Thinkpads Forum

Hi there everybody....

I just purchased a 600e off ebay. I got it for $102.25USD shipped. 32mb of ram, un sure of the HD space (I should have asked huh...), and the OS is SUSE Linux but no password so I think I'll go with another Linux OS.

I own a desktop, a gaming pc. Built two years ago, AMD Athlon XP 32000+, NVIDIA GeForce 5700LE, gig of ram. Its great but I only play CS from time to time. I wanted a laptop because my brother has one and I just love to sit anywhere in the house and be able to do what I do on the desktop.

It has 32mb ram, which is way too low. I just was wondering, how is it possible to get 544mb of ram when they sell ram in 256mb? 32 extra mbs from the onboard processor? So my best bet is to go with two 256mb ram?

Also, I read in another thread that the 600e can support a hard drive as big as 20gigs as long as it has the right rpm. Is that correct?

The 600e comes with a battery that does not hold a charge and I see batteries for for 30-40$ on ebay. Is there anywhere else that I could find them for cheaper? I bought this one off ebay because a local guy was offering 150$ for the same model except 288mb ram. So I wanted to save a little money.

Thanks in advance for any response!

Good choice of first laptop; the 600E is a great machine. I still use one myself.

You can use special "low density" 256mb RAM chips in the 600E but they are usually quite expensive. I would reccomend installing two PC66 or PC100 128mb sticks for total of 288mb RAM.

Your 600E can support just about any modern PATA hard drive so drive capacity is more or a matter of what you can afford. Since the average going price is about $1 per megabyte, I'd reccomend finding a good 5400rpm or 7200rpm hard drive. The brands I find to be most reliable are Hitachi and Fujitsu.

$40 is about as cheap as a reliable battery gets. Every now and then you'll come across a used battery for cheap but the $40 OEM batteries are really a best bet; just be careful who you buy from.

Ah I see. Thanks for the reply. Maybe going with the local guy was a better deal. But I guess what's done is done. But in this case, I might be paying the same amount because the other one didn't come with a network card adapter, this one does.

Thanks for the reply, all my questions answered in one post, how awesome. ahaha.

You got a pretty decent deal for your computer. The only thing I would have done differently is ask for more RAM and a good battery but RAM is pretty cheap if you know where to look. I´d reccomend buying PC100 RAM even though the 600E is supposed to take PC66 because PC100 is completely compatible and usually cheaper in large amounts.

I see. PC-100 is cheaper. Is it because PC-66 is older and not many companies make it? just wondering. PC-100 is really cheap on ebay. Thanks for that tip!

Pretty much. Since PC100 is compatible with PC66 and PC100 machines (whereas PC66 only works in PC66) the companies make more PC100.

If you plan to use the laptop on battery power frequently then i'd suggest that you look at an Ultrabay battery in addition to a new main battery.

I replaced the dying main battery in my 600E with a new 4200mAh battery from Ebay many months ago - it cost me £39.99 inc p&p.
Then in April this year i bought an Ultrabay battery (again from Ebay) for just 19.98 euros - this is a 2800 mAh battery.

Fully charged my 600E gives me many hours of use between charges.

I also replaced the 128MB and 64MB sodimms which it had with a single 256Mb sodimm - cost me £28 inc p&p.
(One of the memory slots on my 600E is dodgy and the sodimm in that slot doesn't always get detected so i now leave that slot empty).
With the onboard 32MBs of memory i have a total of 288MBs and that runs XP Pro perfectly.

It's all proved to be money well spent.

warwound.

In my opinion people outside the forum (and many inside) underestimate these old Pentium II laptops. All you have to do is make sure you have the right amoung of RAM and a good hard drive and XP will run on it almost as well as many PIII laptops.

AlphaKilo470 wrote:In my opinion people outside the forum (and many inside) underestimate these old Pentium II laptops. All you have to do is make sure you have the right amoung of RAM and a good hard drive and XP will run on it almost as well as many PIII laptops.

I believe it.

AlphaKilo470 wrote:In my opinion people outside the forum (and many inside) underestimate these old Pentium II laptops. All you have to do is make sure you have the right amoung of RAM and a good hard drive and XP will run on it almost as well as many PIII laptops.

Exactly - my 600E runs Dreamweaver, a (testing) webserver with both PHP and MySQL installed with no probs - in fact it all runs very smoothly.

I just dug out my old 64MB sodimm and installed it into my 600E's 'dodgy' memory slot and it's now running with a total of 352MBs of memory.
That 64Mb module will however not always get detected and be usable - but the remaining 288MBs is still ample.

warwound.

AlphaKilo470 wrote:Pretty much. Since PC100 is compatible with PC66 and PC100 machines (whereas PC66 only works in PC66) the companies make more PC100.

Also, if you ever decide to upgrade the cpu to a Pentium III you'll need PC100 ram.

PC100 ram is more readily available and just as cheap, if not cheaper, than PC66.

I finally got it today. This thing is smaller than I thought. The guy said it boots up to Suse Linux and asks for a password, which he doesn't have, but I get this error when its checking the RAM, something like 133 & 132 error. I click continue and then it does its thing until this page that says like ON>OFF and blinks and I don't know what to do with that. Anye clue what to do? I'm not too OS suavy you know?

Also I took out the floppy from the ultraslimbay and then tried to put it back in but noticed something was inside it. It came out and I think its the CMOS battery and wires... I'm like okay... How do I put that back in there?

600E's CMOS battery is installed in the memory module bay. It is sandwiched between the motherboard and front, bottom edge of the laptop and normally held in place with a plastic flap. If the plastic does not hold the battery in place, then I guess it can fall into the Ultrabay. I would suggest that you download the Hardware Maintenance Manual at:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... WIK-3SYPX2

It's a valuable guide to your "new" toy.

That was a quick reply. Thank you!!!

The errors I get are 161 and 163.
161 is dead/no battery. (doesn't hold a charge anyways)
163 is time and date isn't set. I believe that is because of the CMOS battery. The thing is falling apart, its better if I just bought a new one.

Still, its at an "OFF > ON" screen. I read somewhere I had to press esc. and f1 repeatedly to get to the BIOS.

The battery that is referenced in the HMM with regard to the 161 & 163 errors is the CMOS battery, not the standard battery.

These batteries are cheap and easy to replace.

Don't give up on this great little workhourse. The 600E series is one of my favorite of all the Thinkpads.

Error 163 is definitely the CMOS battery. Error 161 is usually due to a dead CMOS battery as well, but as you know that you have a bad main battery, it's possible to be getting that error code too. You should be able to get to the BIOS by holding down the F1 key while powering on.

Not to disagree with the highly intelligent Ray, buuuuut...

The regular battery will not create the 161 error. The 161 error is the result of a dead back-up (CMOS) battery. The 163 error code is the result of the time and date not being set...which is the result of a dead CMOS battery (or system board).

According to page 53 of the HMM, the 161 error tells you to check these items in this order:

1. Go to "Checking the Backup Battery" on page 38.
2. Backup Battery
3. System Board

I have never had this error as the result of a dead regular battery.

It seems like I cant get into BIOS. Maybe its because of the CMOS battery. I really wish the guy told me about this. I still would have bought it, its just I would have bought a CMOS battery at the same time so there wouldn't be a delay to get it working.

I should have read your initial post a little better. I didn't see the part about the password.

Yeah, if you dont have that password, then you can't get into the BIOS to set the date and time. If you can't set the date and time, you can't get rid of the errors. If you can't get rid of the errors, then you can run the system.

You will need to replace the systemboard, or the entire system to get around the password, IF it is the Supervisor password.

My guess is that it is the Supervisor password, and that the CMOS battery was removed to try to reset the system and bypass the password. Since the CMOS battery was removed, the date and time need to be reset.

These system boards are pretty cheap nowadays. Maybe about $30 on eBay.

tfflivemb2 wrote:Not to disagree with the highly intelligent Ray, buuuuut... The regular battery will not create the 161 error.

You can disagree with me anytime. My wife does it all the time . Yes, I agree that the 161 error is due to the CMOS battery. I was leaving a little "wiggle room" in my answer just in case that 0.001% chance that it was the main battery.

tfflivemb2 wrote:I have never had this error as the result of a dead regular battery.

Agreed. For the few times I ever tried to power up my laptop with a known dead battery while also plugged into the AC adapter, I never got an error message. I was going by the description in the HMM under error 161 which says "Dead Battery". It's a little ambiguous unless you also read the "solutions" column next to it.

Its actually the password to Linux, not the supervisor password itself.

Here was the ebay bid.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %3AIT&rd=1

Heres a pic of the ghetto cmos battery. Yeah my nails are long because I hate the feeling of them cut.

pic

Replace that baby right away! Can be had for around $6-$9 on eBay. Less, if you attempt the same kind of "repair" that the previous owner tried .

Saysana13B wrote:<snip> ...but I get this error when its checking the RAM, something like 133 & 132 error. I click continue and then it does its thing until this page that says like ON>OFF and blinks and I don't know what to do with that.

Getting back to this symptom... Is this a "blue drawing" on a "black background"? If so, then it sounds like one of the IBM status/error screens. As it is generally frowned upon to post large pictures inside these threads, can you send one to me? I've PM you with my e-mail.

This Off>On screen that you are getting is telling you to turn the system off and then reboot. I have seen this several times.

You will need to turn it off and then turn it back on pretty quickly...then maybe you can get into the BIOS by holding down the F1 button while turning on the system.

I'm in a place that I think is the BIOS (never been in it before). It says Easy-Setup at top, tells what current bios version I got too.

EasySetup=BIOS. You should be able to set your system date and time in here which will solve your 161 and 163 errors (until you power off and start over again). I got the pictures and indeed that was an IBM error screen telling you to power cycle your laptop.

It actually booted. I don't know what I did but it booted... once. I restarted because... I didn't have the linux password or anything. After that, it went back to the errors. Atleast its working fine and the problem is the cmos battery.

I guess after that, my next question would be how to reformat the thing. But I should try to figure that out on my own now. Thanks everyone for the help.

Okay I've deleted the original message since its worthless now. I have a totally new question and I don't want to triple post so I hope someone comes by this thread. Oh btw, I've wiped my HD clean using my brother's laptop.

It seems like my thinkpad doesn't read my CD drive. In the testing screen, the CD drive is greyed out. It also doesn't boot from my CD drive. The LED works, and it opens. Could it be a BIOS problem? Or is the CD drive dead and I need a new one. It is fishy though, the drive came with electrical tape covering the model number and other things.