Thinkpads Forum

I found this site after dusting off the 560 that got me through grad school. It hasn't been turned on in perhaps 15 years. It has 24MB RAM, floppy drive, and an IBM PCMCIA ethernet card. The old girl looks like it is brand new. I remember paying close to $3000 from PCs Compleat for what was then the finest notebook (not laptop) in the land.

I have two questions to start with:

1. It looks like I pulled the hard drive as the bay on the side is empty. The drive is nowhere to be found.
   
   But, when I turn on my computer I hear distinct sounds very much like the sounds of a hard drive seeking. As I remember there is only one drive bay. I don't remember that sound - is it normal, or is it a fan about to die ?
2. I'm hoping to install Warp 4 on it to show my children. I have my CDs and think it can be installed over NFS, but my first problem is getting a hard drive or equivalent.
   
   I've seen some posts describing CF-PCMCIA and SDHC-PCMCIA cards, so I'm guessing those would be cheaper than getting a new drive. Can anyone recommend a specific card, preferably as inexpensive as possible ?
3. Finally, I've seen a post mentioning links to HMMs,but I couldn't find them. Could someone please point me in the right direction ?

Thank you !

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Last one, first... The Hardware Maintenance Manuals for systems older than the T/W/Xx40 series (circa 2014), are found at the HMM link at the top of every page on this forum (just under the thinkpads.com Support Community banner). You'll find a list of systems and an icon on the right side of the page which you can click for the .PDF. The (plain old) 560 system is covered under the "ThinkPad 380, 385, 560, 760, 765" entry.

Don't know if PCMCIA would be bootable but you might be able to find that out from the HMM.

I would assume that it's a fan noise as that should be the only spinning item in the laptop (no built-in floppy).

Doesn't the unit need to be taken apart to remove the hard disk drive?

The 560 is also described in tpvol3.pdf, in the HMM-link: SelectaDock I, SelectaDock II and ThinkPad 365

Thanks everyone for the replies, and the pointer to the HMMs.... i couldnt see what was plainly under my nose... im glad i could never bring myself to toss this gem.

fultontech wrote:Doesn't the unit need to be taken apart to remove the hard disk drive?

OMG, i just realizd that you might be right... i think i mistook the PCMCIA Slot for the Hard drive bay, as i have owned a laptop where the drive was easily accessible from the side.

This gives me hope for two reasons:1) that may indeed be my hard drive clunking, and so maybe i sont need to replace it, and 2) maybe my fan isnt dying after all !!

Will report back !

To get at the HD, you must first remove the battery and keyboard.

NuggyBuggy wrote:2) maybe my fan isnt dying after all !!

Did the 560 have a fan? I took apart a 560E last year and can't seem to remember seeing one.

axur-delmeria wrote:

NuggyBuggy wrote:2) maybe my fan isnt dying after all !!

Did the 560 have a fan? I took apart a 560E last year and can't seem to remember seeing one.

Out of all the 560 models, the only one I know of with a fan is the 560Z (it's also the only 560 with an easily removable hard drive, all the others have it buried underneath the keyboard/palmrest)

Edit: I'd recommend buying a CF to IDE adapter and using a small CF card (1GB-4GB) for your ThinkPad 560, it will give no noise and run cooler/faster

danikayser84 wrote: Edit: I'd recommend buying a CF to IDE adapter and using a small CF card (1GB-4GB) for your ThinkPad 560, it will give no noise and run cooler/faster

Danikayser84: can you please re commend a particular adapter ? i see a bunch on eBay, but not sure if they are all equivalent.

The original 560 can take up a hard dive up to about 8 GB, right ?

I remember when i bumped my 560 up to 24 MB RAM and thought that was insane !!

Ok, I'm officially a dummy. you guys are right...the hard drive is indeed under the plastic wrist rest. I opened it up and found a 10 GB TravelStar drive that must have been pulled from an HP Omnibook.

Can that drive be used, perhaps by some fancy partitioning that sacrifices the extra space ?

The hard drive in the Thinkpad 560 was very hard to get to...

I personally aborted this procedure, once I opened the machine and found it needed a serious disassembly (and reassembly) to replace the HDD...
(Glad that subsequent Thinkpads HDD/SSD after that were much easier to replace!)

Good luck with your HDD replacement!