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Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

Older ThinkPads from the 300, 500, 600, 700 Series, iSeries, Transnote etc.
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Franchute13
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:24 pm
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#1 Post by Franchute13 » Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:17 pm

Hello.

Just to confirm that you can boot a tp365xd from a PCMCIA to SD card adapter.

To note, the SD card must be prepared using a ide adapter, such as an ide44 to sd card. Do not use sd reader on the notebook.

Sometimes when trying to boot it gives error i9990305. The system reboots and boots.


For my tests I used a 16bit Chinese pcmcia to sd card adapter.
A 2gb card, creating a 400mb primary partition.
A Windows 98 MS-DOS, msdos.sys with option BootMenu=1
No autoexec.bat and config.sys (freeze system)

my03
Sophomore Member
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 3:06 pm
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#2 Post by my03 » Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:42 am

Hi,

I'm also an owner of this model and i was a bit dissapointed to see that the CD did not show up in the bios (following this, there was no such option to set in the boot order either) and so i tried to prepare a CF card (both 512mb and 4gb) with a bootable dos 7 (from win98) making sure to move system over + do fdisk /mbr on them both.

When trying to boot either of these, i get the "i9990305" on the screen but i'm not sure what to do next??

Did you prepare your SD card in some specific way?
W530 3940xm/32gb/520/240/240gb ssd, FHD
T410 w. I7-640m, 8GB, 240+128gb ssd hd, 1440x900
X61 w. T7500, 8GB, 240gb ssd, 1400x1050
760E
380ed
365xd
360cs
701cs
T21
T590 (work machine)

Omineca
Sophomore Member
Posts: 215
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 9:40 pm
Location: British Columbia, Canada

Re: Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#3 Post by Omineca » Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:26 pm

This model will boot from a CF Card in a PCMCIA adapter too. I couldn't get an IDE to CF adapter to work, so I ran mine for years using this method. I was using Slackware Linux. I can't remember what method I used for setting up the card (See https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.p ... 42#p683642).

I gave the device to another user here a while back (too many ThinkPads!). When I had it, it was great for streaming radio and playing CDs.
Home: L440 | R500 | X120e Server
Work: ThinkPad Yoga 260 | Dell Latitude 5320

SMA
Junior Member
Junior Member
Posts: 335
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:48 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Re: Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#4 Post by SMA » Thu Jun 29, 2023 5:40 am

I cannot say about this specific model as I do not have a such,
but I know that a 600 will not boot from pcmcia/cf when there is no harddisk (hdd1).
That might be the case here.
Else there is also the possibility that you will need to disable IDE2 using the configuration utility.

Ref: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=132765

Omineca
Sophomore Member
Posts: 215
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 9:40 pm
Location: British Columbia, Canada

Re: Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#5 Post by Omineca » Mon Jul 03, 2023 8:34 pm

I can confirm that my 365XD booted from a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter with nothing in the hard drive bay.
Home: L440 | R500 | X120e Server
Work: ThinkPad Yoga 260 | Dell Latitude 5320

my03
Sophomore Member
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 3:06 pm
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Booting from PCMCIA on a TP 365xd is possible!

#6 Post by my03 » Tue Jul 04, 2023 1:41 pm

Hi guys,

very nice to hear that it can actually boot also from the pcmcia :)

Would there be any performance penalty in booting it via the pcmcia vs. internal ata?

br
W530 3940xm/32gb/520/240/240gb ssd, FHD
T410 w. I7-640m, 8GB, 240+128gb ssd hd, 1440x900
X61 w. T7500, 8GB, 240gb ssd, 1400x1050
760E
380ed
365xd
360cs
701cs
T21
T590 (work machine)

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