Thinkpads Forum

I finally noticed one of poster with 365X said does boot from PCMCIA with flash storage so I wanted to know about what list of legacy thinkpads 3xx, 5xx and 7xx?

I know my thinkpad 600 would not do this, even bios shows PCMCIA symbol in the boot order list in bios setup. Otherwise tell me how to do this properly?

Cheers, Jason

I think that the PCMCIA boot capability for the 600-series was limited to an external CDROM drive and not with any Flash-based memory card. At least that's what I seem to remember.

I can confirm that the 560Z refuses to boot from CF -> PCMCIA adapter. I tried that once with Linux installed on a CF card. The same card ran just fine in a CF -> IDE adapter in the main HDD bay. I think I also tried it on the 600 with the same result. Even if PCMCIA was selected as the only boot source in the BIOS.

I have never tried the external CD-ROM from it's PCMCIA card, but I own one of those, so I will try that with the 560Z.

360 cse will do it! So I would wager to guess that that holds true for the entire 360 line.

I never had any luck with my cf to ide hdd adapter.

I know this was answered in another thread but thought id post it here for ease of future reference.

360 series, 755 series, 730 series, and possibly the 355 and 750 series as well. It all depends on the CF card as well. Some of the really old 1 and 2GB cards work, but for more recent stuff, the largest I can get to boot from the PCMCIA slot is 512MB, probably because of how geometry is being reported (since the CF card itself is really a modified ATA interface).

I installed Windows 2000 on a 560X or 560Z using a 512MB CF-to-PCMCIA card, XP might also work from a PCMCIA (DOS won't work though)

760/765 I don't think can boot from PCMCIA (I know they can't boot from CD-ROM however; what was the first generation to fully support CD-ROM booting? 380ED can boot from CD-ROM with latest BIOS, don't know if 770 or 600 of same era can)

I also don't like how the 240 line can't boot from PCMCIA (and there's not even a docking option/port for a CD-ROM without using a PCMCIA CD drive); USB booting didn't come until the T2x/A2x/etc. lines either

danikayser84 wrote:I installed Windows 2000 on a 560X or 560Z using a 512MB CF-to-PCMCIA card, XP might also work from a PCMCIA (DOS won't work though)

760/765 I don't think can boot from PCMCIA (I know they can't boot from CD-ROM however; what was the first generation to fully support CD-ROM booting? 380ED can boot from CD-ROM with latest BIOS, don't know if 770 or 600 of same era can)

Probably the 600. Haven't owned one in over a decade, but I think my 600E was able to boot from CD-ROM IIRC.

I also don't like how the 240 line can't boot from PCMCIA (and there's not even a docking option/port for a CD-ROM without using a PCMCIA CD drive); USB booting didn't come until the T2x/A2x/etc. lines either

It seems that PCMCIA booting was only prevalent on machines with IBM firmware. Those with Phoenix, or the IBM multiple screen/text selection BIOSes (think 701, 350, etc), cannot.

I'm still in favor of the 1 or 2GB SSD IDE drive route, if you want more space than a 512MB CF card. I should've ranch benchmarks in DOS on disk transfer speed, but I'm finding about 2MB/sec and up on the SSDs I installed in my machines. I'd love to get a 4GB, but could only find 1 and 2GB on ebay.

Hi all,

I can confirm that the 730T boots from the PCMCIA as it's the only means of storage on the device. Comes with a 105mb Type III PCMCIA card.

I also used to own a 755C and for that one I had a third-party PCMCIA CD-ROM but I don't recall if I could boot from it.

-DJ

750's do NOT boot from PCMCIA HDD
The 360's do, BUT it has to be a PCMCIA III HDD from about the time of the BIOS was written. If there are too many cylinders or whatever, the system won't be able to use it. For example, the 1GB IBM Microdrive required an BIOS update to boot in the 360CE/PE
PC110 boots from CF or PCMCIA III HDD but it needs to be initialized correctly. The 730T/TE will initialized correctly the HDD by default, but almost every other system requires a utility program to set the drive up correctly to boot from.
The later 600x and 240 boot from PCMCIA CD-ROM only.

In general, one cannot boot up from a PCMCIA storage.

For Windows of that era, the PCMCIA drivers got loaded after windows started booting up.

Some of above posters said some selected (rare?) IBM related hardware could bootup from PCMCIA storage,
but we have never tried this.