Thinkpads Forum

Found this in the old storage. It boots up but hangs at the windows 95 main screen.
I dont remember how this was configures but I believe there was an external CD rom. Question is how can I re install windows 95 on this classic?

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l201/ ... oard01.jpg

You will need an external PCMCIA CD-ROM (1969?1968? something like that) or a FDD and a set of 22 floppies with Win 95.

The aforementioned CD-ROM requires a driver to be downloaded prior to use...

That's the way I remember it, but proceed with caution since it's actually been years since I've done it.

Good luck.

There is also another way of reinstaling win 95 on a 701C, but it is rather annoying and lenghtly. You simply take out the HDD from the laptops caddy (but you will need a Torx T6 or T7 screwdriver to deal with the screws). Then you place the drive to another notebook and simply instal Windows (alternatively you can connect the drive to a standard PC via an IDE 3,5" to 2,5" converter but be careful - I lost one of my hard disks that way because I placed the converter in a wrong way). When the instalation is finished, you HAVE TO copy the whole WIN95 directory on the hard drive. Finally, place the HDD back to your ThinkPad and start it. Now when windows detects a new device you will need to point the apropriate .cab file in the WIN95 directory that you placed earlier on the drive. Once you are finished with the drivers, you can delete WIN95 directory (it won't be needed).

I hope that everything is clear for you. If not, feel free to PM me - I will try to do my best to help you.

Is there a floppy drive on that machine? If "yes," the the easiest way to re-install WIN95 (IMO) is to buy a parallel port CD ROM. You can probably find one on eBay for $5 - 10. You load the DOS drivers for the CD ROM from a floppy and viola! A working CD drive that you can use to load WIN95... without taking anything apart.

And when you're done, you still have a CD ROM you can use on that machine any time you want.

second the parallel port option. if you can't find a cd-rom with that interface, consider buying a used parallel zip drive and at least one disk (duh!). You can then manually copy the Win9x files to the zip disk and transfer it to the 701c's hard drive. You'll have to create a dos boot disk with the zip drivers, copy, fdisk and format utilities first.

Wow, I remember doing this years ago.

Btw, someone is giving away a beat up 701c in the marketplace to a good home.

Has anyone ever entertained the thought of gutting a 701c and installing an ITX motherboard with a modern core2duo or even a pentium M and a new 10.4" LCD with XGA display? It'd be a cool project.

Thomcat wrote: Has anyone ever entertained the thought of gutting a 701c and installing an ITX motherboard with a modern core2duo or even a pentium M and a new 10.4" LCD with XGA display? It'd be a cool project.

That's an interesting thought as I just happen to have a spare dead 701c now.

I also agree with the parallel options which i have also tried. I bought a parallel casing for $5 from weirdstuff dot com. Older notebook should atleast floppy drive.

"Convert internal 5 1/4" IDE (CD-ROM) drives into external drives using a parallel port. Includes audio connectors, parallel cable, mounting screws, and power cable. DRIVERS ARE REQUIRED!"

driver url is listed under the item.

It work wonderful with my old 380z.

Any idea what this machine could be worth, if I decide to sell it to someone with more time bringing this back to life.

$50?

Very nice find! I'd agree with the $50 comment, even though it doesn't boot properly, which might just be an OS problem.

I bought my 701CS for $24.99 shipped on eBay, and all I had to do was add a hard drive.

I got my 701 C for the equivalent of 60 $ (it came with a HDD, 100% good battery pack and no AC power suply - all I had to do was simply install an OS on it). So I think that if the problem with booting is esay to cope with, 50 $ is a fairly good price.