Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

One of my friend managed to grab a 360C from eBay for relatively cheap, but the system do come with a power-on password... Checked HMM for procedures, on which I quote:

"This information is not available in the HMM online format. See your IBM Servicer or IBM Authorized Dealer for this procedure."

Please help...

Best Regards,
Mingcong Bai

Found this http://wiki.mbirth.de/know-how/hacking/ ... 755cs-9545, not sure if it will work. Will try it out when the machine delivers.

Power-on passwords can generally be removed by taking out the CMOS (aka, backup) battery. Some of the older systems also relied on inserting a jumper. This has been published in most HMMs. However, if there is also a supervisor password enabled at the same time, this can "brick" the system as it would automatically trigger the supervisor password prompt the next time the system is turned on. If you can't provide that password, the system will not allow booting any operating system.

rkawakami wrote:Power-on passwords can generally be removed by taking out the CMOS (aka, backup) battery. Some of the older systems also relied on inserting a jumper. This has been published in most HMMs. However, if there is also a supervisor password enabled at the same time, this can "brick" the system as it would automatically trigger the supervisor password prompt the next time the system is turned on. If you can't provide that password, the system will not allow booting any operating system.

So is there anything I could do just in case a supervisor password is set?

I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere that the 360c stores the password on the hard drive. Try taking out the hdd and see if it goes to the picture of a floppy disk.

Supervisor and power-on passwords are stored in an EEPROM somewhere on the motherboard.
Hard disk passwords are stored on the hard disk.

Think supervisor and power-on passwords (stored in an EEPROM as RealBlackStuff said) is usually set by companies.

The most end-users would do is set hard disk passwords and Windows log-on passwords.
(Or at least, I would like to think so...)

Good luck!

So it turned out to be HDD password, is there anyway to remove the password without swapping out the hard drive? Couldn't find anything online about this that does not involve having the original password...

FWIW, I searched for 755/760 info as they are more popular, and 360 is just too easy to be omitted or be understood as something else by Google...

Some way of using a tape eraser to wipe the drive?

Thinkpad4by3 wrote:Some way of using a tape eraser to wipe the drive?

Anyone tried to use MS-DOS and treat it with debug?

It will be easier, cheaper (and faster) to just buy another HD.

RealBlackStuff wrote:It will be easier, cheaper (and faster) to just buy another HD.

Yeah... I am just wanting to make shre that the password stays with the HDD, but not the motherboard itself...

Try and get the casing open if you can and just wipe the drive with a basic IDE to USB adapter