Which Legacy Thinkpad would be best for my needs?

[Twiggy]

Okay,

So I already own one legacy Thinkpad, a 380XD and it's very good:

Pentium MMX 233mhz,
64MB RAM
Internal Floppy and CD drive,
Cirrus Logic Video
Etc

It's great and I am running Windows 95C on it, and I even have USB mass storage drivers on it, for easy file transfers.

I am however looking for a late 90's, 98/99 maybe even 2000 laptop, which has active matrix screen, floppy and CD, and a Pentium 2 at least or preferably Pentium 3. I am looking to install Windows Millennium Edition on it.

I did talk to JHEM and he said he has some 600es and 600xs, and a T21 but after I did some research on those, I saw they only supported one internal drive, so I'd either need to swap out drives, or have an external floppy drive.

I would much prefer both the CD and Floppy drives to be internal so I wouldn't have that hassle, just like I don't have it with the 380XD.

So if anyone knows a legacy Thinkpad model which will meet my needs, and preferably also have a Pentium 3, feel free to sound off.

I am not looking to do any 3D windows gaming, so I don't need a 3d accelerated graphics adapter, or any "good gpu" so as long as the GPU isn't horrible it should suit my needs, because I'd mainly be playing older Windows and DOS games on it anyways.

[GMGolds]

You could look into the 390 line. The base models start with the Pentium 233 MMX, the 390E have celerons or pentium IIs and the 390X have celeron 400s up to Pentium III 500s.

They shipped with various flavors of Windows - 98, NT4 or 2K. And I've seen one with XPPro. And they all also have the diskette integrated with the optical drive you're looking for.

One caveat... They weigh almost 8 lbs. Not something you'd want to carry around on a regular basis.

Good luck in your search!

Greg

[theterminator93]

Also take a look at the A series.

[kfzhu1229]

390 series and 770 series best suit your requirements, but the last models of those things (especially the 770X and Z) cost an absolute fortune.
As said, A2x series and A30 also suit your requirements, but the A2x suffer from the ADP3421 blink of death if you aren't lucky and the A30 you have to baby its ATI graphics chip.
And Dell equivalents would be the Latitude C800, C810, Inspiron 8000, 8100. These have a non-removable CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive and a modular bay which you can fill a floppy inside. The Inspirons are quite cheap but the casing don't age as well (C800, 8000; C810, 8100 use the exact same motherboards with a different BIOS so that's not a problem, just the Inspiron casings are more flimsy).
And as for all 3-spindle machines, they are absolutely heavy.

[dr_st]

Look at A21m/A21p/A22m/A22p - internal floppy, swappable optical drive in Ultrabay, sound card supports SBPro compatibility for both pure DOS and Windows.

My own experience: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=127074