Thinkpads Forum

... thinking of picking one up - if its cheap enough - to futz around with really. Are these fairly solid in the TP tradition.
Spec says 2.5MB VRAM - databases claim the LCD can do XGA at 16M colours (don't see how this is possible) .... 16-bit yes ...
Do you reckon it could boot from a IBM PCMCIA SCSI adapter + generic SCSI CD drive that I have kickin around ?

TIA

I have a pair of 570Es I got recently. I was able to get a pair of ultrabases from a countryman of yours and so far so good. They feel solid enough. The only problem is that one of them had a slightly loose hinge.

The machines came right up and worked with the ultrabases just fine. Next step is to install hard drives and install windows (I'll be using W2K). I'll let you know how it goes.

Very sweet machines overall, however:

a) Problematic hinges

b) Known for video failures, as ridiculous as it may sound.

c) Because of the thin lid, LCDs very prone to spotting.

I'd get an ultrabase for it, they're very cheap nowadays and work great...

My experiences only.

slaz wrote:Spec says 2.5MB VRAM - databases claim the LCD can do XGA at 16M colours (don't see how this is possible)

16M colours is also known as 24 bit color. Requires 3 bytes per pixel. Since an XGA panel is 1024 x 768, the math works out as 1024 x 768 x 3 = 2,359,296 or just a shade under 2.5MB

16M colours is also known as 24 bit color. Requires 3 bytes per pixel. Since an XGA panel is 1024 x 768, the math works out as 1024 x 768 x 3 = 2,359,296 or just a shade under 2.5MB

Dooh ... of course - I'd forgotten 24-bit - I was fixated on 32-bit - which doesn't fit into 2.5MB ...

OK thanks guys - I'll look out for hinge/lid probs .....

My experience with the hinge problems is that you can remove the covers on the hinge and use some pliers to squeeze the pin back into the hinge. That seems to tighten them back up.
I also have some with the video problem. Every time you reboot the screen goes white until you tap the power button, then it comes back.

the 570 has the same footprint as a 600 but is 10 mm
thinner: this translates into a big screen/keyboard
with pleasant typing position.

[censored] - I'm about to pick up a 570E ... but I forgot - the 570(E) doesn't have on-board ethernet .. does it ? ... and my stock of cardbus ethernet cards is down to almost zero ... grrr ...

[quote="slaz"]the 570(E) doesn't have on-board ethernet .. does it ? ... [quote]
It does not, but it does have a USB port. You could plug in a wireless USB adapter.

tom lightbody wrote:the 570 has the same footprint as a 600 but is 10 mm
thinner: this translates into a big screen/keyboard
with pleasant typing position.

Also, that makes it less solid than the 600 series. I had a near-mint 570E last year, whose base felt pretty soft. Another issue that I noticed was that the bottom of the laptop got very warm during normal use.

I think the 570E is one of the best-looking Thinkpads, but other than that not a good laptop.

OK folks - well I picked up that 570E. First thing was that it did indeed have a hinge problem :-/ ... but as it had a bit more memory (128MB rather than the 64 I expected) + a cardbus ethernet card I hadn't expected + he rounded the price down a bit .... well I couldn't just walk away <g>.
Looked like CMOS battery needed replacing - OK no biggie - main battery completely dead (as I expected) ... but booted into win98 OK, other plastics good, kb good, etc ....

Well I took the HD out - put the win2k i386 folder on there, and set up win2k. No probs ... been running quite sometime, thrashed it a bit - no probs.

So - to the thorny issue of the (right side) hinge. It was "flapping around" by a couple of mm (but the left one had enough friction for it be useable still). But thats an itch that had to scratched ... get the HMM ... start stripping. Turns out the hinge itself had "split" - the pressed steel bit had come adrift from the die-cast bit :-/ No chance of fixing that ...... well I wedged a bit of soft plastic between the remaining hinge upright and a post on the bottom plastic - thats actually improved it somewhat .... (well until that bit works loose and finds its way somewhere near the CPU heatsink and starts melting ... ooooeeerrrr .... <g>.

Well while it was in bits, I thought - hmmm - that modem card is actually a mini-pci device - lets try a Intel 2100 card pulled from my T41 ... but - same deal as when I tried that card in the T20's mini-pci slot ... "resource conflict" :-/
Anyone know whats actually going on with this ? I tried disabling a couple of things like par and com ports... no dice. Is it a memory address conflict maybe ? (Doesn't really seem to be an IRQ problem).

Oh - and the main battery ... as it was toally dead - I thought - maybe I could do a DIY re-cell job .... got the pack to bits OK ... then start googling for cells - but whats happened ? Is it now illegal to sell the bare cells or something ? - Can't find anywhere selling them ..... anyone have any leads on this ?

TIA ....

For the batteries:
http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.400

Maybe your 2100 card is bad? You can replace the modem with a different card. I put a Ralink wireless card in a 570E in place of the modem and it works fine.

Hmmm - it'd be surprising ... it was working perfectly before getting pulled from the T41 - just got pulled to update to 2200b/g ...

Must be some quirk of the 570E and T20 BIOS's methinks. Seems like a few folk have other brands of mini-pci wi-fi card working OK too ...
On your 570E, was any BIOS hack reqd. ?

TIA.

Nope. Plugged it in and it works.
I was going to try an Intel ethernet card but I was running Win98 on that machine and I could not find drivers for the card. Now it has XP but I have no Intel ethernet card to try and I am happy with the wireless card the way it is.

Probalby to late to help slaz, but others might have the same problem:

slaz wrote:Well while it was in bits, I thought - hmmm - that modem card is actually a mini-pci device - lets try a Intel 2100 card pulled from my T41 ... but - same deal as when I tried that card in the T20's mini-pci slot ... "resource conflict" :-/
Anyone know whats actually going on with this ? I tried disabling a couple of things like par and com ports... no dice. Is it a memory address conflict maybe ? (Doesn't really seem to be an IRQ problem).

The 570/570E is very special about WiFi cards.

Cards with Broadcom chipset BCM4306KBF work (they do in my 570E), as Cisco MPI350 seem to do, too.
All (?) others give the aformentioned resource conflict.