Thinkpads Forum

My friend has a 770 (original BIOS) with a 6 GB drive, and I'd like to upgrade it to a 12 GB drive for her (my T20's old drive ). Can I do so without an upgrade to the BIOS. Upgrading is a pain because she doesn't have a floppy drive module (and I'm assuming that the upgrade is done off of a floppy disk).

I'm also noticing that it's impossible to boot off of her Windows 2000 install cd. Is this my imagination? Can alternate boot devices be defined for the 770? If it's possible, I can't figure how to.

You should be able to go to 12 gig without updating the bios, but i'd recommend updating the bios anyways. There are flaws with the prior versions, and almost all Bios updates are improvements.

As for getting it to boot from CD... that's easy. You want to enter EasySetup (holding the esc key down, then powering on the unit while still holdin the esc key... til it beeps once?) Then I believe the block you want to click on it boot menu? but i'm not entirely sure. Just pick the CD as the 1st boot device and it will boot from any CD that's compatible.

Goodluck!

Just a quick correction to NDOG. On the older Thinkpads up to and including the 770's and 600's (maybe even later?) you need to press and hold F1 to get to Easy Setup.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the help! Hard drive installed and setup was sucessful!! I'll perform a BIOS update when a floppy drive becomes available to me.

You can update the BIOS without using a FDD for TP770 if you have
an access to another computer having a CD burner and a FDD.
First download the file of the latest bios from IBM web site. Create a
BIOS update floppy out of it on the other PC. Then burn a bootable CD
of the image of the BIOS update floppy. Boot your TP770 from the
bootable CD.
Voile! Now you should see the BIOS update menu.