Thinkpads Forum

I was given this little gem which had a 366Mhz P2 chip, 192MB RAM and a 3.2GB HDD.
I was amazed it was running XP Pro SP2, which I updated to SP3 and though it worked, it was obviously struggling big time once I had installed AVG 9.0 Free and kept telling me there was only 82MB of HDD space left!!
I transferred the installation to a 20GB disk to give it room to breathe, but it was still struggling, so I upped the RAM to the max, (2x128 plus the "nailed in" 32MB giving me a massive 288MB!)
I also found out that whoever had put XP on it had evidently used a volume licence key which had since been withdrawn, since I was getting a "This copy of Windows is not legal" notice lol!

At this point, I thought I would take the chance to try Linux, which has always intrigued me, but I don't really think I'm clever enough to use it!

I installed Mint 9 (Isadora) Lxde, on the old 3.2GB drive, possibly a bad recommendation, but I've managed to get my wireless PCMICA card working, and also the sound....which was a mammoth struggle and it works....albeit slowly!

Took it on holiday with me and just in case, I also took the Mint installation disk, a small thumb drive with the wireless card driver and instructions on how to re-instigate the sound, and for good measure, the other HDD with Win XP Pro on it!

Thinking I had covered any and all possible disaster scenario's, I confidently set off on my travels looking forward to evenings spent with my TP!!

Second day....switched on and was presented with an animated line drawing that represented a "Floppy drive" instructing me to insert a disk (Wot disk!) whilst pressing "F1"!

The machine doesn't have a floppy drive, just a CD so I tried inserting the Linux bootable mint 9 disk to no avail.
Changed the HDD and tried the Windows installation, just in case it was a corruption of the Linux MBR that was preventing it from loading, but no, it was just as before.

I've grown fond of this little machine built like the proverbial Brick Khazi and though I don't want to invest money in it, I would like to restore it to health!

What's wrong?
Is it "terminal"?
Do I need a Floppy Drive?
Do I need to find a bespoke Floppy drive to swap with the CD unit, or could I cobble together a standard unit from an old PC just to sort this problem?

Admin note: Corrected "e600" to "600e" and added picture warning in subject line

Not to worry, the 600 series always show that floppy drawing when they can't find a boot drive. My suggestion would be to press and hold F1 while you power on to go into BIOS and "initialize". That's something that usually should be done anytime you change hard drives with these ThinkPads. While in there you might want to re-set the boot order, just to make sure you have that the way you want it.

Could also be a case of some of the HDD pins not making contact. Are you using a caddy for the drive, with screws? While not absolutely necessary, it does make alignment easier.

Or, could be something else entirely.

Oh! And welcome to the forum. I also have a 600E that still gets used almost daily. They are rugged little ThinkPads for sure.

Thanks for the welcome Neil!
Well, I did do what you suggest, but although it takes me to the time and date set screen as normal; before this happened, I could use the keyboard to input the correct date and time, now I have to use the trackpoint and the little flappy bird!
(What were those early programmers smoking?)

Once that is set, I'm instructed to re-boot, but once the "Thinkpad" screen appears, there is no associated disk activity that would indicate that it was loading an OS.
After about 30 seconds, I get the Floppy Drive line drawing again requesting "Feed Me, Feed Me"!

What leads me to suspect there is no BIOS, is that When Installing Linux Mint 9, amongst the geeky stuff it reports is something that says it's detected IBM BIOS (seemingly this is something different to normal BIOS) and it warns that "The IBM BIOS EPROM may be irretrievably damaged" or some such warning!

I only remember vaguely, but it used to scare me witless!
Now I suspect that It has happened!

Regarding the HDD's, I always screw them into the caddy, and have inspected the pins on both drives and all appear to be undamaged.
Regarding setting the boot order...I wish!
I just can't enter what passes for BIOS on this machine anymore.
Again leading me to believe that there is none to enter!!

there HAS to be a bios or it would be bricked..

i THINK you hold down the F1 key while booting to get into the bios..

it MIGHT be that somehow the existing bios lost or "forgot" the boot order so thats what i would look at first but its a long shot..

i'm not sure what floppy it might be seeking but thats a sure indication of something wrong..

from reading your posts it DID work with both of these HDD's at one time so something changed of died in the interim..

i'm out of ideas since the last 600E i has was YEARS ago..
very tough thinkpads, ibm sold over a million of them i believe..

Thanks Bill both for your post and the pm.

I know I'm just clutching at straws here, but if the BOIS are still "there", they're doing a good job of hiding!
On the recommendation of various folks, I've systematically booted whilst "jabbing" each and every "F" key, similarly, Iv'e booted whilst holding down each one....through all of which the machine was totally oblivious......"bless it"
I've removed the battery and the CMOS battery for half an hour to "clear" any residual settings.
Even "bootable" CD's are ignored, the drive (which blinks on boot) never spins up to read from them.

The sinister thing since it stopped working, is that when it gives me error 161 and163, I am presented with the time/date page and regardless of whether it's correct or not, I used to be able to change the data with the keyboard, now it's only recognising "the bird", via the trackpoint!

Thinking this might indicate a stuck key or failed keyboard, I tried an external ps2 one... still not recognised.

Am I right in presuming that in the event that BIOS is corrupt or otherwise not working, only a floppy drive would work without any drivers?

(Just trying to understand why it is specifically asking for a "floppy disk" when it has a CD drive)

I'm not sure what to make of your BIOS woes. However, one possible culprit for all manner of strange and inexplicable BIOS/time behaviours, especially ones that are somehow associated with errors 161 and 163, is a weak or dying CMOS battery. An old 600E that has never had its CMOS battery replaced since it was bought in the 1990's would definitely be a candidate for such a problem.

The CMOS battery is just a regular CR2025 (or maybe 2032?), but it has some leads welded to it and then it has been wrapped in plastic. You can find it under your memory cover, and you can reach it after you pull your memory out. Maybe you can test the voltage? I ordered a couple CMOS batteries for my 600X's recently from eBay: they are very cheap. I would advise against trying to create one yourself, because there is a risk of explosion associated with soldering a lead to a lithium battery. Some folks have reported success simply using electrical tape, though, and that might work for testing purposes.

If your CMOS battery is good, then I think you should get a specific error during boot up if you have a keyboard problem. Otherwise, you should be able to get into your BIOS by pressing and holding F1 just after you see the memory count finish, just before the IBM screen appears, and then holding it until the BIOS screen opens up. The appearance of the flappy bird suggests that you do indeed have a BIOS. It would be very, very unlikely for it to be corrupted, and yet still be able to show you the flappy bird and date counter. The process of getting into the BIOS will be interrupted if your date and time need to be set, and your date and time will need to be set every time you boot if your CMOS battery has gone bad.

Phil.

Thanks Phil,
That's the weird thing, after setting the date/time; if I exit in an acceptable manner, it is still there next boot which could be hours/days later.
Sometimes the machine just sits at the "Thinkpad" screen after mem count, where nothing happens for 3/4 minutes, no disk activity, nothing.
Then the line drawing of the floppy drive and disk appears.
Other times it will announce error 161 and 163, and display the time/date page which is not always incorrect. (When it is wrong, it reverts to 1999 !)

That seems to vindicate the CMOS battery, though since I was gifted the machine in September last year, I have no way of knowing if it's the original battery.

I enjoyed the challenge of getting it to work with Linux Mint 9 Lxde.
Even the scuffle with the rather exotic sound chip to bend it to my will "and make it stick" was gratifying.
I had promised the old thing that I would find a distro more befitting it's vintage, and feel somewhat cheated not to be able to fulfil that!

That bios battery gives me all kinds of hell. I would change the battery out first, then rule out any other errors that pop up after.

Thanks vanaya, I'll cobble one together and see if there's any different behaviour.

Just thinking about it though, I've had a dud CMOS battery in a desktop PC, and that is just "inconvenient", the machine will still boot, and BIOS are still accessible..........it just doesn't matter what you change, it's all down the plug hole once you switch off!

With a dud/dead CMOS battery, these machines can forget all sorts of settings, especially the older generations.
This onset of Alzheimers, when a CMOS dies, can be cured easily and cheaply.
Stop procrastinating and get a new CMOS battery.

Well!
Here we are with a new CMOS Battery,.................absolutely no change, except there are no longer any error codes.

I still cannot get it to register that I'm pressing F1,....or any other F key at boot.....but at least it knows what time and what year it is! lol

Tried booting with alternately a Linux live CD and an Acronis rescue disk......totally ignored both!

What is it about the FLOPPY drive that it craves?
Is the floppy drive "hard wired" into the machine so that in the event of no BIOS, then the machine can recognise this drive and receive input from it where as it needs drivers to even understand what A "CD" drive is, let alone assimilate anything that might be imparted by one...were it to even work without said drivers/BIOS


And any way....what the hell is it expecting to be on the disk that it is asking me to feed to it's imaginary floppy drive?

With the 600 series you have to press and hold the F1 key as you turn the power on. Keeping holding the F1 key down throughout the IBM Thinkpad "splash" screen. This will eventually yield the Easy-Setup (BIOS) menu. You can then use either the trackpoint (point and click) or arrow keys (press the Enter key) to select a BIOS menu option. I would start with the "Start up" menu. This menu controls which devices are checked for a boot disk. When entering the" Start up" menu you should have two options: "Power-on" and "Network". Select "Power-on". The top line of the screen has up to 4 "devices" that will be used for booting the system:

Click on the image for a larger (800x600; 81KB) photo.

This was captured from one of my 600X systems; the 600E should be the same. Each device is checked in order for a bootable OS. If none are found then you get the generic, line-drawn "insert floppy" display. It's meant to say that the system was not able to find any OS and that you should check your boot drive(s).

In my example, the floppy drive, then the CDROM and then hard disk #1 is checked. Only those devices are scanned at boot. If the HDD-1 icon is not in the top line, then the system will never check the internal hard drive. The Reset icon at the far right in the top line will clear all of the devices. The two lines below contains the list of devices that you can select from. Not all of them will be available at all times. For example, HDD-2 represents a hard drive that would be installed inside an Ultrabay HD adapter. Once you have cleared all of the devices from the boot order with the Reset icon, simply select each device, in the order you want, then click the OK button, the following EXIT button and then the Restart icon at the main menu.

Thanks Ray, I am familiar with a similar screen on my machine.....long ago ....before this disaster befel me!

I've tried booting and holding F1.......and all the other F Keys in succession, and each time the blessed machine just totally ignores me.
It does the mem count, loads the Thinkpad screen, and then ....nothing....60 seconds later there is a quick flash from the Hard Drive LED, and then the [censored] line drawing of the Floppy drive appears saying "Feed me, Feed me, and whilst you're at it hit F1".

I think you know the screen I mean, or should I video it and post it here?

I don't understand why it totally ignores the CD when I boot with a Linux Live disk in it, or with an Acronis rescue disk in.
What chance would a floppy have of being noticed!?
And in anycase, what the hell does it expect to see/load on the floppy disk?

Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but I just don't understand what it is wanting or how I can provide it since I don't have a Floppy drive.
(That's not strictly true, I have several internal Floppy drives in my box o'bits! )


Just to be clear, I have two Hard drives, one with XP Pro on it and one with Linux Mint 9 Lxde, and both of these Operating systems were working fine.
I could just swap drives and boot up from either without any problem.
Now, no bootable media, Hard drive or CD seems to be recognised.
If this is a Boot order issue, Then I'm snookered....since I cannot enter the BIOS to change it!
(What's wrong with the word "d-a-m-n" ? )

hexeta wrote:I've tried booting and holding F1.......and all the other F Keys in succession, and each time the blessed machine just totally ignores me. It does the mem count, loads the Thinkpad screen, and then ....nothing....60 seconds later there is a quick flash from the Hard Drive LED, and then the *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** line drawing of the Floppy drive appears saying "Feed me, Feed me, and whilst you're at it hit F1".

If your system does not respond to the F1 key to access the BIOS menu, then try this: Hold down the "A" key and power up the system. Keep pressing the "A" key and look underneath the memory counter. Does "1C 301" appear, followed by a large ERROR screen with "00301"? If so, then the system is responding to the "stuck" key properly and it would appear that the keyboard connector is properly inserted into the Sub Card. If you do not get the "1C 301" error message then that means the system is not detecting any keypresses. A loose keyboard connector would be one of the things that could make the system ignore your F1 key.

I don't understand why it totally ignores the CD when I boot with a Linux Live disk in it, or with an Acronis rescue disk in.
What chance would a floppy have of being noticed!? And in anycase, what the hell does it expect to see/load on the floppy disk?

The line drawing of the floppy drive asking for a disk to be inserted is a symbolic error message that the system was not able to find any bootable drive/media. It does NOT mean it REQUIRES a floppy disk, only that for some reason or another the BIOS did not see any operating system from any of the devices it has been told to look for.

Just to be clear, I have two Hard drives, one with XP Pro on it and one with Linux Mint 9 Lxde, and both of these Operating systems were working fine. I could just swap drives and boot up from either without any problem. Now, no bootable media, Hard drive or CD seems to be recognised.

This could have occurred when the CMOS battery was replaced and the system lost the list of boot devices. You would need to access the Startup menu as I previously described in order to reset the boot device list.

If your keyboard is not responding to any keys, then perhaps you can try an external keyboard. With the age of the 600E, I'd think you would have to connect a PS/2 keyboard and not a USB one.

One more thing you could try if the previous suggestions don't resolve your issue.

There is a reset button on the 600 series machines that will, I believe, reset the BIOS to its defaults. This should reset the Startup sequence to Floppy, CD, HDD1, if I'm not mistaken. And then you can try pressing and holding the F1 key during boot up again.

The reset button is found in a small hole, just behind the power button, beneath the edge of the fan exhaust. You can use the tip of a pen or a strong paper clip to press this switch in to reset the computer.

Phil.

OK Ray, tried holding down the "A" key as you advised, and it just ignored it!

Plugged in a ps2 keyboard, and the indicator lights for Caps/Num and scroll locks all flashed on boot, but again it just ignored the depressed A Key.

Funny thing though, I take it that the flashing of the external keyboards lights indicated that the keyboard's existance had been acknowledged, but tapping either the PgUp or PgDn keys was similarly ignored, this should have altered the volume of the system beeps.
Oddly, even with the external Kb attached, the same keys on the lappy's Kb raised and lowered the POST Beeps volume as normal.
I would have thought that the presence of an external Kb would have isolated the internal one, but thinking about it, maybe not, since using a USB mouse didn't isolate the trackpoint!

Ray wrote:This could have occurred when the CMOS battery was replaced and the system lost the list of boot devices. You would need to access the Startup menu as I previously described in order to reset the boot device list.

No; I only replaced the CMOS Battery on Tuesday.
Made one up using a CR2032 which has 220mAh capacity rather than the 160 of the CR2025
The machine is now remembering date and time!
Due to a bug in the Linux distro that I had installed, the machine used to always lose the date and time, reverting to 01:01:1999 at each boot.
where as slipping in the HDD with XP Pro on it, time and date were maintained at each re-boot.

In Linux, selecting "Re-Boot" rather than "Quit" partially cured it.
The battery was however on it's way out at the time!

Phil wrote:There is a reset button on the 600 series machines that will, I believe, reset the BIOS to its defaults. This should reset the Startup sequence to Floppy, CD, HDD1, if I'm not mistaken. And then you can try pressing and holding the F1 key during boot up again.

OOoohh!! Phil, I never noticed that, it isn't made clear in the manual that I have, just points to the visible power switch slider, and says something like "Power/re-set"...I had always assumed that it meant sliding it forward and holding (as in a hard shutdown) was what they classed as a "Re-Set".

Ooh! I hardly dare try it!!

Edit @ 01:15
Wooo Hooo!! After several attempts, it has begun to boot into Linux!
However, diskcheck has immediately taken over and has been going for a while now worryingly, it's been stuck at 90% for most of that time and there is seemingly no activity from the hard drive (LED).
I'll leave it for half an hour or so, can't take that long to check a 3.2GB drive!!

At least I now know that the BIOS are not corrupted, and that the mother board is OK!

Just hope there is nothing else to spoil things!

Got impatient and cancelled the disk check and what a lovely sight... it began to load the OS.
Now all I have to do is try and remember how I managed to get sound, then how I managed to get it to endure a re-boot!
Oh happy day!!

Thanks to all of you who have rescued my little lappy, especially Phill for knowing about the re-set button!
What a nugget of 24 carat that has turned out to be!!
Mr Happy!
I'll have a play for a couple of days, and report back!
Grateful thanks once more

Glad to hear you got it to boot finally (sort of). Though it doesn't sound like you are quite out of the woods yet!

Something that you may not have checked, that might be worth trying (after you get a copy of any critical files, and have decided to try to reboot). I wonder if it is possible that a bad (or badly fragmented, or dying) hard drive can prevent access to the BIOS. You might be able to check this by removing the hard drive altogether and then trying to access the BIOS by pressing and holding F1 as you turn on the machine with the hard drive bay entirely empty.

Also, regarding the keyboard, the Thinkpad 600 series doesn't have a standard PS2 port. It has a special PS2 mouse port. To attach a keyboard only to the PS2 port on a 600 series machine, you need some ridiculously expensive proprietary IBM "Y Adapter" that is designed to allow you to plug in both a mouse and a keyboard into the single PS2 port. So that could be why you didn't get the expected results from your PS2 keyboard. The PS2 port on the 600 series is really intended for a mouse only.

Phil.

Ah, thanks for correcting me Phil . Forgot that the 600 series needs that special Y-splitter.

Hi Guys!
Posting from "Linux Land" with my trusty Thinkpad.

I did manage to re-boot last night without incident, however, today was a different matter!
1st attempt got me to my login page and allowed me to type my username; this invoked the page for my password but it wouldn't allow me to type anything!
opened the note pad program (Leafpad) and that too didn't let me type!
It did however respond to Kb shortcuts to save, create new, etc......Odd!
I had to re-boot and then it wouldn't load; just the thinkpad screen, but no "beep".
After "poking in the hole" a few times, and removing my PCMCIA Wireless card, it booted OK and allowed me to enter text.
Then i reconnected the wireless card, and all seems to be fine at the moment!
I haven't yet tried to re-instigate the sound....that's a pleasure for later when I've got my caffeine levels up a bit!!

More!

I've learned that once an install has gone flaky, you are just battling against the inevitable!

It finally happened today;The dialogue was like something from a care home!

You're who.......................Do I know you.....................But what's your name?.............What did you say your name was?.............................I don't think I know you.................Go away!.....................

So, here I am, with a nice new install, having finally got the WiFi card to work..........but sound still eludes me.
I've installed/uninstalled the sound cards, cs-46xx and cs-4236 soooo many times, and each time been greeted by a blank Gnome Alsa Mixer window.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get it to squeak to me??

I have a Thinkpad 600E that I installed Puppy Linux 4.3.1 with the 2.6.1.17 kernel.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... l-puppies/

I was able to get the sound working following the directions at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=38383 even though the directions are for a slightly older version of Puppy Linux.

My D-Link DWL-G630 wifi card works in open mode. I don't have wifi network at home, so I don't know whether secured mode works.

Don't know if the dial-up modem works. That is also very tricky under Linux.


Puppy Linux 4.3.1 with the newer 2.6.25.16 kernel would install okay, but I could not get the sound to work.

And the BIOS has the QuickStart set to Disable.

Thanks for that ieee488, I will probably give Puppy a try.
I have other problems grabbing my attention at the moment, think I'd better start a new thread!
I'm beginning to think that I must have an intermittent fault in my keyboard connection, or there is something seriously going wrong with either the Motherboard or the hard disk.

One thing I did not mention was that I updated my BIOS to the latest available for my model of 600E. You will need a battery with some charge left in it.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade
The link to George Tellalov's ISO image of the BIOS is the one to use.

ieee488 wrote:One thing I did not mention was that I updated my BIOS to the latest available for my model of 600E. You will need a battery with some charge left in it.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade
The link to George Tellalov's ISO image of the BIOS is the one to use.

Hmmm... I've heard tales of woe concerning the updating of the BIOS due to the battery giving out or what ever and turning it into a brick!
Mine is just about fit to boot into the OS, but then it suddenly gives out, so I don't think it will be suitable!

Don't understand why it needs to have a decent battery, but then there is much about the Thinkpad I don't understand!

The check for adequate battery voltage is built into the BIOS update script. Depending on which model, it sometimes is possible to fool it. I was able to update a 570 BIOS without a working battery.

I have two good 600E batteries, so I was able to upgrade the BIOS on three 600E without any problems.

It sounds like though that you do have some sort of problem with your motherboard.

Good luck!