Thinkpads Forum

A year ago I saw on eBay a "solid state disk" module that was claimed to replace a small laptop harddisk with an SD card. The HDD of my IBM Thinkpad 760XD has only 2.1GB and I have no clue how long it will last. Is it possible to replace this harddrive with an SD card adapter? I also own a 760EL from that I transplanted better parts (e.g. sound card) to the 760XD (that I bought incomplete), thus it currently lacks the HDD.

Has anybody ever done this upgrade? Would it be worth the effort to avoid HDD wear trouble or swap in another OS on a different card?

How reliable are SD cards when there is continuous write access? I read that flash memory has problems with it. However the famous EEE-PC subnotebook also uses a 4GB flash drive instead of HDD. Nowadays even 16 and 32GB SD cards exist (yet expensive, but prices fall), those would make quite a huge shockproof HDD for such a system. A diskless 760EL could also make a good diary machine so far SD cards are reliable.

I just posted a topic like this. XD Nobody told me if they had done it before... I think I'll try it.

Hi OldManClayton,

I've just done such a conversion on my 600E & I would say it's worthwhile if you know your way around MsDos based Operating Systems. I installed Win 98SE on a 512mb Compact Flash Card & it works great. I bought 3 of the longer versions of the CF carrier from regan_neville on eBay (Hong Kong Based but fast Postage to Uk).

It's nigh impossible to install the shorter, or dual version without stripping the 600's down, but it could be interesting to do a dual boot project with Win 98SE & Win ME on 2 CF Cards ?

If you type ' CF to 44 pins IDE adapter 4 Laptop as 2.5'' HDD Bootable ' or just part of the above into the eBay search bar, you should find it okay. Less then 5GBP each. Alternatively, go to community in My eBay & search for a member (regan_neville)

I also installed Windows 2000 Pro on a 4gb CF Card in the same Laptop & in a500mhz, 600X, but overall performance is actually slower than a normal Hdd!! In my opinion, it's better sticking with Windows 98SE for a pretty fast O.S. Or you could just install Linux, but that's not what I wanted to do.

My current configuration at the moment is : Ibm Thinkpad 600E, 400mhz Pentium II Cpu, 128mb + 64mb + 32mb On-Board, D-Link 802.11b Wi-Fi Card, Cd Rom, Win98SE & running FireFox 2.0.

There are still websites that you can get the 'Unofficial Sp2 for Win98SE' from, also the Universal Usb drivers are available. I think I have almost everything you can still get for Win98SE, & I'm more than willing to share it, but to anyone who's reading this, please let me know if there's more out there.

If you, or anyone else, needs any more info, please let me know.

I'm thinking about trying Windows ME next on both the 600X & the 600E with a 4gb CF Card. Hopefully, it won't be as slow as Windows 2000, but I'll let you know.

I'm actually using the old 600E (SSD) to type this out !!!

bdc43@hotmail.com

I did this with a TP760EL using a 2 GB SanDisk CF but ran into trouble with a 8GB CF. I am wondering about HD size limitations. The 760EL had a 2.1 GB HD with 2 partitions when I purchased it, I also bought a 760ED wit a 3.1 GB HD also using 2 partitions. When I tried the 8 GB CF, I partitioned it as a 1 GB FAT16 partition and the balance as a FAT32 partition, after problems, I reduced the second partition to 2 GB but it made no difference. The symptom is that DOS will not complete its load from floppy (using either Windows 98 startup disk or DOS 5.0) but a stand alone test program Tuff Test can read and write both the floppy and HD with no problems.

there is a BIOS limitation of, i think, 6 gigs..

Glad others are starting to find out about this It was one of my 1st ideas on how to keep these old machines alive as tiny working ide hard disks are becoming scarce.

760's & HD size: different caddy adaptors: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=97393

760's with CF SSD's + longer battery life: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=96357

Search in google for: site:forum.thinkpads.com CF IDE for lots of people trying flash based media as a HD replacement

that 1st post i linked to has links to the CF to IDE44 adapter I use in my 760's with pic of the different caddy connectors.

As far as the SD adapter, you must ensure a quality SD2IDE adapter is used, as any wear leveling will be the job of the adapter. CF cards have it built in so any cheap adapter will work. (that one I linked to on DealExtreme I can personally vouch for)

The eee prolly has wear leveling built into the hardware. dunno as I ain't researched it.

With 98SE you can use your extra ram above 64MB to create a ramdisk to put the pagefile on. (My 760XL with 98 has 104MB, I make a 32MB ramdisk to put "temp" and pagefile on for use with CF hard disks) ... use in config.sys

DEVICE=C:\DOS\himem.sys
DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 32767 512 256 /e

then in autoexec.bat:

md X:\temp
set tmp=X:\temp
set temp=X:\temp

where X is the ramdrive letter, then in windows, move the pagefile to the ramdisk as well. This will greatly lower the number of writes to the flash based drive. Similar tricks can be done in linux with the tmp filesystem.

In DOS the limit of the hard disk will be 8GB (4 2GB partitions), but Linux only needs it's boot area below 8GB.. then you can use much larger drives... think:

2GB DOS (C:\)
2GB DOS Data (D:\)
4GB Linux root/system mounted on /
???GB Linux Data (the rest mounted as /home)

BillMorrow wrote:there is a BIOS limitation of, i think, 6 gigs..

6 GB is a strange limit. If I had a 2 GB first partition and a 6 GB second, could the TP boot to the first?
Can you provide any more info on preparing disks for the TP760? I know from experience that there is much more to it than partitioning the drive before it can be formated but am not close to figuring it out.

Linux is the only way to BOOT a drive over 6GB in a 760, to get dos use syslinux to boot a floppy image (then you can run dos stuff like games or the PS2 utility from the DOS partitions.

Linux does all the correct translations of the drive, the linux boot files must still reside inside the 6GB machine barrier.

If you want a windows 9x OS, then use the 4GB CF cards, it's easy enough to keep spare drives in the bay as there is plenty of room with only the CF adapter. I use velcro to stick the spares to the memory cover and bottom of the keyboard. For more space, you can also use a PC Card microdrive adapter (I use a 31L9315 I got from eBay... here is a pic... http://gg104013.dyndns.org/ebay2011/ibm/CIMG7892k.jpg) or even get the ultrabay 2nd hard disk adapter, 29H9295, although that has been in my ebay saved searches for a while now with no hits.

Anyhoo, you can install linux from a bootable CD using Smart Boot Manager, install it to the boot record of the HD/CF, then use it to boot a Debian netinst cd with a pcmcia network card... you can partition the drive to leave space for DOS apps, and put Linux under the 6GB(maybe 8GB mark, aint tried), use syslinux to boot any DOS's you want, they will see the DOS partitions with all the dos games/apps/utils.

2GB dos stuff
2GB more dos stuff
2GB linux
2GB linux data

Even using GRUB to boot dos partitions, I cannot boot MS-DOS or Win 9X bootsectors ON the drive if over 6GB, I have to use syslinux to boot floppy images then use the DOS partitions. Nice part of using syslinux is I can have as many different versions of DOS as I want, 1 floppy image for each version stored in Linux under /boot