Help re ThinkPad 760CD

[CornFlakes]

My first post here, and I have next to zero knowledge about laptops. Six years ago, I came into a ThinkPad 760CD which I never used. I have three networked desktops running FreeBSD in the basement, and thought of installing BSD on the ThinkPad. I would run an ethernet cable upstairs and use it there.

The ThinkPad is in pristine condition. It has a cdrom, harddrive, external floppy drive, and AC power adapter. The battery holds a charge for a short time, and it runs fine on AC. It won't boot from CD, and Smart Boot Manager doesn't work with it. I installed Windows 98SE by using a Windows start up floppy. I can start a BSD install from floppies, and have ordered an ethernet card so as to do the install from ftp. I say this hopefully. It seems to have 64mb memory, but it shows only 1.4gb on the HD.

Questions:

Was the 760 a decent computer in its day, and what could it be worth?

What might a larger HD cost, and some advice about purchase and installation?

I'm embarrassed to ask, but what are the two connectors, large one below and small one above the AC power connector?

The ethernet I ordered is a Megahertz card with built in jack, five bucks on Ebay. Hope it works.

Any advice is appreciated.

[phool@round]

First, welcome to the Forum CornFlakes!

Second, welcome to the Tankpad club......lol.

The 760 line at one time was the pinacle of the portable computerdom. Here is a post I found to show just how high end they where; here.

You said that the SmartBootMgr floppy isn't working for you? What is it doing or not doing? I've never had a problem booting the CD-Rom up with it.

My first laptop was given to me by my employer, it was a 760ED. When it came time for replacements I offered to buy mine. My employer simply said it's yours.......

I've bought a couple more off eBay for $20-$25 dollars shipped and with all their parts! They aren't worth much *right now*. One day they will be again. Keep yours running and in pristine condition.

The 760's where the first laptops to go into space, aboard the space shuttle, they still have a couple they use to this day.

I think you could probably get a 5.1GB disk in without the BIOS squawking. That's about as big as they came.

Here's a site with some specs; here. Take a look around the site, great site for general information.

As long as your network card isn't a cardbus card you'll be ok. I don't think the Megahertz cards are....... 32bit cards work in 95/98/NT4, 2K and XP only accept 16bit because of the PCMCIA TI chip having issues with the newer OS's. Linux, I've not had any problems.

Long white connector is the Dock/Port Replicator connector, small one is a MIDI/Joystick connector.

A larger hard drive shouldn't cost you too much but you'll need a different caddy connector for the larger drive. They crossed a few connections. The 3GB caddy will be all setup for a larger drive. They where 17mm high monsters back in the day, the smaller are 12.5mm high. EBay has them. While searching eBay check out the prices for the 760's. The best of the best 760 series was the 765D.

Any more info you wish to know just hollar.....! I have a 760XD that I use at least once a week for putzing around the net with. Kinda like driving an old car.......the kind with wooden spoke wheels......lol.

[CornFlakes]

Thanks for the help, phool@round.

About SmartBootManager: It would show error 0XAA immediately upon pressing enter, no wait for the CD drive. I tested it on an old relic I had built in '95, and it worked. Tested the BSD cd I had downloaded and burned, and it's also OK. The Thinkpad's floppy and cd drives work as I installed Win98. I searched this forum for an hour before posting, and read where someone claims that the older cd drives won't read cd's burned on computer, only cd's that are "commercially pressed."

Figured out that F1 enters the bios, but it's very strange. All I get are some diagram like graphics. No matter what I select, it shows two memory chips with 08198kb & 65152kb respectively. Then the machine hangs and needs another boot. Win98 works fine, but cannot read any cd I have burned.

My BSD install will be minimal, a simple window manager (JWM) no wallpaper and icons, Opera, and ABI Word. If it doesn't fit, thanks for the hard drive advice.

Now, I'm thinking about another ThinkPad for a low power consumption printer server. Thanks again, and have a happy new year.

[phool@round]

LOL....... I think it was me who posted that only pressed CD's are being read and so what I did was buy another Ultrabay Thick CD-Rom from the 765 series. They spin at 20X, hence have a stronger laser to read at higher speeds. That stronger laser can read through to goop in burned cd's. That solved the problem for me. I would ask at what speed are you burning your disc's? 1X is getting harder to find these days....... Some members have had no problems at all with burned discs. I wasn't one of them........

A floppy ftp install is probably the quickest and cheapest method. The BIOS that you entered is called "EZ Setup", not sure why it's hanging other than maybe the memory seems to be an issue. Mine will do the same thing at times. I like the little birdie as a cursor, kinda retro right there eh? If you can get to the "Exit" symbol before the BIOS hangs you'll get into the main menu.......

[CornFlakes]

It's been interesting.

I also found the pressing vs laser burning info on Google. Burning at 4x didn't work. Also read that the older cd's were thinner. My old Windows 98 cd mikes at .043 while my new cd rw's are .051, so maybe the laser just doesn't get through.

I recall having the same problem when I upgraded the relic I made in 1996, but didn't think much about it at the time. I just replaced the cd drive with one I had laying around. The old box also has a 1.4gb HD, and I just found out that it won't hold a FreeBSD install with a GUI.

A larger hard drive for the ThinkPad would be cost prohibitive, so the project is to find a small Linux distro that doesn't require a cd install.

Thanks again for helping.

[phool@round]

As you know...... I feel your pain. I don't own a burner that can burn at 1X in any of my boxes, even my Mac's burn at a minimum of 4X. I had this same problem when (trying) to install Solaris 10 and Aurora Linux on my old dog Sun Ultra2, the 4X discs I burned where too much for the SCSI CD-Rom drive. I had to upgrade and luckily for me SCSI DVD drives are cheap these days.......

Good luck with your project. Something I've done a time or two is to put my drive in a USB external, hook it up to another running box and load the OS onto another partition. Then I boot up with a floppy and head over to the partition and install from there. DSL will fit your drive, there's even an older version for i586. It's a bit of a learning curve compiling apps against it but it's tiny.

[whizkid]

Hard drives up to 8GB should work fine in that machine. I've used 12GB and 20GB drives in my 750P, but the boot partition has to be in the first 1024 cylinders (usually 8GB).

I know you're a BSD fan, but there's a lot of good info on getting Linux to run on ThinkPads at www.thinkwiki.org, and some may well apply to your machine. (And I just got Ubuntu 6.10 LTS installed on that 750P with 36MB RAM and a 5.1GB disk installed.)

BTW, which 760CD do you have? The 7-digit TYPE from the case or EZSetup will tell us a lot about the machine.

[CornFlakes]

BTW, which 760CD do you have? The 7-digit TYPE from the case or EZSetup will tell us a lot about the machine.

It's a 760CD type 9546, it says on underside, plus S95-3813-0.

I'm looking at small Linux distros, and have installed DSL to HD on my old Relic desktop to try out. It's an AMD 100mhz with 1.4gb HD, 32mb memory. What I'm looking for is a distro that can be installed with just the command prompt, and then Xorg, window manager, browser, text editor, and any other applications to be installed individually which is how I have done FreeBSD.

[whizkid]

You can certainly do that with Ubuntu. Use the alternate install CD, and it will install only a command prompt if you like. It's what I have on my 750P right now, with no time to get anything else working.

9546 is a good start, but all seven digits are helpful. Can you get that from EZSetup/BIOS?

In any case, ThinkWiki.org will have details about your machine, such as the video chip, which is a Trident Cyber9320. I wonder if it's VESA-compliant (my 750P is not, sadly).

[CornFlakes]

You can certainly do that with Ubuntu. Use the alternate install CD, and it will install only a command prompt if you like. It's what I have on my 750P right now, with no time to get anything else working.

** My CD drive is of no use for installation. Might as well not have one. **

9546 is a good start, but all seven digits are helpful. Can you get that from EZSetup/BIOS?

** Bios part # 05K3093 - Model/Submodel/Revision = FC/01/00 **

[whizkid]

As you know, the CD won't boot, but it can still be used for installation. That should work with Linux as well as xBSD besides Windows.

TWBOOK.PDF shows only four 760CDs: 9546 -U11, -U1A, -U13, -U1C. One difference is whether you have a P90 or P120, but either will work. The other difference is whether the machine came with Windows95 only, or it had DOS and Win3.11 and OS/2, and again that won't matter.

The book also shows that the machine came with a 1.2GB hard disk. That's pretty tiny for Linux, but my command line-only Ubuntu only needed about 400MB during the install. It can be done, but it's not easy.

As noted, a larger disk will be handy. In my 750P, I have a 5.1GB disk, and that is in an original caddy with no changes. With larger drives (such as a 12GB drive), I had to bend a pin on the drive because the 750P's master/slave polarity is reversed with some drives, and some OSes won't boot off a slave drive. I tried cutting a trace on the small flexible connector in the caddy, but that didn't work for me.

64MB RAM is as fully loaded as that machine can get, and it may run X.org, if the machine is VESA compliant. The ThinkWiki has links to other sites with articles about installing Linux on the 760 series, some of which have that same video chip. Unfortunately, none of those are for current software.

Keep us posted!... and you might want to look up the Linux ThinkPad Mailing List.