701c, a butterfly and some questions

[PandorasThinkpad]

Actually i have had the luck to get an 701c in well condition.


Oh well, the picture does only appear if i am logged in at the german forum, too. Terribly sorry about that!

If i am not online, this picture should be seen (sorry for to times the same picture if i am online on the german forum):

http://picload.org/view/lgripcw/701c_1.jpg.html

It has the following specifications:

Intel 80486DX4 75MHz.,
16KB Cache,
16MB RAM
631MB HDD (I have changed this drive with an 4GB Drive, although i will have 4GB of diskspace)

Which newer linux distribution will work properly?

Would it be needful to get a 16MB Ram Module?

Does anybody know where to get a 32 MB or 64 MB Ram Module which will work in it?

Which ethernet card will work on it?

Where to get an cd rom drive with pcmcia adapter?

Where to find a screw set for this machine?

And how about a fitting akku?

Thanx a lot for any hints and help!

Greetings,

PT

[PandorasThinkpad]

Does really no one have any hints or informations in here?

[JohnD.]

I did a search for you in the forum and found the link below. It will answer some of your questions and you can always PM the OP for assistance.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... =701+linux

Good Luck!
John

[Saucey]

I tossed some sort of RAM module in a 701C that was either from a 365XD or 355CE...
My machine has Win95 installed on it, but it runs very slow for me to notice the gains/difference of the RAM.
I don't what size the RAM is, it didn't have a sticker and I cannot decypher from whats written on the chips.
I got it for collection, your unit looks very nice, great photo!

Also the external floppy drive that came with the 365XD has a similar connector to the 701C but it isn't as wide...
Plus the pcmia adapter might need a driver to install which given the 701C would require a floppy or CD to boot it in the first place.

[Penultimate]

Does really no one have any hints or informations in here?

There are not too many people who have a working one, or for that matter who have ever actually owned one as more than a novelty in recent times.

I have one, and I can tell you that a pc-card cdrom worked fine with it many years ago when I last played around with it. You are going to have to ebay it, because the kid in the Microcenter a couple weeks ago actually replied "what is that?" when I asked him about PC card wifi adapters.

There is only limited use for that and its mostly going to be people who like to play around with vintage hardware so its not going to be in stores or germanys version of 'best buy', for the most part.

My ram module is 8 mb to my recollection, but the 75 mhz processor (701c) still runs Win 3.1, Win 95, and Win 98 just fine, and it dual boots into all three of these operating system. You could find a 16 mb stick if you try, and are willing to pay for one, but I doubt its cheap and its not required in my case.

As far as any parts you are going to be needing, that is not going to be the easiest computer because although iconic its not like a large quantity of them are currently being parted out. Once again, Ebay will be your merchant of last resort.

Be careful with that ram cover on the bottom of the computer when you remove on replace it, they break easily. Mine is currently held on by tape. I checked ebay some years ago for a new one many times and never found one being offered, so the odds ten years later have probably not gone up that a bunch of them will go on the market!

good luck, have fun.

[PandorasThinkpad]

Oh, answers

Thanks a lot for this very useful input!

I am honestly amazed, because i use to get even an 701cs and i would please to get an well explanation of how to get something like this slackware 10 to this machine.

First of all i will need a bootdisk, then i will need a connector to connect the hdd to another system and to drag win95b or so on it. Win95b will work with just copying it to the disk, but this slack i will have to install like some other linux distribution or am i wrong?

The other system was completly installed when i got it. In this case i was a really lucky one.

This 701cs has no operation system installed but is in very very good condition.

The best will be to purchase an cd rom with an pcmcia connection, this will probably have to be by itself old enough to work with the 701, on which way i will have to integrate the driver, what should a bootdisk for this should look like, what files in which way should it carry? The other reliable method will be to get an distribution completely on old floppy disks, but this will rather be hard to find.

Oh so much questions, but it is such a long time ago, boot with floppy and such things, i really need help in any way.

[Saucey]

I have yet to install an OS off of a floppy on some of the older machines, thankfully those models have a CD drive.
I know there is a port replicator for the 701 on ebay, that should give you more ports, but I am still unfamiliar with them as the 701C was strictly to collect.
I was barely able to run Puppy Linux CD on a A20m, but I wasn't able to install that on that system mainly because my unfamilarity with GNU/Linux.

Best of luck!
I've been thinking of getting rid of my 701C, they seem to cost $100 which is alot more compared to other machines made in the mid 90's.

[PandorasThinkpad]

Hello again

I have written an german trader on ebay an message, there will be an older cd rom with pcmcia connection to get, i have checked out the drivers and it the drive will be supported by Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT/2000/XP, Dos/Windows 3.1 OS2 Warp (Windows 95/98/Me use same driver in A:\Win95). This will be a good thing i guess.

Oh, something to the usage of this systems, i will mainly be able again to play something like monkey island without any vitual machines and such nowadays stuff.

And i really like this good old butterfly.

So there will be a lot of trial and error for me.

I will give always some up to date information of the state of !play!

Sincerly,

PT