Thinkpad 600 Series and a few Questions

[Temetka]

Over the last few days I have had the pleasure of working on my friends Thinkpad 600. I am immediately struck by what cool little laptop it is. I really like the shape of. The keyboard is quite easy to type on, if a bit noisy. I think I just might pick one up. With the Pentium II architecture and upto 4MB VRAM it should be old school enough to run some of my older games that seem to have a problem with newer hardware.

That being said I have a few questions:

1. Do any of the 600 series support USB?
2. Which models have the 4MB NeoMagic card? Are the 2MB models upgradeable?
3. What is the fastest Pentium 2 CPU I can get for these, and what is it's SLSPEC? I know they are MMC-1 right?

Other than that I should be good. Man I'm typing this on my T60 (which is a great machine) but looking longingly at my friends 600. I've always liked these. From the speaker grills, to the more evident rubber paint coating. The lack of a Windows key is strangely comforting as well. Oh and the black OEM Pentium II CPU sticker is cool in its own right.

Thanks in advance.

[rkawakami]

1) All 600's have a single USB 1.1 port; located on the left side to the rear and usually protected by a plastic drop-down cover
2) All 600X systems have the 4MB VRAM NeoMagic video chip; the 600E has 2.5MB and the 600 has 2MB; don't believe that you can upgrade any of the video system without replacing the entire motherboard (and I believe that the 600/600E boards are significantly different than the 600X and won't go into each other's bases without some alterations)
3) Not an expert on 600-series CPU upgrades but the 600/600E used a PII, while the 600X has a PIII processor

More info can be found in the following "book" file: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pcinstitu ... twbook.pdf

[ms5133]

Fastest processor...

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-I ... 001AA.html

[Temetka]

Thank you Ray and ms5133.

I am very relieved to find that the 600 series features USB. USB 1.1 is fine for copying drivers and the odd file or two. I was also pretty sure about the PII 400 being the fastest PII available. I might be interested in going PIII, if so I should probably start with a 600X then so that way I have the slightly better video card.

[ms5133]

You can actually update a 600E to PIII

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopi ... nkpad+600e

[Temetka]

Yeah.

I'd want my L2 active all the time even if I am DOS or something. Therefore I *must* have full CPU support. So I guess a 600X is the only model that fully supports P3's out of the box? I don't want to use any L2 enabling programs unless, and only if they are used one time only to re-enable the L2 in the BIOS so that I never have to run that SW again.

Thanks.

[rkawakami]

Fastest factory 600X came with a 650Mhz SpeedStep CPU but are fairly rare. I understand that there's ways of putting a 850Mhz processor in there but may either be occasionally unstable or limited in speed (to 700Mhz). Search the Legacy forum and I'm sure you'll find lots of threads.

[Laptoplucknow]

I'd want my L2 active all the time even if I am DOS or something. Therefore I *must* have full CPU support. So I guess a 600X is the only model that fully supports P3's out of the box?

L2 can be enabled with most boot loader programs before your OS starts up. 600s (and very early 600Es)are limited by the 66 FSB. All other 600Es support the P3 and the 100 FSB "out of the box" but lack Speed Step capability. Not all 600Xs support Speed Step.

[whizkid]

Not all 600Xs support Speed Step.

Exactly right. Only the system boards that came with the 650MHz PIII have SpeedStep.

[ms5133]

For what its worth..my 600X 2646-8EU was originally a non-speedstep 500Mhz unit.

I was able to upgrade to a 850Mhz CPU that runs full speed on mains (700 on battery)

I do have to hit Fn F2 on boot up most of the time, but once running it is rock solid (WINXPP SP3) no heat issues at all.

The only other item that needed attention was the Intel CPU driver in device manager..Chose the middle one of the 3 options.


My T61 is my work machine, but at home the 600X is what I use to surf, watch videos, send E Mail and blab on forums.

[Temetka]

How does the 4MB chip handle with sites such as Youtube or hula? I think it should be ok with .MPG and .AVI files but I would assume a .MP4 file would choke it?

I am also considering something I haven't thought about in a while. I might get a Toshiba Portege. Those are really cool machines also. I do miss the M300 I used to own and it had a nice 4MB ATI chip in it also.

Still the 600 is a fast little machine. I just upgraded my friends HD from the stock 4GB HD it shipped with and replaced it with a 30GB drive I had laying around. Windows 2000 is much more responsive now with that drive.