuit had tripped. "No joy"

I found a guy in California that will refill the battery cells, so I sent one to him. Lets see what happens....

[goldeneagle]

Just running diagnostics now.

20MB RAM
340MB HDD
2.88MB FDD
Dock I with CD-ROM

Looks like it got dropped about 1996 and put back in the bag since it wouldn't turn on. The battery contacts may be the only thing damaged and powers up just fine once the battery is removed. Update: It was just the battery.

The original install still there.
PC DOS 6.1
750Cs demo
Prodigy

I know, I know pictures. I'll make some as soon as I can.

Any chance you can zip up the demo program and share on dropbox? I try to collect them from the various older models.

[goldeneagle]

The 750 smart battery will work in the 360 but the 360 doesn't have the circuitry to do use the "smart" output provide by the battery. According to the documentation, the 360 dumb battery won't work in the 750, but I haven't had one (dead or alive) to try with.
The 750 draws off the battery if installed, so if it's smart / recharge circuit is tripped, just like an old Christmas light string, the 750 won't power on.
I had a couple of sealed in the box 750 smart batteries and tried to charge them in the quick charger a month ago, but the charging circuit had tripped. "No joy"

I found a guy in California that will refill the battery cells, so I sent one to him. Lets see what happens....

I hope you didn't send it to batteryrefill.com...

[fultontech]

I hope you didn't send it to batteryrefill.com...

I don't recall who, but I never saw that battery again.

[fultontech]

Any chance you can zip up the demo program and share on dropbox? I try to collect them from the various older models.

As soon as I get a chance, I will see what I can do.

[goldeneagle]

I don't recall who, but I never saw that battery again.

It wouldn't surprise me if it were them. I worked for them years ago. Ended up quitting when I realized how shady the company was. Schools, police, military - they ripped them all off! And to boot, they would advertise as replacing the cells with Samsung or LG, when it was really the cheapest, crappiest Chinese junk they could buy in bulk.

On the plus side, I'll be rebuilding some 750 and 360 batteries on my own (rebuilt batteries there until I got promoted to tech support).

As soon as I get a chance, I will see what I can do.

Thank you very much!

[goldeneagle]

Thanks! Interesting to see. So my batteries seem to be an early 755 battery and a 760 one. The interesting fact is that the 755 battery seems to have changed somewhere in the 755 lineup, from a 360/750-style battery to a smaller one. I will definitely keep the 760 batteries for parts, as a 760 is a possible future member of my Thinkpad collection.

Btw. for the battery with the On/Off switch, they also seem to work in the 360. I have the user manual for the 360, so I spent some time reading it when I did the image restoring. And the On/Off switch for storing over an extended amount of time is described there. All my 360/750 batteries are dead, though, so no chance to verify this.

I think they changed with the 755CE/CSE and above. The 755C/CS uses the 360 style battery, but with the switch and circuitry; the 360 battery only has 3 leads and a thermistor (I'm staring at one of each that I opened today, for an upcoming rebuild project). The 755CE/CSE pack is the same shape as the 760 series. Supposedly, you can use it in a 760, but the 760 Li-Ion batteries won't work in the 755. Go figure.

I had a good 360 battery, but mysteriously today, it decided it no longer wants to work, even though it's reporting a voltage of around 11 volts, and resistance across terminals 3 and 4 is consistent with the HMM. Glad I updated all my BIOSes while I did.

[fultontech]

Glad I updated all my BIOSes while I did.

Somewhere there are instructions for bypassing the battery requirement for the BIOS flash. Takes a couple of floppies as I recall.