Thinkpad 701C mod?

[Maxence822]

Hello!
I am new to this forum, so thank you for accepting me and helping me out.
I have a few thinkpads (X61s, T420, X220T and T470) and just recently purchased a working 701Cs at a decent price.
I am wondering if there is any mods I can do to make it better adapted to handle a very very light workload in today's pc world.
I know there is a AMD 133Mhz board mod I can do but don't seem to be able to find the board in question anywhere.
Also I was thinking of replacing the motherboard with a raspi I don't know if anyone has done that?
Could any of you help me out with what I can do with this old beauty of a Thinkpad?
Cheers,
Max

[Thinkpad4by3]

Ok, well the AMD 133Mhz was EXTREMELY RARE and is a 244 pin QFN package. If you have extensive soldering equipment, go right ahead. There is a hackaday article on upgrading the CPU. To upgrade it to a raspi would be 1: sacrilegious and 2: Involve wiring up the 701c keyboard which has NO documentation. If you can manage those 2 things, it shouldn't be too difficult. Again someone did that with a Thinkpad 770 but was baffled at how to wire up the keyboard and it stopped there. I know CarVac on GeekHack has made an IBM M6-1 keyboard successfully for the 75x and 36x series machines. On eBay, they have an expensive M4-1(on L40SX, 700 and 720 AFAIK) keyboard that SHOULD(not confirmed) M4-1 to PS/2 converter. That's for if you really want to put an RPI in a vintage Thinkpad.

My recommendation, leave it stock but if you want a good upgrade worth your money, get a 701C LCD on eBay for 25$ and ditch the STN LCD. TFT screens have higher contrast ratios, more vibrant colors, and none of the ghosting that your 701Cs LCD will exhibit.

[Cooler22]

I agree with Thinkpad4by3, anyway if you plan on getting a 701c screen I heard the 701cs bezel is incompatible so you need to swap out the bezel to one from a 701c as well. Although I'm unsure atm you should upgrade the RAM to 64mb's (planning on trying one of these weeks once the RAM arives) or to 32mb's. But if you insist on a overhaul... I'll leave this here (https://www.udoo.org/udoo-x86/)

[Maxence822]

Thank you both for your help! You're probably right the raspi mod or the AMD mod are probably above my technical skill.
I think I'll probably just fix it up, replace the battery (CMOS and main), install windows 95 and play some doom on it!
It is probably much cooler as a retro machine than anything else I could make it

[Thinkpad4by3]

Just note: there are 3 batteries in the system. Main, CMOS, and standy. If your machine boots to 171 and 173 errors like it should, both are dead. The Standby is SOLDERED ON THE BACK SIDE OF THE LOWER MOBO. Its a pain to get to. Also, finding a replacement is hard. A quick search on this fourm will guide you on finding and replace the standy battery.

[Maxence822]

Is the standby battery necessary to replace in order for the laptop to work? I do know how to solder and have soldered in the past but I would rather not if I can avoid it ^^
Thank you for the info

[Thinkpad4by3]

Its not necessary for boot but it is a NiCD or Lithium(dont remember) battery and is leaking slowly. Given enough time, it will look like the disaster that plagued most 386 motherboards, as the battery guts spilled all over the motherboard and damaged traces.
Theres a reason most 386 PCs dont work anymore.

Pics:
NiCD
https://goo.gl/images/kgmJ6P

Lithium!!!!!!!
https://goo.gl/images/ESKFB5

[BillMorrow]

hello Maxence822..
welcome to the forum..

just FWIW....

neither of those pix are 701 system boards..

i have (had) a dozen 701C thinkpads..
been sending them to hwattys, a forum member..
he refurbs and gets them running even though all of them worked up to a few years ago..
the issues seem to be a memory error probably due to age and the usual CMOS battery arror and the soldered on battery all of which being over 25 years old are or have failed..

looking at the soldered on battery on the CPU system board it would be easy to de solder and re solder a replacement if they can be found..
as this is a NOS system board i'm not going to mess with it now..

i have 2 excellent remaining 701C's left.. i was planing to retain one and send the other to hwattys but my impetus seems to have gotten a bit lazy..

i sent the only AMD 133 board and 64meg memory part to hwattys.. he had trouble with the RAM chip but got the AMD 133 board working..

another 701 issue is the paint on many of them is failing and becoming soft and tacky..
luckily the two i have left are still ok in that regard..

replacing the system board or even the entire "guts" with a raspberry aka raspi would be an interesting project..
i'm not sure it would be doable given the issues with interfacing the 701 keyboard to a raspi and the same with the screen..
and powering the backlight with something available and compatible with the new guts..
but it would sure make a nice exclamation mark to the 701 history..

[axur-delmeria]

replacing the system board or even the entire "guts" with a raspberry aka raspi would be an interesting project..
i'm not sure it would be doable given the issues with interfacing the 701 keyboard to a raspi and the same with the screen..

IMO one big challenge is the Trackpoint. Ancient Thinkpads have the Trackpoint circuitry as part of the system board, while later models use a self-contained Trackpoint module as part of the keyboard assembly.
.
This means that if you replace the 701C's guts, you may need to do one of the ff:

1. Somehow extract the Trackpoint circuitry from the 701C system board (if possible)
2. Shoehorn one of the self-contained Trackpoint modules into the 701C keyboard (might be very difficult since this is the Butterfly keyboard we're talking about)
3. Directly connect the bare trackpoint sensor to the RPi, and reimplement it in software (probably more trouble than it's worth, not portable to boot)

Regarding the display, how about the 9.7 inch Retina screen (with controller board) from an iPad 3/4?

[Thinkpad4by3]

hello Maxence822..
welcome to the forum..

just FWIW....

neither of those pix are 701 system boards..

i have (had) a dozen 701C thinkpads..
been sending them to hwattys, a forum member..
he refurbs and gets them running even though all of them worked up to a few years ago..
the issues seem to be a memory error probably due to age and the usual CMOS battery arror and the soldered on battery all of which being over 25 years old are or have failed..

looking at the soldered on battery on the CPU system board it would be easy to de solder and re solder a replacement if they can be found..
as this is a NOS system board i'm not going to mess with it now..

i have 2 excellent remaining 701C's left.. i was planing to retain one and send the other to hwattys but my impetus seems to have gotten a bit lazy..

i sent the only AMD 133 board and 64meg memory part to hwattys.. he had trouble with the RAM chip but got the AMD 133 board working..

another 701 issue is the paint on many of them is failing and becoming soft and tacky..
luckily the two i have left are still ok in that regard..

replacing the system board or even the entire "guts" with a raspberry aka raspi would be an interesting project..
i'm not sure it would be doable given the issues with interfacing the 701 keyboard to a raspi and the same with the screen..
and powering the backlight with something available and compatible with the new guts..
but it would sure make a nice exclamation mark to the 701 history..

Actually, the screen would be a breeze to hook up. They make 31 pin CMOS display drivers for cheap on eBay.

The keyboard would probably require disassembling a 701C keyboard to get its membrane about. Then its just a matter of connecting pins.

Is it very hard, not totally. Is it worth it, not at all.

1. Somehow extract the Trackpoint circuitry from the 701C system board (if possible)
2. Shoehorn one of the self-contained Trackpoint modules into the 701C keyboard (might be very difficult since this is the Butterfly keyboard we're talking about)
3. Directly connect the bare trackpoint sensor to the RPi, and reimplement it in software (probably more trouble than it's worth, not portable to boot)

And for you, the trackpoint pinout of the wire is positive,negative,x,y. X and Y are just voltage dividers and you can jook right into the analog in of arduino. Easy Peasy.

[axur-delmeria]

And for you, the trackpoint pinout of the wire is positive,negative,x,y. X and Y are just voltage dividers and you can jook right into the analog in of arduino. Easy Peasy.

Good to hear!

Question, is the stuff like negative inertia, drift calibration, etc. done via the Trackpoint driver (whether windows or Linux) or firmware in the controller? I've yet to play around with these babies (even though I already pulled out the Trackpoint module from a bum T4x keyboard. )

[Thinkpad4by3]

Its done in the controller. But FYI all trackpoint II dont have negative inertia and if dont mind those, I doubt it will be a hassle.

TP II : No inertia, handled in computer(XY PINOUT)
TP III: Neg. Inertia, handled in computer (XY PINOUT)
TP 4: Neg. Inertia, handled in controller(PS/2 PINOUT)

[axur-delmeria]

I remember trying to research about Trackpoint hacking a few years back without much success. Looks like a lot of new info rained all over the net without me noticing.

[Thinkpad4by3]

I remember trying to research about Trackpoint hacking a few years back without much success. Looks like a lot of new info rained all over the net without me noticing.

Some of the info is my own discovering. I had a 570E keyboard that happens to have the 4 wires clearly labeled on the back of the PCB.

[hjanzen]

For replacement of Standby battery you may have a look here:

https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/16163 ... light=701C

or here:

https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/13393 ... light=701C

[hwattys]

Anyone interested might check out my blog on the 701C 133 mhz unit.

https://thinkpads.com/167/bills-butterf ... collection

Also some updates here including finding and installing the original 701C Win3.1/OS2 factory image.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=124058

I have the CD and floppy set that can be used to load this image on a 701C as long as you have a Laplink cable, the docking bar, a floppy drive, and another Windows 95 computer with floppy and CD (I used a Tpad 380)

Happy to share .isos and disk images of the original factory load. Also have the images for a 755CD and 755CE. It was a real adventure in tech nostalgia to work with the Laplink cable and DOS.

[Thinkpad4by3]

Anyone interested might check out my blog on the 701C 133 mhz unit.

https://thinkpads.com/167/bills-butterf ... collection

Also some updates here including finding and installing the original 701C Win3.1/OS2 factory image.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=124058

I have the CD and floppy set that can be used to load this image on a 701C as long as you have a Laplink cable, the docking bar, a floppy drive, and another Windows 95 computer with floppy and CD (I used a Tpad 380)

Happy to share .isos and disk images of the original factory load. Also have the images for a 755CD and 755CE. It was a real adventure in tech nostalgia to work with the Laplink cable and DOS.

Hey hwattys, I went on alibaba and found someone selling 2GHz 486 pin compatible chips. Check it out, I got Ubuntu running on my Thinkpad 701c.

http://i.imgur.com/tUCTxaJ.jpg

[hwattys]

So you desoldered the DX4 chip and soldered in a 2 ghz chip? Where do I find this on alibaba? Not like I know how to solder in a CPU.

[Thinkpad4by3]

So you desoldered the DX4 chip and soldered in a 2 ghz chip? Where do I find this on alibaba? Not like I know how to solder in a CPU.

It was just a little photoshop . Acutally, they do make Pentium MMX chips that run at 1 GHZ. My pic was fake but for more info, check this out:https://youtu.be/pkqtQ3ySE6c

[axur-delmeria]

Too bad that Vortex86 is an SoC (System on Chip) and not a pin-compatible processor.

Then again, HOPE and his team were able to build custom boards like the T50, X62, and T70.

[Thinkpad4by3]

If the HOPE team were to build a 701C board, they would probably use a low powered atom processor so it could run a modernish OS. They got the skills to!

[axur-delmeria]

I doubt they'll do it though. Not enough 701's left to rebuild.

[Thinkpad4by3]

You know, an X301 rebuilt actually might be nice. Like a X1 carbon, but with ports you need and a classic keyboard

[axur-delmeria]

You know, an X301 rebuilt actually might be nice. Like a X1 carbon, but with ports you need and a classic keyboard

If they can :
1. retrofit a much better screen (IPS FHD or better)
2. make the DVD bay have a SATA connection if a 7mm height SATA DVD drive exists, which also makes for a better HDD tray (no IDE-SATA bridge needed)
3. M.2 2280 SSD slot

All my YES.

[Cooler22]

if someone found one of these for the 486DX4 would be awesome I mean even upgrading to a desktop am586 would be cool.
http://i.imgur.com/iiraoRo.jpg

[hwattys]

That's what this is:

https://thinkpads.com/167/bills-butterf ... collection

Its an AMD "586" (Pentium class) 133 mhz processor soldered into the dx4 socket. I have one of them working.

[Cooler22]

I mean having a socket adapter for PGA->QFP instead of having to resolder and risk damaging the motherboard would be nice (although there is not enough space anyway)

[Thinkpad4by3]

I mean there is always what el-sahef did with his 600X. The problem is that the 600X is also 10000x more common. His approach was to hijack the PS/2 output of the keyboard controller instead of the keyboard itself. The other problem is that the chip and its pinout would need to be extracted because the 600X has a seperate keyboard controller board. A project for a machine like the 365XD, which also has a seperate keyboard subcard.