Thinkpads Forum

I have a 600e Ebayed (found out later it had been swiimming). BUt the beast just won't die!!!

I put in a 500 Mz P3 - just modified the Bios and viola could run XP .. ok not super fast but acceptable. - IT started to appear sluggish and I noticed I had not as much Hard disk space that I thought I had. I bought a 60 gb (thanks forums) This beast was now a 5400 with a 8mb cache... OK it took a couple of hours to clone the drive via the USB 1.1 port.

With bated breath I removed the old drive - 20 mb Death star...- even showing signs of the previous bath - dried water residue on top)
Put in the new drive and bang it booted much more spritely!!!! response was much better the white boot up bar just about flashed on then much fewer blue dots back & forth (cylon start up?)

Everything seemed quicker.

The 600 series were OVER engineered! they are sturdy reliable - quirky but Ya gotta love em !!!!
I wonder how many new notebooks are gonna be around in 5 - 10 years?

ChefJohn wrote: bar just about flashed on then much fewer blue dots back & forth (cylon start up?)

Q: How does a 600 startup?
A: By your command.

Please don't throw all of your vegetables at me!

I forget.. is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Every now and then (much less now than before), I pull out a 600E or 600X and use it. I still love the keyboard compared to the T23 I'm on now. Running a memory maxed-out system (544MB or 576MB) on a slow 4200rpm drive with Win98 (600E) or WinXP (600X) really isn't all that bad. I wouldn't want to try transcoding video on one but for normal day-to-day surfing, word processing or downloading .MP3s, it's not that terrible. My older daughter used a 600E for a couple of years. It developed a delayed backlight turn-on problem and now has a partial dead column of pixels on the display, but it can still do useful work. My younger daughter is still using a 600X and is running it into the ground. She keeps it on 24/7 as much as she can. So far the only thing wrong with it is cosmetic; there's worn spots in the palmest where her bracelets have gouged the plastic. Those systems are built like a tank. The 600E I'm working on next is documented here. Even after the "run-up" with the wrong screw, those keys are still working.

Hello,

600E is such a wonderful machine !

Built like a tank, sturdy, comfortable, relatively light, well tought, very upgradable. The kind of machine you'd like to keep with you all the time.

Mine is a 1999 unit, and it's like new. I've stuck a 500 MHz PIII in it, to replace the 366 MHz PII, and, if it boots more slowly (the L2 cache is disabled in the BIOS), the machine is snappier when running Windows XP (I have 288 MB of PC100 SDR-SDRAM in it).

I'm lucky, because I have 5 TP (see my sig) - I will have a new companion on next saturday (an X20) - , everyone of those are rock solid (don't know about the X20, but it's said to be very well built too), but the 600E is even more solid.

And God, this keyboard is so [censored] nice !!! I miss it everytime I use another keyboard...

For sure, I will never sell it.

People who don't have this machine cannot understand, the 600E is really oustanding.

Long life to the 600E !!!

You could think I'm a bit crazy, but I owned a Dell L400 during 2 years. It was, technically, a nice machine too, but I sold it, because when I used it, it didn't seemed to be MY laptop. I had the impression of using another one's machine. Yes, it(s weird, but, for me, 600E has a soul, it's perfect.



W.

You really gotta give credit to IBM for the 600 series. I recently got a VERY nice 600X from Ray, and I love it. The memory is maxed out, I installed win2k on a 40 GB HDD and used the original 20GB for linux (the installation was painless, I love thinkpads just for this) in the ultraslimbay. This machine has a manufacture date of May 2000, and it runs like it was made last year. I have not had one single problem with it (thanks to Ray for testing it in and out completely). Its been running 24 * 5 for the last month and no issues at all.

Once you see and work on a 600 series, you immediately understand the legendary hype aorund it. It is the most famous thinkpad till date, and will be so for the next few years - unless lenovo decides to "bring back" the 600 series with new internals. Ah, I'd do anything to get one of those.

gator wrote:I recently got a VERY nice 600X from Ray, and I love it. The memory is maxed out, I installed win2k on a 40 GB HDD and used the original 20GB for linux (the installation was painless, I love thinkpads just for this) in the ultraslimbay.

The original specs for your 600X are:

PIII 650MHz (256KB) 64MB RAM 12.0GB 13.3 XGA TFT 1024x768 24X-10X CD-ROM, Win2000

What have you changed so far besides the 576MB RAM and the 40GB HDD. And what's the speed of that HDD? Have you upgraded the processor?

pianowizard wrote:What have you changed so far besides the 576MB RAM and the 40GB HDD. And what's the speed of that HDD? Have you upgraded the processor?

Processor is still 650 Mhz, no plans to upgrade it. HDD is 5400 RPM. I got a ultraslimbay FDD from Ray (in a nice external caddy incase I want to use floppy and optical at the same time) and also a "modded" CD-RW/DVD ROM (the front bezel does not match, but it fits and works very well). . Ah, I also bought a new, unused ultraslimbay battery from a forum member for only $10 shipped (total battery life is slightly more than 2h 30min at min brightness and idling!).

edit - More 600X accesories:
1. I found a Xircom Realport ethernet card that fits flush with the 600X (and looks great too, complementing the thinkpad black) in my lab's junkpile.

2. I got a 3com 802.11b card with a retractable antenna from a friend here a while back (while I still had the T22 without wireless) and I use it occasionally with the 600X when I carry it out from my lab.

I wish I had the time, skill and the patience for attempting the internal wireless mod (© Ray ).

unless lenovo decides to "bring back" the 600 series with new internals [...] I'd do anything to get one of those.

A new 600-like laptop, designwise, with up-to-date components would be a legendary machine for the ten or twenty years to come !

I would sell my mother to have one !!!

W.

rkawakami wrote:I forget.. is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Fruit, as my wife the 3rd grade teacher keeps reminding me.

I've found a way to justify keeping a 600X around. It's now my son's laptop that he plays learning game on! Sometimes I "borrow" it to websurf on just to enjoy the keyboard.

My 600E was like the veritable ancient broom - I'd had it 10 years and it had had 6 new brushes and 5 new handles but it just kept on going, and going, and going.........