Thinkpad 600 resurrection

[Vipersan]

I'm starting a new thread dedicated to he TP600 I'm restoring..
I already have 2x 600X restored and I wrongly assumed this recent aquisition was the same ..
It was not ..
so many variations to get familiar with.
So
This one only exhibited a power light ..and nothing else.
I was convinced it was either the CPU or the GPU ..
both of which reside on a sub pcb ..
I have no idea what the original was but opted for a 300mghz PII cpu ..and again ..not sure what the GPU is on this board.
but it arrived and physically fits .
The laptop now powers up ..and I installed a 30 gb HD (blank) as it came with no hard drive fitted.
I also replaced the bios battery ..
I can now get to the bios ..and have the bios diaplayed on screen
So vindicating my suspicions of a faulty cpu or gpu.
I ran the diagnostics after setting the clock ...an errors were seen with a cross against the mainboard diagnostics check ...
other than that everything else passed OK.
I then set about googling the errors ...which hinted at the fan being faulty.
I obtained a replacement on ebay ...fitted it...and the 600 now runs diagnostics with no errors.
I think I can safely assume ..this was responsible for the gpu/cpu failure.
This laptop was designed for Win 98 or NT ..
I assume it will accept 98se which would be my OS of choice.
But ...I cannot get it to boot one of my restore CDs ..
I only have restore discs for the 600X or 600E ...
could this be why ?
I assume I now have to find a basic TP600 restore CD
?
Am I right about this ?

Perhaps I cannot use a 30gb Hard drive ...as it doesn't appear to recognise the blank 30GB HD ..giving an I9990305 error ...which I believe is missing hard drive or OS.
It may well be that the bios simply wont accommodate this 30gb fujitsu drive ..and is expecting a much smaller drive ?
Do these early thinkpads not recognise or boot restore discs from later machines ..eg ..the 600E or 600X ?
can anyone shed light on this ...?
can anyone help me obtain a genuine IBM 600 (basic) model restore cd if this is the case.
Also does it matter that went for a 300mghz cpu version (gpu unknown at this stage)
rgds
VS

[GomJabbar]

I have a 600E that still worked last time I used it, but currently there is no working operating system on it. I haven't tried using it in several years. I was messing with Linux on it last.

Anyway, I know that older optical drives can be quite picky on how a CD was created. Stamped CD's from the factory are pretty reliable as long as there is no physical damage to them. If you burned the CD yourself or it is a copy made by someone else, it may or may not work. The brand and type of ink used in blank CD's can really make a difference on readability. I would try to get a factory created bootable CD and see if that works. You also may have a problem with your optical drive or perhaps the lens needs cleaning with a CD lens cleaner CD.

I don't remember anymore, but I believe there is an option in the BIOS for allowing or disallowing booting from a CD. Have you checked your BIOS menu options?

[Vipersan]

Thanks for the reply ..
..and yes these are copies of restore CDs I'm using ...
So that might be an issue ..
as to the CD drive ..it is one I borrowed from one of my 600X ...and has been used for win2K restore on that unit.
I do wonder however ..if a 600E restore CD will actually work on a 600 ?
Are these basically the same unit ?
If not ..then I need to aquire a 600 Basic win98se restore disc.
The only option I can see to set in the bios is boot order ...and this currently ignores any CD in the drive..even though I set the CD as first boot device.
rgds

[RealBlackStuff]

According to the 600 HMM:
- max. CPU was Pentium II 300 MHz.
- HDD was limited between 3.2GB and 6.4GB.

[Vipersan]

So it looks like I'm probably ok since my cpu is a 300mhz PII
..but it may be that I need to use a smaller hard drive ..
unless a bios udate allows larger drives ..
Can I update the bios from floppy ..with no operating system or hard drive installed ?
rgds

[Vipersan]

Measured my screen ...approx 13.5 inches which I believe makes this one XGA
It is/was type 2645 ..(1024x768)


So I'm hopefull the 300mhz cpu/gpu I bought for it is fully compatible ..
Looks ok on bios screen ..and runs the bios video tests ok.
I will be trying a smaller hard drive next ..assuming I can find a suitable 2.5 inch drive in my collection.
So many variations of the 600 series you need to be an expert in this field.
lol

[GomJabbar]

On the link below you can get some good information on the ThinkPad 600.

https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:600

Click on the download link on the above page for the Hardware Maintenance Manual. This has a wealth of information.

[kfzhu1229]

So many variations of the 600 series you need to be an expert in this field.
lol

The most annoying part about this 600 series is that 600, 600E and 600X all have incompatible processors to each other.
13" XGA means that your display can be for any of the three series.
A wrong processor means that the CPU either won't fit at all (MMC vs MMC2), or won't show anything at all.
You can also make sure if your old processor was actually dead or just mix and matched wrong.

[Brad]

Your ThinkPad 600 will work with any size hard drive.

I could have missed it in your posts but is your optical drive working?

Brad

[Vipersan]

Yes it is Brad ..
A line from earlier in the thread..
"as to the CD drive ..it is one I borrowed from one of my 600X ...and has been used for win2K restore on that unit."
..if only it were that straightforward..
no such luck
rgds
VS

[thinkpadcollection]

600 is MMC-1 66fsb Neomagic is 2MB
600E is MMC-2 66fsb, video vram is 2.5MB
600X is also MMC-2 but 100fsb. Vram is 4MB.

Up to 13.3" LCD max.

And 2 notes from my experience because I played around to see what max capacity hard drives on these 3 models are (I do have all three 600 models).
Both 600 and 600E can take up to 80GB. 600X up to 120GB.

And be gentle with swapping hard drives, the motherboard's female PATA connector is easy to break. I had one of them happen to me. Only fix is motherboard or connector replacement.
Also caddy and screws are unique to these 600 series only. They use large head screws (cannot substitute due to 600's hard drive bay's guide slots is sized for that head size larger for a reason) along with unique caddy with blue pull tag attached to caddy in different way and a blue shim snapped onto HD cover to use either 9.5mm or without blue shim for 12mm height hard drives.

That blue shim is not required as long as you have a screw installed from bottom to keep hard drive cover and hard drive secure.

I found a topic right here from google, Screw head is thick and 6mm diameter.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[kfzhu1229]

As for the CD drive, you can mod any Ultrabay 2000/Plus optical drive into Ultraslimbay drive by swapping the drive cage frames, if you have a broken/unreliable ultraslimbay drive and a working Ultrabay 2000 drive.

[Rob Mayercik]

Nice to see another 600 still kicking.

I know you already replaced the fan and it may well have been failing, but the 600-series does something rather strange (at least, strange to me) - it uses the CMOS battery to spin up the CPU fan on startup. I've seen fan and motherboard errors thrown by my 600 on several occasions, and it's always been the CMOS battery getting low. I just buy a generic CR2032, transfer the leads from the old battery with a little copper tape, and then wrap in black electrical tape. Next time you see fan or mainboard errors on startup, check the voltage on that little battery first off.

Yes, there were a LOT of variations and configurations in the 600 family - I think back then they were IBM's flagship ThinkPad model until the T-series came onto the scene.

The CPU and HDD limitations were covered already, but I'll toss a little bit of trivia on the pile simply because it's interesting...

As stated previously, the 600 (no "E", no "X") uses the MMC-1 processor sub-card type, and IBM offered the 600 with up to a 300MHz version. Interestingly, though, Intel did make MMC-1 processors in up to 400MHz - some non-IBM machines of the day used them, but they were fairly uncommon. Even more interestingly, they also made an MMC-1 module with a 400-MHz Celeron, which will not work in a 600. The part number for the PII-400MHz MMC1 (which WILL work in your 600) is PMF40002001AA in case you're interested, but at this point, I'd say it's probably not worth making an effort to search one out - if the machine runs well enough for you on the 300MHz chip in it now I'd leave it as-is. You'd get more bang out of pushing the RAM up to 288MB if you haven't already (a pair of PC133 CL2 128MB sticks plus the on-motherboard 32MB) and figuring out a way to go SSD (CompactFlash adapter?). Mine ran Win98SE very acceptably at 300MHz.

Interesting story: I actually managed to score one of the 400MHz modules off ebay ten years ago; for reasons I can no longer remember I tried searching for the thing one day purely at random, never expecting to find one (or, at least, not at a price I would be willing to pay). To my surprise, one actually popped up at a fairly cheap price. Naturally, I snapped it up immediately - what else could I do, when faced with the chance to get my hands on such a unicorn?

I still pull my 600 out occasionally - I don't know that the battery works too well these days, but it does charge and the thing still runs good. Best part, though, is the keyboard - the 600-series keyboard seems to be the laptop equivalent of the legendary "Model M" - nothing else really seems to compare to it in terms of feel/response. Even my T61p, while it's very nice to type on, still feels like it comes up a hair shy of the 600 in pure feel.

[kfzhu1229]

You'd get more bang out of pushing the RAM up to 288MB if you haven't already (a pair of PC133 CL2 128MB sticks plus the on-motherboard 32MB).

A PC133 stick isn't gonna play with TP600 series nearly as well as a PC100 or PC66 part in the case of 600 and 600E.
If you have 128MB PC66 memory in the slot that is exposed to the ultrabay, and a 256MB PC100 memory in the other slot, you can get yourself 416MB of RAM if you have the 32MB onboard memory!
A 256MB PC100 memory in the slot exposed to the ultrabay results in its capacity cut in half, but works just as well if you don't wanna source a 128MB PC66 stick.

[thinkpadcollection]

You'd get more bang out of pushing the RAM up to 288MB if you haven't already (a pair of PC133 CL2 128MB sticks plus the on-motherboard 32MB).

A PC133 stick isn't gonna play with TP600 series nearly as well as a PC100 or PC66 part in the case of 600 and 600E.
If you have 128MB PC66 memory in the slot that is exposed to the ultrabay, and a 256MB PC100 memory in the other slot, you can get yourself 416MB of RAM if you have the 32MB onboard memory!
A 256MB PC100 memory in the slot exposed to the ultrabay results in its capacity cut in half, but works just as well if you don't wanna source a 128MB PC66 stick.

False. I had OEM Micron 256MB from large orders (8) all are PC133 working good in thinkpads of different models A21m, 600X, 600E even T23. Quality OEM memory modules with good SPD does matter and work well.
Except for 600, if Pentium 233 MMX, memory might be a problem and keeping at 64MB PC66 or PC100 would be best due to TX chipset caching subsystem only able to cache first 64MB thanks to Intel being so retarded and still is with Celeron, Pentium dual core and some i3 and few crippled chipsets like H81 etc. Talking about TX, I wish IBM went with HX chipset and dual tag cache chips to address 512MB cached when using Pentium processors. If 600 has PII, easy to expand to 512MB plus with said OEM modules.

If you want to do 512MB properly, go PII or PIII.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[kfzhu1229]

False. I had OEM Micron 256MB from large orders (8) all are PC133 working good in thinkpads of different models A21m, 600X, 600E even T23. Quality OEM memory modules with good SPD does matter and work well.

My bad. It depends on the chip configuration of the PC133 RAM. If it is the 16 chip configuration of 256MB PC133, it is very likely that it will still work with PC100 and PC66 computers.
I have one such module, even with a domestic Taiwan brand that's not recognizable outside of China, it still works on PC66 machines like 600, PC100 machines like T22 and PC133 machines like T23.
Also, just about all PC133 modules work on T23 since it is natively designed to support only PC133.
That said, I have a couple of 256MB PC133 RAM sticks that came with T23 and A30 with IBM FRU number (in 8 chip configuration), and none of those work on my TP600, 390X and T22. Some of these machines won't post at all, some displays garbage characters all over the screen and freezes after POST, and all these chips are perfectly working in T23 and A30.

If you want to do 512MB properly, go PII or PIII.

My TP600 has the Pentium II 266mhz CPU, and for some reason whenever one inserts PC100 or compatible low-density PC133 RAM into the slot that's exposed to the ultrabay, the machine only reads half the capacity of the stick but works just fine. So the maximum amount of RAM of my TP600 is 416mb (32+128+256), and there is no way that I know of that allows it to read 512mb (with the latest BIOS too).
If you have the T23 or A30 with a Tualatin Pentium III, those things work with 1GB RAM and those machines take 512MB PC133 sticks with about zero pickiness about the specification of the sticks.

[Rob Mayercik]

Never had issues with the PC133 128MB sticks in my 600 - they seemed to have no problem "clocking down" to 66MHz.

I've heard that if you can find PC66, CL2 ram sticks you might be able to get a pair of 256MB sticks recognized in a 600, but I've yet to try it.

[Vipersan]

Still not having any luck restoring this old TP600..
I have done a bit of searching ..and this issue is not unknown I guess..
maybe the bios is simply too old ?
I did read that some 600s shipped with unbootable recovery discs ...
maybe that's what I have ?
having said that ...I can't get the 600 to boot from any cd of any kind so maybe I need to approach this problem from a different angle.
I can boot from a floppy ...and apparently there was once a bootable IBM floppy which introduced a delay spinning up the CD ..and this did force boot ?
Assuming I am reading this correctly.
Sadly I cannot find an active link to make this floppy.
follow this link to see what I mean..
http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/a8a6.htm
I know the CD drive is ok ..as this is the drive I used to recover win2k and NT on my 600X ..
This has to be a bios or hardware mainboard issue I think.
unless the CD simply isnt recognised in the 600 ...yet works just fine in the 600X
unit part number ..FRU P/N 20L1926 ASM P/N 20L1925 rev 101 (24 speed)
can anyone help ?
rgds
VS

[thinkpadcollection]

Divide and conquer one problem at a time.

Does that thing turns on and POST at all?
Try without memory modules; all of them have 32MB on 600 and 600E, 600X 64MB.
May have to swap out ultrabay optical drive mechanism with good one that is compatible with 600's ultrabay caddy.
Buy a ultrabay floppy for this 600 series. (I did for good reason and a external floppy drive for 600 too).

Hard drive PATA drives can be 9.5mm or 12.5mm height up to 80GB max. Anywhere from 10GB, 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 60GB and 80GB is not expensive and plenty on ebay and I was able to buy new ones.

I start with buying few support tools to take care of a old hardware properly:

I bought from ebay for everything I mentioned and few local places for other supplies like CD-R and optical burners. I already had other older systems working already.

3M brand floppy disks (1.44MB)
HP brand USB floppy, support computers I have lying around and this works rather well on XP and 7 the best support OS for software creations for preparing older computers. Win 10 is out of question. I had a generic USB drive die due to bad quality of USB plug fried the usb to floppy bridge chip.
Working burner (I'm partial to LG brand on newer computers (PATA and SATA), other brands died) and quality CD-R discs.
Pre-made CMOS battery with correct connectors for 600 series from ebay and make sure polarity is correct vs original. Always have good 3V CMOS batteries every time each time I receive any notebooks. I check them with multi-meter. Computers do funny things sometimes with dead or weak 3V CMOS battery.

Software needed too. I downloaded DOS boot image and kept XP and 7 OSes for software creations tasks in order to work on other older but newer thinkpad and computers with floppy drive also.
Update all the 600's firmware first, via forced update with dead battery method, no choice, search here for details.
And handful of OS installation discs on CD-Rs.

I bought these thinkpads and all of them had problem at one point or another and needed fixing.

600 was fine but wanted Pentium 233mmx had to change mainboard.
600E was a junker, badly abused by ham-fisted tinkerer. LCD CCFL is dying, PATA connector broken and keyboard finally broke.
600X was good and needed 3V cmos battery and hard drive to get going.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[kfzhu1229]

having said that ...I can't get the 600 to boot from any cd of any kind so maybe I need to approach this problem from a different angle.
I can boot from a floppy ...and apparently there was once a bootable IBM floppy which introduced a delay spinning up the CD ..and this did force boot ?

The older BIOS versions for TP600 is pretty unstable in terms of booting from CD-ROM. It from time to time tells me failure to boot from the CD-ROM when I attempt to boot.
I flashed the latest version of BIOS and replaced the CD-ROM drive with an Ultrabay 2000 DVD-ROM drive and that problem went away.

Hard drive PATA drives can be 9.5mm or 12.5mm height up to 80GB max. Anywhere from 10GB, 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 60GB and 80GB is not expensive and plenty on ebay and I was able to buy new ones.

I am not entirely sure about 60GB and 80GB, but I used a Hitachi hard drive that has the FRU from a T4x machine (5400RPM, 40GB), and even with the latest BIOS, if I have the system partition too large, the computer just simply won't boot and gets stuck on the blinking cursor (Windows XP was installed).
I also have a Toshiba 30GB 4200RPM hard drive that is a bit more period correct (no fluid bearing) and that drive (with Windows 2000) boots on that computer no matter how I tamper with the partition.

[Vipersan]

I have a couple of floppy drive units which work just fine in a 600X ....as does the CD drive ...
Yes The 600 unit does post ...and has recently had a new cpu pcb fitted ..plus a replacement fan/cooler.
I have also relaced the CMOS battery ..
can work in the bios just fine ..it simply refuses to boot a CD.
I strongly suspect this to be a bios issue..
too old maybe ..
I can borrow a working battery (though not 100%) from the 600X ..
So ..maybe it's time to try flashing to a recent bios ?
I have some newly aquired blank floppies so ...just a question of learning how to achieve this..hopefully.

I must be either a glutton for punishment ..or have been bewitched by this series ..as only today I paid £26 for a non working 600E on fleabay.
Wish me luck.

My 600X has been the most successful so far ...As I now have several working OS on various hard drives.
Windows ME on a 30gb
Windows 2000 on a 40gb
..and most recently I aquired factory restore disks for Win98 and Win95 (600X)
I installed win98 on a 30gb Toshiba drive ...but annoyingly this was not 98se ..and the restore created a 2gb partition and formatted by default as FAT not FAT 32
That was solved by creating another 30gb partitioned HD in a DELL laptop using a win 95 boot floppy ...Fdisk and Format ..
Then using a usb interface read and copied the entire contents of the newly FAT16 restored Win98 partition ...including all 'hidden' files....and transplanting the copied OS To the Toshiba FAT32 drive..
It boots just fine in the 600X.
The lengths we go to..
lol

[Vipersan]

Well ..at least I managed to get the bios updated ..
now showing IBET54WW
As it turned out ..a 100% battery wasn't needed ..
I have 2 batteries ..
one charges to 96% max ..and the other to 97%.
..which is the one I used during the flash.
I updated using a floppy drive after extraction of a bootable floppy using spsdib54.exe
..and yes it was a scary time waiting to see if all went well.
Tomorrow I'll try again to install an OS using a recovery CD.
rgds
VS

[kfzhu1229]

As it turned out ..a 100% battery wasn't needed ..
I have 2 batteries ..
one charges to 96% max ..and the other to 97%.

As far as I can remember, you need a Highly Charged battery to execute the BIOS flash. That means, the percentage has to be about 80% or higher (I remember that's the percentage for good health batteries to change from the orange LED to the flashing green LED for pre-Lenovo ThinkPads)

[Vipersan]

So ...the hunt is now on for a win98 restore disc or iso image for the 600 ..
I have restore discs for various OS for the 600X ...and a Swedish restore disc for a 600E ...
These are not suitable.
Is there anyone on the forum that can provide a 600 restore cd iso ?

The laptop I'm trying to restore is a

Thinkpad 600 Type 2645-850
..to give it it's full title
rgds
VS

[Vipersan]

I'm convinced now that this 600 has a faulty system board..
I tried installing win98se by putting the cd contents onto the HD and running setup from there..
The install completes just fine ...except the final display is small and only fills around half the screen..
I cannot increase colour depth or resolution.
At first I assumed it to be a graphics driver issue..but after running CPUZ and NOT finding anything for graphics other than standard VGA ..I have to conclude this laptop may have a fault with the GPU.
and that may well be just the tip of the iceberg..as I still cant boot from CD...although the drive is 'seen' by 98.
This one may well end up as spares for other units.
Doh!

[kfzhu1229]

At first I assumed it to be a graphics driver issue..but after running CPUZ and NOT finding anything for graphics other than standard VGA ..I have to conclude this laptop may have a fault with the GPU.
and that may well be just the tip of the iceberg..as I still cant boot from CD...although the drive is 'seen' by 98.

Use the drivers provided in this forum and install it manually.

[Vipersan]

Many Many thanks for the pointers buddy ..
So ..I guess one less thing to worry about ...I now have a full sized screen.
I am surprised that this wasn't automatically accomodated during the installation since the 600 was designed for Win98.
??
rgds
VS

[Vipersan]

Getting closer ..
As with the 600X ..there was once again the Intel Busmaster conflict error ..
which I fixed with the Supplemental file for the 600 and PIXX4 APM2APM reg mod ..
This time run from floppy ..
The only error I appear to have left is an unknown device error in the device manager list ...yellow exclamation mark.
I have no idea what this 'device' is so impossible to install a suitable driver ?
If I remove it ..and reboot ..windows tries to reinstall it.
The only info I have is the resources Tab
It uses
2x IO 0130-013f range & 02f8 - 02ff
2x interupt request 03 & 10
DMA 7

looks for all the world like it might be related to sound ...but the crystal audio is installed and working ?
any ideas guys ?
how _do_ you identify a mystery device ?
rgds

[Vipersan]

I just aquired a 600 series dock from somewhere in Italy ..
and it only cost me a couple of UKP ..
I thought it time I traded some of my nectar points ..
which accrue with each ebay purchase.
Since I now have 2 working 600X ...an almost working 600 and a 600E on order ..I figured it would be a useful investment ..
rgds
VS

[kfzhu1229]

I just aquired a 600 series dock from somewhere in Italy ..

From my experience, some of the docks are pretty funky if you try to add another video card or something in the dock. I have a dock for the T/A2x/3x series and it creates resource conflicts all over the place. Plus, these controllers are getting old and may not be stable either.
Just saying, things may not go as planned if you try to add PCI cards to those laptops.