90s Thinkpad Haul

[solidpro]

I picked up this bundle of rough 90s thinkpads today. I'd say about 70% look like honest, complete machines - about 20 in total, most of them I've stuck on the shelf with the model numbers on the sides.

Nothing hugely special but with a few duplicates, I am hoping I can make some really nice examples out of them and extract some nice spares. I've certainly seen a (and paid more for) a lot worse. I think they probably came in at about a fiver each.



340
486SLC, 50Mhz, 9.4” DSTN, 4Mb

340CSE
Colour DSTN

365XD – says DSTN, but is it?

370C
486DX4, 75Mhz, 10.4” TFT, 4Mb

755C
486DX2/50 or 486DX4/75, 10.4” TFT, 4Mb,

755CX x 2
Pentium 75, 10.4” TFT, 8mb

760C
First 760 machine, 90/120Mhz, 8mb soldered, 10.4 or 12.1 TFT

760CD x 2
760C with ram expansion and CD-ROM space

760L
Same as 760C but with improved DSP sound card.

760ED x 3
Better video, CD-ROM, MPEG2, DSP and Modem

And a couple of 380 and 345 machines.... Also one 355, which I'm not sure i've ever come across before.... **edit - yes I can attest I have never seen a 355 before!**

I think the 760ED machines might be good picks, with MPEG2 hardware and CD-ROM. 760c is a nice 'slim' example (so i've just learned). One of the 755 machines is going to become a 755CDV shortly....

[Irina060]

What a find! Havent heard of a 370C nor 355. Very interesting. Im fairly curious about the 370C, will this DX4 reach 100mhz?

[solidpro]

I've had a couple of 370C machines.... I don't know what speed this one is.

So far, the two 380Ds are pretty perfect, except on one the G & H keys don't work. Both factory restored now to W98 on the original HDDs.
The 340 is also in perfect condition, running an OEM 3.11 installation. It's missing the square plastic cover on the bottom covering the clock batteries and IC DRAM card though - which I'm pretty sure I had one laying around at one point, which is bugging me!.
Out of the 3 x 360CSE machines I know I can make one good one, one rough one and have a bunch of spares. However, the 355 and 370 are almost extactly the same on the outside so what I'll do it break down and label and see what I end up with.
I'm leaving the 7xx machines until last.

So far though, I've easily covered the cost....

[astral]

370C is a 486DX4 @75MHz.

[ThinkDan]

Nice haul, they've gone to a good home

Talk to me about the slim chassis 760C, please, if it's surplus

The 760 *L* variants were the cheaper hardware variants at each model point, e.g. 760L vs 760C, 760LD vs 760CD, 760XL vs 760XD, etc.. Usually slightly lower spec overall, but crucially all L models did not have Mwave audio, using ESS 1688 Audiodrive instead. I suspect these are actually preferred by retro gamers as they are a pure hardware audio card, rather than the cumbersome Mwave hardware/software solution, and are (IIRC) fully SoundBlaster 16 compatible for DOS games.

IBM was effectively selling a budget 760 range alongside a premium 760 range, whilst also selling the 310,340,365,380 as successive budget models, plus the 560 'ultraportable' and the 770 variants as the 'premium' models. ThinkPad product planning was started to fall apart in the mid/late 1990's, ending up with the madness of 1999-2000 of being able to buy any of a 570, 600, T20 or T21 for about a 9 month period - and that was just the 'midrange portable' offering, of course, with both 'premium' and 'budget' alternatives also available. Much of this came from IBM's heavy push into the education sector in the US, which needed cheaper boxes on desks, as they simultaneously tried to mine both the 'executive' and 'minion' market in the more lucrative corporate sector. The XTRA range marked a much-needed thorough clear out and simplification of the range of offerings: 4 laptop models, offered in overlapping 'this year' and 'last year' spec.

The 355 was an oddball. From memory it was essentially a 360 with an integrated modem daughter card where the 750/755 would have the audio daughter card, so a modem jack on the left behind the power switch. The 360 had no audio card and just had a blanking plate behind the power switch.

[solidpro]

'budget' alternatives also available

I prefer 'simpleton'.

Hmmm about the 760 "L" range. This batch are all either ED, CD or just 1 x L. The EDs were later, higher spec so thats what I was trying to get working but only 1 is any good, so I'm next onto the 760CD and the C/L. Almost every issue is related to the keyboard and it's trackpoint and/or built in PCB/batteries. That's to be expected. I'll let you know what happens with the thin one (which seems just like a 755 chassis, but I only glanced so far).

As I now have an example of an L, LD, CD, ED and XD (at least) i've noticed how many different memory configurations there were. It's very difficult to re-use between each distinct variant of the same model. I already owned an LD and it's got weird 88pin RAM on a daughterboard which is hard to find. After noticing the ED had a similar configuration I thought I was in luck and could rob some memory from them, however they do have the same 'daughterboard accessible via bottom trapdoor' design (same location as 360/755, but you have to access it from the bottom of the case), they use totally different RAM sticks! The LD is 88-pin weirdness and the EL is the more common later SODIMMs with the key centre-left, EDO.

They'll all go up for sale at some point with the exception of 1 'perfectish' example of the model range, ideally an XD.

The 355 was an oddball. From memory it was essentially a 360 with an integrated modem daughter card where the 750/755 would have the audio daughter card, so a modem jack on the left behind the power switch. The 360 had no audio card and just had a blanking plate behind the power switch.

You're absolutely correct. As it turns out this 355 was dead. It would power on but do nothing. I swapped around everything and it was not playing ball. However the case, screen, modem were all intact so I decided to re-use the motherboard from a 360 and rebuild with that inside. I had to install the modem to the 360 board, but you're also correct, there is a small plastic cover back-left which is either blanked, has 2 audio jacks or has a modem jack. The 355 lives on, possibly with a slight CPU upgrade...

I'm quite pleased so far and will be following up with pics in the next few days.

It's been interesting to see how much crossover there is between 355, 360, 370 and 755 machines. A lot. The main differences are rubberised coating on the 755s, the 3xx have a different plastic panel above the keyboard to accomodate a very slightly different lid on the 755s (it's got a bigger gap between itself and the bottom of the lid to allow you to close it!) but generally a lot is interchangable. All the 355/60/70/755 keyboards seem to have a high 08611/trackpoint failure rate.

[ThinkDan]

It's been interesting to see how much crossover there is between 355, 360, 370 and 755 machines. A lot.

Good to hear the 355 can be saved - from memory it was the same lowly CPU spec as the 360, so a board swap should be fine even for the purists

That's a big factor in why I love those early machines so much! I noticed a little bit of crossover with the 365 when I was photographing that for sale recently, of course much of the lower chassis and system board are different but the keyboard is still an M6-1 and the lid looked passably like that of the earlier machines, although I'm pretty sure the video connectors are different on the LCD ribbon - rotated 90 degrees from memory. The mimicry of the 340 and 310 (*spit*) is why I dislike them so much, trading on the look of the others but with little or none of the elegance and quality. I remember we had a whole thread on the 310 where I vented about it, I'll go and lie down now to avoid starting that again

All the 355/60/70/755 keyboards seem to have a high 08611/trackpoint failure rate.

Yes. A build up of finger grease/sweat reacts with the rubber to make a solution which accumulates around the trackpoint strain gauges below and causes failure. This was one reason why the early smooth rubber 'eraser' trackpoint covers were changed to the 'cat's tongue' ones from the 755CD onwards, ergonomics of 'slippery nipple' being the other. I've found that many of the early eraser caps are going noticeably soft and pliable now, a little like the soft-touch rubber deterioration. These things were never designed for 30+ years of use, though!

Sounds like you are seeing the problem with the later cat's tongue models, as many of your haul are, so it's not all about the rubber formulation. I wonder if you remove the TrackPoint mechanisms from the keyboards and immerse/soak them in alcohol or switch cleaner you might reverse some symptoms? Certainly worth a try before consigning them all to the bin as faulty, plus it sounds like you have enough there to do a statistically significant experiment

[astral]

As I now have an example of an L, LD, CD, ED and XD (at least) i've noticed how many different memory configurations there were. It's very difficult to re-use between each distinct variant of the same model. I already owned an LD and it's got weird 88pin RAM on a daughterboard which is hard to find. After noticing the ED had a similar configuration I thought I was in luck and could rob some memory from them, however they do have the same 'daughterboard accessible via bottom trapdoor' design (same location as 360/755, but you have to access it from the bottom of the case), they use totally different RAM sticks! The LD is 88-pin weirdness and the EL is the more common later SODIMMs with the key centre-left, EDO.

760C, 760CD, 760L, 760LD = 88pin EDO
760E, 760ED, 760EL, 760ELD, 760XD, 760XL = 144pin EDO

[astral]

Yes. A build up of finger grease/sweat reacts with the rubber to make a solution which accumulates around the trackpoint strain gauges below and causes failure. This was one reason why the early smooth rubber 'eraser' trackpoint covers were changed to the 'cat's tongue' ones from the 755CD onwards, ergonomics of 'slippery nipple' being the other. I've found that many of the early eraser caps are going noticeably soft and pliable now, a little like the soft-touch rubber deterioration. These things were never designed for 30+ years of use, though!

Sounds like you are seeing the problem with the later cat's tongue models, as many of your haul are, so it's not all about the rubber formulation. I wonder if you remove the TrackPoint mechanisms from the keyboards and immerse/soak them in alcohol or switch cleaner you might reverse some symptoms? Certainly worth a try before consigning them all to the bin as faulty, plus it sounds like you have enough there to do a statistically significant experiment

From what I've experienced, and seen when looking at online listings, any of the laptops that use a smooth rubber cap seem to be prone to deterioration. I suspect it's the same sort of effect that causes rubber feet on the bottom of laptops to melt. Maybe the rubber soft touch deterioration is the same as well, but I have heard before that that coating isn't ACTUAL rubber, rather, it's some other formulation. That was in reference to the awful stuff used a lot in the 2000s though, the stuff that melted was worse and in way shorter time. ThinkPads definitely used a different formulation for their coating than whatever was popular in the 2000s as while we complain about them going sticky a lot, the truth is they're FAR better than anything else people were using (looking at you Dell).

As for the caps, my PS/Note 425 used the early eraser-head type. It hadn't completely melted yet, but it was at the point that it was leaving residue on the trackpoint sensors underneath. This was causing it to badly drift. I attempted to clean it off, but man is it nasty stuff and it didn't help much. The left side sensor also came detached from the middle plastic stalk which couldn't have helped.
My second PS/Note 425 unit (ThinkPad 350 branded, I used it for parts as I needed an internal cable and the keyboard) came with a cat's tongue style cap installed. It was very fresh and clearly not original. When I removed it, I could see residue left from the original deteriorating.
The second trackpoint sometimes drifts and sometimes behaves. I've left it alone as I don't wish to make it worse. It will also usually throw the TrackPoint error, but only on cold-boots. I forget whether it's 08611 but I think it is. Usually, if I power cycle it after that, it will pass post without the error and the trackpoint will work. I'm not sure exactly why this is.
It's not worth the time to solve anyway - the PSN425/TP350 is an awful computer.

[solidpro]

I've been through a few 425/350 machines. I think I managed to make 1 good one out of the lot. I hate the machine too. I think the hinges are dreadful aren't they? Even worse than the 700/720....

At one point I had virtually all the PS/2 note or PS/note or whatever else they called them and almost all of them didn't work and just were so full of disasterous faults it just wasn't worth it. I still have a few in a box called 'paperweights'.

[astral]

Yes, hinges are impossible. I could probably force them to work if I tried hard enough but the actual hinge design is bad, not just the mounting. Mine failed in a way where they're just completely floppy, because the hinge in the base can just spin freely without hitting any plastic, and that's how I've left them. It's not worth trying to force them to work.
Even with all the work I've put into it, I still have various gremlins that just rear their heads. Sometimes it decides not to POST. Sometimes the floppy drive doesn't work. The TrackPoint issue already mentioned. Sometimes the speaker quits working. The display looks terrible, even for passive matrix, and it's just not a fun system to use. The keyboard is good but I could get the exact same keyboard in a 750C, and have a way better computer attached to it. I'm keeping it just because who else is going to bother? I still need to recap the inverter and the floppy drive, that may have been why my first drive failed.

[ThinkDan]

My two 350's are not in great shape either. The worse of the two has had all its labels removed, I can't decide if it was a PS/Note 425 that somebody wanted to pass off as ThinkPad, or it was a ThinkPad 350 and the labels were taken to restore a better machine. The better one makes a good static display piece, and yes the hinges are poor.

It's a great example of a machine so obsolete now that I do question the need to have a working example, particularly given the weaknesses you both mention. As a now-temperamental DOS/Win3.1 machine with limited connectivity, I do wonder what I would do with it even if I did power it on. Gone are the days of keeping a truly old PC working because that's how you get a hit of DOS or Win3.1 nostalgia, given how easy and approachable virtualisation is. As a static exhibit, though, as a physical example of the design & development of IBM notebooks, it has value to me as the end of the N23 / N33 / N51 product line, and for this only its cosmetic and mechanical condition is important. Do the latches work, what panels open, what peripheral ports are there, how were the ergonomics, how did it differ from the predecessors and successors, etc.

Back to the subject of the thread, out of interest, how many of the 760's have secure lower memory doors? There is an inherent weakness in the design. So many I've seen have these missing, or at best held on with sellotape!

[ThinkDan]

760C, 760CD, 760L, 760LD = 88pin EDO
760E, 760ED, 760EL, 760ELD, 760XD, 760XL = 144pin EDO

Great summary, thanks. It's worth adding that all the 755 variants - including early (755C, CS) and later (755CD-CX) took either the DRAM credit cards (same as the 700, 720, 360, 750) or an adapter card for 2x 72 pin SO-DIMMS in the same location, i.e. under the floppy/CD, accessed via the keyboard. A third variant!

[solidpro]

Back to the subject of the thread, out of interest, how many of the 760's have secure lower memory doors? There is an inherent weakness in the design. So many I've seen have these missing, or at best held on with sellotape!

All of them had the doors intact and working! Infact I have a spare.

[panips]

What a find...340/355/370 are rare. I once saw one or two on Yahoo auction but did not bid it. They might be something quite sought-after, but for me it lacks of audio card

And, I have a broken 750C lcd, literally broken glass and cable. And I tried to see if 755cd/cx LCD assembly is compatible for I read that the thinkwiki, but I found the wiki tft info IS wrong.
Do you have spare 750C LCD, or do you have spare system board of 755cd/cdv/ce/cv/cse (85G1141)? I bought at least 3 untested from ebay but none works.

[Luizapper]

Yes. A build up of finger grease/sweat reacts with the rubber to make a solution which accumulates around the trackpoint strain gauges below and causes failure. This was one reason why the early smooth rubber 'eraser' trackpoint covers were changed to the 'cat's tongue' ones from the 755CD onwards, ergonomics of 'slippery nipple' being the other. I've found that many of the early eraser caps are going noticeably soft and pliable now, a little like the soft-touch rubber deterioration. These things were never designed for 30+ years of use, though!

Sounds like you are seeing the problem with the later cat's tongue models, as many of your haul are, so it's not all about the rubber formulation. I wonder if you remove the TrackPoint mechanisms from the keyboards and immerse/soak them in alcohol or switch cleaner you might reverse some symptoms? Certainly worth a try before consigning them all to the bin as faulty, plus it sounds like you have enough there to do a statistically significant experiment

From what I've experienced, and seen when looking at online listings, any of the laptops that use a smooth rubber cap seem to be prone to deterioration. I suspect it's the same sort of effect that causes rubber feet on the bottom of laptops to melt. Maybe the rubber soft touch deterioration is the same as well, but I have heard before that that coating isn't ACTUAL rubber, rather, it's some other formulation. That was in reference to the awful stuff used a lot in the 2000s though, the stuff that melted was worse and in way shorter time. ThinkPads definitely used a different formulation for their coating than whatever was popular in the 2000s as while we complain about them going sticky a lot, the truth is they're FAR better than anything else people were using (looking at you Dell).

As for the caps, my PS/Note 425 used the early eraser-head type. It hadn't completely melted yet, but it was at the point that it was leaving residue on the trackpoint sensors underneath. This was causing it to badly drift. I attempted to clean it off, but man is it nasty stuff and it didn't help much. The left side sensor also came detached from the middle plastic stalk which couldn't have helped.
My second PS/Note 425 unit (ThinkPad 350 branded, I used it for parts as I needed an internal cable and the keyboard) came with a cat's tongue style cap installed. It was very fresh and clearly not original. When I removed it, I could see residue left from the original deteriorating.
The second trackpoint sometimes drifts and sometimes behaves. I've left it alone as I don't wish to make it worse. It will also usually throw the TrackPoint error, but only on cold-boots. I forget whether it's 08611 but I think it is. Usually, if I power cycle it after that, it will pass post without the error and the trackpoint will work. I'm not sure exactly why this is.
It's not worth the time to solve anyway - the PSN425/TP350 is an awful computer.

This type of error occurs when trackpoints needs cleaning due to grime and dust accumulated through the years. Using contact cleaning spray on base of the stick has solved this issue on my 770.