Thinkpads Forum

Just bought an elderly i series 1200 to play about with. I have used 4 tower pc,s with a netgear adsl wired router and they have all accessed the internet with hardly any user intervention, so I thought the laptop would be the same.I plugged the Lan cable into the lan port but there is no internet light on the router . I went into Device manager and there is no network adaptor shown. I have been into the Bios and cant find any reference to disabling/enabling the lan port.The lady who I bought it from had used it on wireless( Belkin Router) The wire less usb adapter is with the laptop Should I continue trying to get the lan sorted or go for a wireless router ? I heard wireless can be problematic . Any help would be apreciated Pablo126

Hi, welcome to the forum!

What is your seven character type number? It may be that even though you have an lan port, there may not be a network card install in the computer. I have a T20 that has both LAN and Modem ports, but only one PCI slot, which originally came populated with a modem card only. You may have something similar.

Welcome, Here is what I know about older systems:

What is the operating system? windows 98/ME it is easiest to just restart it with the cable plugged in, windows 2k, xp should automatically connect and work. Wireless with windows xp is a breeze, and with 98 and 2000, provided the card manufacturer supplies a driver, they are fairly simple too, just not as "intergrated" - there is the occational problem, which I normally solve by putting the system into standby and letting it re-connect.

Good luck

Jack

Hello Neil and craigmontHunter.Thanks for your replies ,pleased to meet you both. Idont know the 7 figure number, where would I find it?I,m not sure if there is an inbuilt network system. There is a slot for a network card so I will get a network card and try that next.I went into Device manager and ther is no mention of a network adaptor which is a bit peculiar. I have been trying to find out if it is disabled but cannot find any reference to enabling/disabling the Lan port(including in the bios) The operating system is Xp. As I understand it the network card will have a Lan port on it which I should then be able to use my Netgear wired router. If that does,nt work Ill go for a wireless router.Thank you both for your help. Stan.

Hi Stan. The machine type/model will be on a sticker on the bottom of the machine. It will be a 7 digit alpha-numeric like; 2653-31U. The 2653 is the machine type, and the 31U is the model.

Hello Neil +craig..... I bought a network card with a Lan socket on it and tried to access the internet . I used the same router (netgear 602) which I have used on 4 desktop pc,s they all went on line with hardley any user interaction. But I had no luck with the laptop . it was asking for all sorts of data some of which I could,nt understand. The last straw was when it asked for the win xp disk , I put the disk in the cd rom but for some reason it would not recognise it, Maybe it had got scratched or just aged. So in desperation I rebooted with a linux disk (freespire) and Hey Presto it fired up straight away with no input at all from me !! It was a " live" cd so although it was slow at least it did work. I,m going to get a bigger hdd (the present one is only about 6Gig then I,ll install several os,s on it . I,m very impressed with the way all the main components can be changed just by sliding them in to position , Much easier than stripping down a normal pc and wrestling with cables and screws .I found the 7 digit number its on a bar code theres 2 of them ....Type 1161-11G and S/N 55-xxxxx So we can assume this is problem solved although I will have another go at XP. I like it for photography but I have found linux less troublesome . Thanks to all 3 of you its good to share ones problems it seems to clarify solutions. Stan

Admin edit: Serial number removed

Good to see that you were able to work through you problem. BTW, here is the description of your Thinkpad as it was shipped from the factory (oh, so long ago):

Product: ThinkPad i Series 1200 1161-11G
Original description: Celeron 550MHz (128KB), 32MB RAM, 5.0GB HDD, 12.1 SVGA(800x600) HPA LCD, 24x-10x CD-ROM, Modem, NiMH battery, WinMe

So, it looks like your original problem was indeed the lack of LAN support. You made the right move acquiring the network card. And, congratulations of your discovery of what a great OS LInux can be! It was designed from the beginning to be a network OS, while networking seems to have been an after thought for Windows. As you have discovered, drivers...and more drivers, must be installed in Windows for most anything to work. But, many of the popular Linux distros have fairly good hardware support built in.

Anyway, I don't know if we were much help, but we're always happy to try. Thinkpads are something we all enjoy using and writing about.

Hello Niel. Its good to know there are others interested in our problems, Hopefully I will be able to help others sometime I,ve dabbled quite a bit with linux all the popular distros , but i just cant get on with the command line, I think it must be like studying chinese from an old book with half the pages missing Luckily most of the popular distros are usable without the command line a good thing for people like me !! Any way thanks again to all of you for your help and encouragement . Stan