Thinkpads Forum

Well, someone gave me a 600E. Looked into most parts that needed updating. I've built 3 desk tops and have yet to need a Floppy. Isn't there any non-diskette update?

Will a USB 1.1/2.0 External work?

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I don't believe that there was ever a BIOS update that was offered on anything other than a floppy back in those days. You might be able to copy an image of the floppy onto a bootable thumb drive, but it's an exercise in futility as the 600E can't boot off USB. The options back then was the following:

- internal (UltraSlimBay) floppy drive
- internal (UltraSlimBay) CD drive
- external floppy drive via the special connector on the right side of the laptop
- PCMCIA-connected optical drive bay

Of these, I'd say that the UltraSlimBay floppy would be the easiest/cheapest to obtain. What you are looking for is FRU 05K8874.

Hello rkawakami.
That pretty much means I need 2 drives. one that will work in the TP and to make the disc. I just got this and have to get a wifi card 1st. Any suggestions on one? How about where to start. I want to put 2 256 mem in and a larger HDD than the one on ebay at 14G.

Of these, I'd say that the UltraSlimBay floppy would be the easiest/cheapest to obtain. What you are looking for is FRU 05K8874.

That mean replacing the DVD?

Ah, yes, you'll need some sort of floppy drive for your desktop computer in order to make the bootable floppy. In that case, any USB connected floppy should work. However, you'll still need a floppy drive that can boot the 600E and that means an Ultrabay or external one (not USB, but using that special connector). And yes, you can swap the out DVD drive if you elect to go with the Ultrabay floppy drive. There's a latch on the bottom side of the laptop that will enable you to slide the drive out. If you foresee the need to use both the DVD and the floppy drive at the same time, then that means you'll need the external floppy drive. That FRU is 05K6187. One good thing is that the housing receives the same Ultrabay floppy drive.

As this is your first 600E system, I would recommend that you download a copy of the Hardware Maintenance Manual. You can find a listing of Thinkpad systems hosted here on this site: http://www.thinkpads.com/support/hmm/thinkpad-hmm.html Select the 600, 600E manual.

As far as the WiFi card goes, I would think you have two choices: PCMCIA-based or USB. I'd go with the PCMCIA adapter. I've used Linksys (don't recall model), D-Link (DWL-650) and Netgear (MA401). Realistically, you'll need to choose one based upon whatever OS you are going to put in the 600E; you'll need to be sure that driver/utilities are still available for your OS.

Memory can be expanded to a maximum of 544MB; permanent 32MB on the motherboard, two low density 256MB PC100 modules in the two slots. You need to be sure that you are using what's normally called "low density" modules. For a 256MB module, that means 16 individual memory chips on the board: 8 on each side. You can use PC100 or PC133.

Found on Amazon....IBM ThinkPad 600E 2645 256MB Memory Ram Upgrade (A-Tech Brand)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FM ... WIQ3PBTNT2 $10.50 They get you for shipping. $4.50

Also Amazon..... FRU is 05K6187 $20.96 I'll go this route.

Also given a 175 page Thinkpad users manual. Which was good, had no idea what those symbols were.

Read many posts people using ......U.S. Robotics USR5410 Wireless Turbo PC Card $29.95

There goes my SSD for the desk top. LOL
Thanks for the tips.

skoville wrote:Found on Amazon....IBM ThinkPad 600E 2645 256MB Memory Ram Upgrade (A-Tech Brand)

Wow, didn't realize 256MB low density was being discounted so much. A few years ago they would have gotten close to the list price. Be sure to run memtest86+ on them right away.

ref: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

skoville wrote:Also Amazon..... FRU is 05K6187 $20.96 I'll go this route.

Description says that the floppy drive is included; couldn't tell from the photo. The FRU 05K6187 refers to the external FDD housing. Most eBay sellers will automatically include the actual floppy drive when offering the 05K6187 but some will only sell the shell. The floppy drive will slide out of that housing and slip right into the Ultrabay if you need to. I don't think that I've ever tried it, but I'm fairly sure you can't slide the DVD drive into that floppy housing and expect it to work externally.

I've been having this problem all along. It always says I cant install the smallest program. memtest says not a registry script. win 98se just doesn't make it. I mostly get " Expected a newer OS.

I've read people have installed w7. Would you suggest win xp? 32 of course.

Well it says it installed it, but I can't find it. Got it.

I think the best that a 600E would run is a very stripped down XP (TinyXP, nLite, etc.). The 600E was released from the factory with Windows 98 or NT. My own 600Es run Win98. I have a 500Mhz 600X with 576MB of RAM using normal XP and it's a fairly slow beast. I doubt that you could get anything useful out of Windows 7 on a 600E. I'm guessing that even a top-of-the-line 650Mhz 600X would probably be too slow for W7.

As far as the memtest86+ error, I'm not sure what you're doing. This memory diagnostic can be downloaded in several versions; executable to create a boot floppy, an .ISO image for burning to a CD, or creating a bootable flash drive. You then use that media to boot the laptop and memtest86+ runs essentially as a DOS program.

I'm not sure what you're doing.

I wonder myself.
This is really for my wife to surf (likes buying on line, me too) so don't need much in programs. Cheaper than getting a new one.

Oh, you reminded me about memtest. I've got it set up on a usb drive. Must be an age thing.

One more thing, if you would. I can't boot from CD/DVD, I get some white on black image that looks like a floppy on top, Squares on the bottom with numbers F1 through F12. And another image in between. Can't do anything but hit F1 and than nothing.

That screen is saying that it can't find any bootable media. The drawing is supposed to look like a floppy disk being inserted. If you boot the system and access the BIOS (called Easy-Setup in the 600E) by pressing the F1 key at power on and holding it down, you can change/specify which drives to boot from and in what order. Once you get to the BIOS screen, click on the "Start up" icon. That will lead to a screen where there's a list of devices that you can possibly boot from. There's a clear or reset button that will clear the boot order. You then click on a drive's icon and that will be the first drive checked for a boot media. Click on the remaining icons and those will be the second, third, etc. hardware looked at. Then save and exit BIOS.

From startup I have 2 choices, Power on and Network. I go to Power On and can choose CDROM. Same with Network. I changed both to CDROM. Then back out and exit. It asks OK. I re-installed win98 se so I'm doing something wrong.

You can also use a floppy drive from a 570 series if you can't find the Ultraslimbay drive with external case.
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/findeis/flopinfo.html
This gives some more information about the floppy connectors that ThinkPads use.

Thanks Kasm279. Found one on Amazon $21. Memory 256 for $5.99 a stick. Thanks for the info. If I had to pay those prices I'd never get it together.

skoville wrote:Thanks Kasm279. Found one on Amazon $21. Memory 256 for $5.99 a stick. Thanks for the info. If I had to pay those prices I'd never get it together.

No problem, came across it when trying to find out which cable I needed for my 760ED. Protip: Despite the cable for a Toshiba and one of the IBM ones having the same connector, they are NOT interchangable. I blew a fuse in a Toshiba that way... The drives are totally interchangable though, just as the page says. I've used the IBM drive on my Toshiba and vice versa, you just have to use the proper cable...