Thinkpads Forum

Hey all! I'm hoping that someone located in Orange County (or LA even) who has a 701c or 701cs and has the ability to install an OS on the drive (via floppy or PCMCIA CD-ROM) might be able to give me a hand in getting a copy of Windows 95 or Warp 4 on my 701c. I have a 540MB drive module in it now and don't really plan on upgrading. I just want to get Win95 or Warp 4 on it until I can get the parts I need to do it myself.

My wife has forbade me from making any "gadget" purchases, so I can't just order a floppy module or CD-ROM drive from eBay right now

Thanks for the potential assistance!

Tyler

Do you have a 2.5" USB enclosure or 3.5"-to-2.5" adapter? If so, use that to connect the 701c HD to your PC.
Then format the HD format x:/s (where x is the HD) and copy the installation files over into a directory on the HD.
Put it back in the 701c, boot up (should get you to the C:\ prompt) and install from there.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Do you have a 2.5" USB enclosure or 3.5"-to-2.5" adapter? If so, use that to connect the 701c HD to your PC.
Then format the HD format x:/s (where x is the HD) and copy the installation files over into a directory on the HD.
Put it back in the 701c, boot up (should get you to the C:\ prompt) and install from there.

Wow! I had chosen not to take apart the enclosure to make sure I didn't damage the drive, and based on my estimations, the drive itself was not a standard drive. I guess you that shows me how pokey I can be, even after nearly 20 years as a professional nerd! Heck, I'd been looking at threads on drive upgrades. Feh!

Thanks so much!!

Just make sure you don't try an NTFS format, but use FAT32 instead.
Once you installed [whatever], you can delete that install directory.

Well. I'm kinda stumped. I'm usually a rather nerdy guy with loads of options at hand, but this time I'm not sure what to do. It all started with a missing power supply to the only monitor I have in the house. Since I can't load up the one system I have with a floppy drive on it, I can't load up Win98SE and run FDISK on the drive to change to drive letter to C:\. FanTAStic, yes? The only machine I can work with right now is a MacBook Pro with Windows XP SP3 installed in Boot Camp, and I don't have a floppy module for the 701c.

Whee!

Ask a friend who has a PC with a floppy drive, to burn you a CD with all the W98 files.
Then use that to copy the CD files into a directory on the ole hard disk (which should then be in the USB case).
Never mind the Drive letter. It will automatically be C once you put it (only formatted, with the install directory) back into the 701c.

Maybe go back to nerd-school???

Sadly there's no campus located in The OC I suppose I'll have to take a remedial course via correspondence!

When I stick the drive back into the 701c, it doesn't recognize it. I've tried reconfiguring the BIOS to try Smart, Conventional, and direct drive booting and it has no effect. I was able to use EaseUS Partition Manager Home Edition (pretty nice free tool) to format the disk and set it as active, but it still won't see the disk on the 701c.

Zowie!

This is a fairly common problem on ThinkPad hard drives. Your 701C is probably using a different arrangement of heads/cylinders/tracks than your desktop. The solution is to run fdisk and format on the 701C first, then put the drive in the desktop to copy the files, then return it to the 701C. I don't know how you're going to do that without a floppy drive. I've seen them for as little as five bucks on eBay--you may have to skip a latte one day Also ask here and on the Marketplace forum.

I make my double shot lattes at home, thank you very much Heck, I even grind my own beans (Jose's from CostCo). Since I do not have the floppy option at the moment, I'm trying to use Parallels 3 on my Mac to install Windows 98SE to better manage getting what I need on the drive for the 701c. At least from there I can properly format the drive with the correct switch which does what its supposed to do. Yay! I even downloaded fresh copies of DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11, and even WfW 3.11 from MSDN in case I need to do full installs. Whee!!

Its funny, though. The system which was on the drive when I got it was DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.1 (oddly missing krnl386.exe so it wouldn't start) developed for McDonald's reps.

BTW, if nobody mentioned it yet, make sure you get the BIOS update from the Lenovo website (Click here) to update your BIOS; if it's the original 1995 version, it will not support the functions needed to run Windows 95 (much less Windows 98SE), so I would recommend getting that done before you plan on install the OS.

Also, make sure you leave some space (I'm not sure how much) as FAT16, so the 701c can properly hibernate when you close the lid; or at least I think that what it does. Kudos to somebody that can confirm this detail.

I have a question similar to yours on my thread; I'll be eager to get a reply to yours or my question soon

- Bovine Mage

PS Here's the 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure I was thinking about buying (Over here) It's a pretty simple process to get that old IDE hard drive out of your system and into one of these, and then you can use it like a USB drive and put stuff on it, rather than using parallel to do it. If you need help removing your hard drive caddy, you can look on my thread for the service guide; just download it and look at the page with the details for disassembling the 701c.

Keep in mind that the 701C uses a different floppy cable than the 560/570/600/770 series machines.

@BovineMage: I believe you're right regarding hibernation. I remember that issue when I first loaded up Win98 on my good 701C.

BovineMage wrote:Also, make sure you leave some space (I'm not sure how much) as FAT16, so the 701c can properly hibernate when you close the lid; or at least I think that what it does. Kudos to somebody that can confirm this detail.

Confirming your FAT16 info for hibernation, see here: http://bharucha.com/tp701/
Scroll down to: Upgrade information - disk drives

They claim here it's the same: http://www.powerbrixx.com/ibm-thinkpad- ... -p-78.html

RealBlackStuff wrote:They claim here it's the same: http://www.powerbrixx.com/ibm-thinkpad- ... -p-78.html

RBS, I'm pretty sure that site is wrong, especially since they're using a pic of the enclosure that uses the 600 series drive. The cable isn't removable on that. The 701 will use the other type of IBM external floppy (the one with the removable cable), but it requires a different cable. The plug on the 701c is about 3x as big. Google came up with 04H6916 as the FRU for that correct cable.