Thinkpads Forum

I'm pretty sure this won't work, but I'd like another opinion before I give up on the idea...

There's a place selling low-voltage (notebook) Pentium 266MMX processors. It's the same "TCP mobile" package as the Pentium 120 that's already in the machine (the processors are socket-mounted, yes???)

The P120 has a Vcore of 2.9V, whereas the P266MMX has a Vcore of 1.9V. Is there any way that the system board can be adjusted (via jumpers or thru the BIOS or thru auto-sensing) to provide this lower voltage???

Thanks for any info!

IMHO a futile gesture. Like trying to supercharge a lawnmower engine. The 365 is a decent machine but not a brilliant machine. It's a shame too, to nice to trash and too old to bother with. I use my 365XD for traveling. If lost, stolen or dropped I'm not out much. I only use it for MS Word and internet when traveling though.

mi-oldradios wrote:IMHO a futile gesture. Like trying to supercharge a lawnmower engine. The 365 is a decent machine but not a brilliant machine. It's a shame too, to nice to trash and too old to bother with.

A cold glass of reality hits me in the face! Of course, you are right. Even if I got it to work (at 240MHz), I would still only have a WIN98SE-capable machine. Thanks for helping me see the light.

It might be possible to upgrade your ThinkPad 365x from a Pentium 120 to a 133, which would give you an extra few megahertz s well as a 6mhz faster bus, but I'm not completely sure and the risk of destroying the machine wouldn't be worth the effort or money. If you want to get as much out of your machine as you possibly can, I'd reccomend searching eBay for more RAM and a bigger hard drive, I think 6gb is as high as it can go for HD though, if even that. Also, unless you absolutely NEED Windows 98 or higher on that machine, I''d reccomend running Windows 95 since those machines were designed for that OS and W95 makes better use of your RAM and HD space than 98, especially on older computers such as yours. I used to own a 760ED with a P133, 48mb RAM, 3.2gb HD and W98, fresh install, ran slower than the traffic on HWY 400 during rush hour (I live in Atlanta, and yes, the traffic is as bad as shown on the TV, actually, it's worse.) Another thing you might be able to do with your laptop is install an older version of Linux on it. My knowledge of Linux is not that great, but do a Google search on ThinkPad 365 and Linux, you'll probably find a ton of stuff.

64MB of memory ordered last night! Currently researching hard drives. You may be right that an attempted processor upgrade is not worth the risk. However, I suspect that the 150MMX would be the way to go... compatibility with the 60MHz bus, MMX extensions, 2x the size of L1 cache (compared with non-MMX), and I think it's the fastest clock-speed Pentium with a Vcore that the motherboard can provide.

I really do need WIN98, so I'm stuck there. The machine works pretty well, and some of my upgrade plans/ideas/fantasies are just for the hobby of tinkering with the machine (without breaking it, of course).

Hopefully, that 64mb of RAM will provide a significant speed boost to Windows. 64's double what I have in my ThinkPad 380ED and it runs fine. As for the CPU upgrade, you do have a good point with the 150MMX, but it would be a good idea to do lots of research, make sure that it is hardware (connectors, etc) and software (BIOS recognizable, etc) compatible. If the MMX is not able to fit into your ThinkPad, then your best bet if the RAM does not help your computer much is to upgrade to a Pentium 133, the small increase in FPU clock speed and the faster bus will make a somewhat noticable difference. Well, whatever you choose to do, be careful not to break anything and good luck.

Another thing that might increase your computers speed is to defrag at least once a month. Also, having IE integrated into the shell in Win98, while convenient on faster computers, is an absolute dog on older computers, and for that, there are plenty of crazy anti-Microsoft (for some reason or another) nuts out there that would have nothing better that day than to have someone ask them how to separate IE from Windows. www.toastytech.com has a section on separating IE from Windows, there's also a ton of anti-MS rants on there (I still don't know why he uses a PC if he hates MS so much).

If you want a leaner program than windows 98, try win98lite.

Rick Aguinaldo wrote:If you want a leaner program than windows 98, try win98lite.

I've never heard of this! Can you tell me more, or post a link to some info?

Thanks!

98lite is supposed to strip Windows 98 of the "integrated web shell". I believe the site is 98lite.net, but I'm not sure, do a Google search on the name 98lite.

Windows 98SE runs well on my 365XD with 6.4GB HD and 72MB RAM. Not a barn burner though. Don't know about WIN 98 lite but I might it a try.

mi-oldradios wrote:Windows 98SE runs well on my 365XD with 6.4GB HD and 72MB RAM.

This is my exact plan! Which drive did you get, and did you have any BIOS problems to deal with??

I am looking at an IBM Travelstar 6GT... 6.48GB, 4200RPM, ATA-4 (p/n DADA-26480).

That Travelstar should work. I have latest BIOS and have no problem with HD or RAM. Only wish I could boot from the CD on this unit.

OK, thanks for the info! I though that 6.5GB would be OK... but I've read about a "6GB limitation" on some Thinkpads... I know from my work with desktops that common hard drive limits occur at 528MB, 2.1GB, 8.4GB, 32GB, and 137GB... depending on age of BIOS and which O/S is used.

I beleive that they have drive overlay software that you can use to overcome those limitations, but I know nothing about that stuff. There is, however, something about overcoming the 6gb limitation somewhere near the bottom of the thinkpads.com site, here's the link. http://www.thinkpads.com/6gig-limit.htm

Oh, since we are on this topic, does anyone know what the max hard drive capacity is for a ThinkPad 380ED?

That's the reference I saw, regarding the 6GB limit. Based on my experience with desktop machines, I don't understand it. (NOT saying it's wrong, just saying that I don't understand it.)

That person doesn't seem too sure of the result. Wouldn't it be easy to boot from a WIN98 floppy and then fdisk a 20 or 30 GB drive to multiple 5 or 6 GB drives? Thats what I used to do when I used MSDOS6.22 and it had a 2GB limit and I had a 10GB drive in use.

I think fdisk is good when the limitation is due to the O/S. However, when the limitation is due to the BIOS, then I don't think you can use fdisk since the computer can't even "see" the drive correctly.

Of course you are right. Don't know what I was thinking. It was a OS thing with DOS not a BIOS thing.