Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
My main laptop is a trusty old 240 400Mhz. I know it's an older model but it does everything I need it to do. I recently aquired an X40. It's really nice. But I still find myself using my 240. I just seem to like it better. Anyway, I would like to know if it's possible to upgrade my 240 to be more like the X40. For example, the X40 has this cool little LED to light up the keyboard. Can I ad one to the 240. Is there a kit available for this? Also, the X40 has this cool Rescue and restore option. It seems to have a hidden partition that lets me restore the system from the hard drive. Cool! I want to make the 240 like that, too. How can I do this? And finally, can I take the wifi card out of the X40 and put it into the 240?

Thanks,
Paul

I don't know about the keyboard night light matter. After all TP240 is pretty old and it would be nice to even find an oem keyboard replacement for that. Actually it would be a nice project to disassemble the oem keyboard and see if there is anything we can do to make it glow.

For system restore partition it's totally on software level, which means you can customize it yourself on any laptop. My way of doing this (I don't do this anymore since I don't feel the need to) is to use ghost software to make a partition image of the new fresh built system partition and store the image file on a seperate partition. Copy the ghost program to that partition as well as all the dos/windows boot-up system files. Then use a multi-system boot manager to create a boot menu so that I can choose either to boot the computer with the normal system or enter into the system image partition and start restoring the system automatically. The key is to choose a nice multi system boot manager (ex. spfdisk, osw, etc) and write the correct autoexec.bat file for the restore procedure. Hiding the restore image partition is just one of the many funcations that a boot manager program should be able to take care of.

The keyboard light is in the top LCD bezel. You might be able to find a bezel from a newel Xseries, remove the light and rig it in the 240. Not quite sure about how you could connect it and turn it on and off.

Instead of creating the hidden partition, you could download and install the Rescue and Recovery software from IBM/Lenovo.

As for the wireless card, it most likely would work in the 240. You would need to pick up an antenna and install that as well, otherwise the card will only pick up a signal about 5 feet away from your router.

Hmm. Ok. So I guess the light idea is out. Unless I rig in a little LED. But I don't where I would get power from or how to rig it into the keyboard so that I could toggle it with a key combo. It would probably be easier to rig a little switch or something. Oh well. It was just a thought. I don't think I wanna hack up my screen unless I was sure I could get it to work.

As for the rescue & restore, I downloaded it from IBM's website but when I run it, it says it can only be installed on a thinkpad. Which is really bizzare cuz this IS a thinkpad. I was thinkking maybe it would work if I upgrade the BIOS cuz I noticed it't not the latest. Not sure if that would actually help or not. Why would R&R think this isn't a thinkpad?

As for the wifi card. Doesn't the one in the X40 have an antenna I could use? Or is it hardwired/built into the computer somehow.

And finally. I just noticed that while the 240 is smaller than the x40. It seems to be just a little heavier. ??? I don't have a scale but is the X40 really lighter than the 240 or is it my imagination?

240 - 10.4" screen weight 2.9lb
x31 - 12" screen weight 3.6lb
x40 - 12" screen weight 2.7lb
x60 - 12" screen weight 3.22lb
x60s - 12" screen. 2.54lbs (Japan) or 2.69lbs (rest of world)

If you try google you might be able to find some more info.

As for the rescue & restore, I downloaded it from IBM's website but when I run it, it says it can only be installed on a thinkpad. Which is really bizzare cuz this IS a thinkpad. I was thinkking maybe it would work if I upgrade the BIOS cuz I noticed it't not the latest. Not sure if that would actually help or not.

So I updated the bios but it still says the same thing!

Why would R&R think this isn't a thinkpad? It says thinkpad all over it! Why isn't their own utility recognizing one of their own laptops!

Here's the error message I get...

This version of Rescue and Recovery - Client Security Solution can oly be run on a thinkpad or thinkcentre computer. This setup cannot continue.

Actually, it turns out that the 240 is too old. I pulled up the rescue and recovery page and it lists the machines that it can be used on....the 240 wasnt included. Sorry about the misdirection.

Bummer. I was hoping to be able to use R&R. Oh well. What do you think would be the best way to emulate this? I have another 20GB hard drive that I am using to experiment on. I have it partitioned into two sections. One is about 13GB and the other is about 6GB. I would like to put a fresh copy of the OS (Win2K) with all the drivers, updates, wallpapers, antivirus and etc, stuff installed on the 13GB part. But I would like it to be backed up to the 6GB partition so that if I need to redo the system again, I can just restore the 6GB partition to the 13GB partition and have it all set up and ready to go again.

paulm64 wrote:Bummer. I was hoping to be able to use R&R. Oh well. What do you think would be the best way to emulate this? I have another 20GB hard drive that I am using to experiment on. I have it partitioned into two sections. One is about 13GB and the other is about 6GB. I would like to put a fresh copy of the OS (Win2K) with all the drivers, updates, wallpapers, antivirus and etc, stuff installed on the 13GB part. But I would like it to be backed up to the 6GB partition so that if I need to redo the system again, I can just restore the 6GB partition to the 13GB partition and have it all set up and ready to go again.

Hmm, your best bet would be to make your own bootable media (there are actually wizards that can make it easy) and load a stripped down, backup version of your OS onto that; now, at that point, you have two options...you could either burn disks or get a large USB drive and use that, or you could mount the bootable recovery image on that little partition on your HDD. You would then have to change how it is mounted, easy part, then change where it installs, slightly more difficult but still somewhat easy. In the end, you should end up with something like a LiveCD or USB Boot media on that 6GB partition; hothing fancy like the HPA (BEER and PARTIES protocols, as well as the protection) that comes on the newer IBM Thinkpads, but it still would be cool to use. After all, it is pretty much the same basic concept, instead of using an external LiveCD or OS to boot and pull an R&R on your HDD, you have it on-drive and accessible as a protected OS upon boot.

You gave me a little idea here, I will play around with this some more on a few systems I have and will post back with the results.

HTH

Here's how I got a restorable image onto my hard drive so that I can restore my TP240 directly from the hard drive similar to IBM's Rescue and Recovery progrm. Which unfortunately, doesn't run on my old TP240. It's kind of a long read but I wanted to make it detailed so that others could do this too.

I took a 20GB hard drive and put it in a USB drive enclosure and connected it to my desktop and made two partitions. 1) 13GB and 2) 6GB.
Then I took the hard drive out and put it into the 240 and connected the floppy drive.
I then booted off of a WIN98 boot disk (from bootdisk.com). I formated both partitions using fat32 and used the /s option on both partitions to make them bootable. I'm not sure if this was necessary but I did it anyway.
I also don't know if I could've used NTFS or not but I figured I was safer using FAT32 for this.
Then I took the hard drive back out and put it back into the USB enclosure and re connected it to my desktop. I copied the I386 directory from my WIN2K CD over to the smaller second partition. I also copied a program called PDQI (PowerQuest Drive Image Pro) to the small partition.
I've had this program a long time but never used it until now. Then I put the hard drive back into the 240 and booted up. It came up to a C: prompt.
I switched to the d: drive (the 6GB Partition) and then switched to the I386 directory. I ran winnt.exe and it started to install win2k. I selected the bigger 13GB partition to install on to. It gave me a warning about not having smartdrive installed but allowed me to proceed with the installation. I guess that smartdrive really must make a difference because it took like at least 2 hours without it for windows to do it's "copying files to hard drive" phase. It took WAY TOO LONG! But I let it finish. I strongly suggest figuring out a way to run smartdrive! Maybe if you use a DOS622 disk instead of a win98disk. Not sure.
After it got done copying files it rebooted and win2k started up to finish the install and it went much quicker.
The install finished and I had a fresh copy of Win2K on my hard drive. So I installed SP4, IE6, Mediaplayer 9, MS updates, my antivirus and anti spy stuff, winzip, acrobat reader, etc, Basically, I got it just the way I like it to be before I start installing any other apps.

Then I rebooted and now it gives me a boot menu. The choices are 1) Windows 2000 Professional, and 2) Microsoft Windows. (98, I assume) When I select choice 1) it starts Win2K normally. When I select 2) it justs boots to a c: prompt and sits there.

I select 2 and it boots to a c: prompt. I change to the d: drive and cd to the PQDI directory. I run PQDI and choose the create image file option and make an image of the C: drive and save it onto the d: drive. The image file is about 1.8GB in size.

Now to try restoring the image. I reboot the computer again and select '2' from the boot menu and it dumps me at a c: prompt again. I change to the d:\pqdi directory and run pqdi. This time I select the restore from image option and restore the image from the d: drive back to the c: drive. PQDI gives me a warning that the partition 'may not be bootable'. Not sure why but I gotta try it to see if this is gonna work. So I do it. After it gets done it tells me to reboot the computer for the changes to take affect. So I reboot and again it comes up to the boot menu and I select 1) Windows 2000 Professional. And it boots into windows no problem! Woohoo! It works!
Just a couple little problems. I tried to put an autoexec.bat file on the d: drive. I wanted to make it so that I could automatically start the PQDI program plus have a warning page about restoring the hard drive when I select 2 on the boot menu. I wanted it to look cool like the IBM Rescue and Recovery program but I can't get that part to work. Apparently when I choose boot option (2) it just boots to a c: prompt. It doesn't try to run the autoexec.bat on the d: drive. I'm not sure why that is yet. But I'm still working on it. At the very least, I still have a hard drive based image that I can restore from. The oher problem is that I can't hide the smaller partition. If I do, I can't run PQDI from there.

So that's what I've figured out after messing with this ALL NIGHT LONG! Sorry it's so long winded but hopefully this will help someone. Also, if anyone knows how to fix those last couple problems I mentioned please let me know!

-Paul

1. You might find smartdrv.exe file on your win98 boot disk. Simply run smartdrv.exe before you run winnt.exe should do the trick. Or you can get the disk image from http://tinyurl.com/kj964 which has the file on their list. I myself made one disk image at http://tinyurl.com/hobu8 which contains usb driver and smartdrv so I can do the xcopy thing between usb cdrom and hard drive immediately after I format the hard drive on TP240.

2. I would prefer K-lite codec pack (including mpc) from free-codecs.com over mediaplayer9 for TP240 but it's just me.

3. The warning message that PQDI gave you was merely to remind you that sometimes if the partition that you restored doesn't boot, it's not their fault because people often forget to set the partition active to make it bootable. It's nothing important.

4. autoexec.bat has to be placed on the same partition of the boot disk("C" in this case.) in order to work at the boot time. Since you've already setup your boot layout by using windows2000 setup(ref. C:\msdos.sys), there is not much you can do. Again I still suggest to use a boot manager program to handle the main system and the backup image partition seperately. Also most boot manager programs have the ability to change the partition id during boot time so you can hide/reveal the image partition whenever you don't need/need it.

Hmm. I guess I thought that the computer was booting into the d: drive when I selected "Microsoft Windows" from the boot menu. But I guess I was wrong. So what files is it booting from when it doesn't boot into Win2K?

paulm64 wrote:Hmm. I guess I thought that the computer was booting into the d: drive when I selected "Microsoft Windows" from the boot menu. But I guess I was wrong. So what files is it booting from when it doesn't boot into Win2K?

Take a look at your msdos.sys file. It might give you some clue. I assume when you choose (2) on the menu and boot into C:\>, you boot from "C" partition, therefore you need the autoexec.bat file placed on "C" partition too. If that's the case, then I would say the C:\command.com, C:\IO.sys, C:\msdos.sys along with the optional C:\config.sys, C:\autoexec.bat are the files that windows98 boots from.