What operatings systems are y'all using on your vintage ThinkPads?

[goldeneagle]

Just curious what OS y'all are running on your vintage ThinkPads?

To answer my own question, DOS, Windows NT 4, OS/2 Warp 4, Debian Linux, and NetBSD. I think one also has a hard drive with Convergent 386-DOS.

[fultontech]

PC110: IBM PC-DOS 6.1J
720: IBM PC-DOS 3.3, 5.01, 6.1
750Cs: IBM AIX/PS2 1.3
820: IBM AIX 4.2.1
PC110: MS Windows 3.1J
360P/PE: MS Windows for Pen 1.3 (IBM)
701: MS Windows 3.11
240: Win98SE
770X: 2000
365CSD: SCO OpenServer 5.0.5
365ED: Win95 Russian

[kfzhu1229]

That depends on what you mean by vintage.
600: 2000 xp all on different drives, Wme on its original hdd
390X: 98/2000/xp multi boot (Original hdd is failing)
T22: W2k and W7 (pretty unusable) on different hdd
T23, A30p, A31p, T42: W7
T43: W7 + W10 on different hdd

[theterminator93]

Well, most of my old systems I justify keeping by being able to run retro DOS or Windows games on - so they'll all run some flavor of Windows in that regard. The 701c I have the factory 3.11/OS2 install on now, but I also have a Windows 95 image I made for it . The 755c I have 95 on (have the 3.11 image saved as well), then the 365XD I put 98 on. Not sure what I'll load on the just-acquired 380D - Maybe 95 but probably 98... we'll see. I'm thinking I'll put 3.11 back on the 755c and load 95 on the 365XD - then put 98 on the 380D. Decisions, decisions...

The TransNote runs the factory 2000 install. The two A22ms have 98 and XP. The X2*s will have 2000 or XP - whatever they're stickered for. The T42p and T43 also have factory XP installs. The X41T and everything else runs 7.

[danikayser84]

755CX: DOS 6.22/WFW 3.11 (on SSD), 755CD: DOS 6.22/WFW 3.11
765D: Windows 95 OSR2, 770X/Z: Windows 98SE, 560Z: Windows 98SE, 380ED: Windows NT 4.0
600E: Windows 98SE, 600X: Windows 2000 (16GB SSD)
A31p: Windows XP, A30: Windows 2000, T30: Windows XP
T22: Windows 95 OSR2, T23 #1: Windows 98SE (on SSD!), T23 #2: Windows 2000 (also SSD), T23 #3: Windows XP (Japanese)
T42: nothing right now (maybe Windows XP? Windows ME?), T43: Windows 2000
Z60m: Windows 2000 (SSD), Z60t: Windows Vista
T61 4:3 #1: Windows 10 (SSD), T61 4:3 #2: Windows 7 (Japanese, SSD), T61 4:3 #3: Windows 7 (SSD), T61 4:3 #4: Windows 2000 (SSD), T61 4:3 #5: nothing for now

[600X]

600X: Windows 2000
A31p: Windows 2000
X41: Xubuntu 16.04

[goldeneagle]

That depends on what you mean by vintage.
600: 2000 xp all on different drives, Wme on its original hdd
390X: 98/2000/xp multi boot (Original hdd is failing)
T22: W2k and W7 (pretty unusable) on different hdd
T23, A30p, A31p, T42: W7
T43: W7 + W10 on different hdd

I should clarify - vintage being anything older than the 770, but I suppose we can include the 560 and 600, since they were still released before the turn of the century.

T2x and T4x, at least in my opinion, wouldn't be considered vintage (except maybe for the T series as a whole).

[Kasm279]

I run mostly Windows 98, 95 on the oldest machines. The P3 and up have XP either standalone or dual-booting with 98. I once tried OS/2 on a 600E and could never get the installation to work. I've lso tried OpenSTEP/Mach but that had issues with APM. The 701c was received with a broken OS/2 installation and I've yet to obtain a floppy drive to fix it.

[kfzhu1229]

T2x and T4x, at least in my opinion, wouldn't be considered vintage (except maybe for the T series as a whole).

Well I agree with you for that. However out of the T2x machines only T23 has the power to run Windows 7 and none of them can run the latest software even in Windows 7 because nowadays programs drop support for SSE2 incapable processors (and yet they are still sluggish and some are even slower than the older versions that do not utilise SSE2)

[calvinb]

In sig, but in case it changes: Windows 95 on 701. Still the original install; I intend to either reinstall 95 or use 98kite; though appearantly the sound in the 701 causes problems with 98lite, of all the things. (!)

[excal32]

I am either running just XP or dual booting Debian and XP on my older thinkpads. I no longer have my 760EL which was the last one I ran an older OS (DOS/95/Warp) on. I liked the 760 for running Warp a lot. I have some hardware that is XP only hence XP being on most of my machines, and dual boot with Debian so I have a more tolerable and secure OS for going online.

[Farro]

T60: Ubuntu Mint 16.10
T61: Ubuntu Mint 16.10
X1C(1) : Ubuntu Mint 16.10
X1C(2) : Ubuntu GoBang 16.04 ( boots in 4 seconds )
Startup finished in 2.946s (kernel) + 991ms (userspace) = 3.938s

T420: Windows 7

[slaterlp]

HI,

I have a 760XD. I haven't used it in years.

I have 2 HDDs for it. On one I have Windows 98SE. On the other I have Windows 2000 Pro.

I put a Cisco 340 wireless pcmcia card in it the other day, and was amazed at how quick Internet explorer (IE5 I think) is. Has trouble displaying some pages, but still useable.

[Hans Gruber]

Win XP or Linux Mint.

[Omineca]

I would say anything before the Core processors is vintage. But that's just an opinion.

As to the main point, Slackware and Debian.



Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[w0qj]

A vintage Win7 Pro 64-bit running on X1 Carbon Generation 4

(For the record, we had to shoehorn Win7 64bit onto this X1C-4 machine.
Apparently the 2nd-half 2016 models of X1C-4 had fingerprint readers which had no Win7 drivers available).
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=121195

[AlphaKilo470]

I have a 600X running Embedded POSReady 2009 and a T60 running Windows 7 Ultimate. Until sometime in January of this year, I had a T420 and a T400 both running Windows 10. I sold the T420 shortly after upgrading the screen on my Latitude E7250 from 1366x768 TN to 1080P IPS touchscreen and gave the T400 to a friend of mine who didn't have a computer. Come to think of it, as many ThinkPads as I've owned, the bulk of them have been given away to people I thought could make better use of the thing than me. Oh I also had an X301 for a few months earlier this year. I ran Linux Mint and Windows 10 on it. Nowadays, pretty much all of my computers dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Mint.

[thomase13]

Long ago, when I was young and stupid, my "techie" friend thought I should upgrade my i Series 1500 (my first and most beloved ThinkPad) from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.

At the time I didn't understand formatting disks or the difference between MS-DOS and Windows NT, so I probably lost a lot of files and as you would expect, Windows 2000 is pretty slow on a Celeron machine designed for Windows 98.

Anyway, I just reformatted the drive with MS-DOS 5.0a (these floppy disks were just lying around and the CD/DVD drive doesn't seem to work anymore - not sure if it's broken or a driver issue)
It's working o.k. so far except that some programs are telling me I need to install mouse drivers.

Is there some way to get mouse drivers, or even better, TrackPoint drivers??

I would really like to use the TrackPoint, though if that's not possible, I do have some serial and PS/2 mice lying around.

[Thinkpad4by3]

My first Computer was a old Dell Dimension 4550. 5 y/o thought It would be a good idea to install 95 from xp. Then installed a sata raid card with 2 120gb sata I drives. Good Times....

[sdfox7]

Long ago, when I was young and stupid, my "techie" friend thought I should upgrade my i Series 1500 (my first and most beloved ThinkPad) from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.

At the time I didn't understand formatting disks or the difference between MS-DOS and Windows NT, so I probably lost a lot of files and as you would expect, Windows 2000 is pretty slow on a Celeron machine designed for Windows 98.

Anyway, I just reformatted the drive with MS-DOS 5.0a (these floppy disks were just lying around and the CD/DVD drive doesn't seem to work anymore - not sure if it's broken or a driver issue)
It's working o.k. so far except that some programs are telling me I need to install mouse drivers.

Is there some way to get mouse drivers, or even better, TrackPoint drivers??

I would really like to use the TrackPoint, though if that's not possible, I do have some serial and PS/2 mice lying around.

Thomase13

Did you try here: https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... -2621.html

If you reinstall Windows 98 it would be the second option, otherwise for 2000 use the third.

[DK6400Brian]

My 365XD has been running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation ever since 1998, when it was bought 2nd. hand.

[beskus]

I run Slackware on a maxed-out 750Cs, and experimenting with more recent kernels like Linux 2.6 and WiFi. I compiled several programs for it like a "decent" webbrowser like links with framebuffer graphics support. 32MB of RAM and still not swapping. To get XFree86 working, I had to compile "tpdscan" to set VRAM cap.

I also plan to install FreeDOS on a PS/note N33

[Thinkpad4by3]

My 365XD has been running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation ever since 1998, when it was bought 2nd. hand.

Always a solid choice.

[Cooler22]

Windows 98SE with 98micro, it runs well on my 701c even when it was 75mhz and has Wifi with WPA2/AES running fine through PCMCIA slot.

[MustardOrMayo]

Well, I have a 760EL running Windows ME (because a friend dared me to bypass its processor check (minimum 150MHz, but mine has a 100MHz chip) and install it on there).

[linic]

I have a 560Z with it's soldered on 64 MB of RAM only. Core Linux 14 (terminal only) works well. I was able to connect to the internet, download files from an FTP, compile rust programs and rustlings on it and use tmux to have multiple terminals in a split screen arrangement.

If you are interested, you can search "560Z" on the Tiny Core Linux forums and you should find my post with instructions on how I got to that point. You'll find another post regarding the 600X if you search for "600X". Tiny Core Linux 14.x was released recently and bundles linux kernel version to 6.1.2. Direct links for convenience: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,26359, http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.ph ... #msg170008)

It's impressive to me that an almost 25 years old laptop can run a recent kernel version and connect to the internet through a USB to FastEthernet adapter! It's also impressive to see it build modern rust programs for 5 hours "happily" without failing/shutting down/breaking down!