Replace HDD with a CF card on a i series 1161?

[Thinkpaduser72]

I was given an i series 1161 Thinkpad with no HDD. Since I already had a new 4 GB CF card I bought a CF to IDE adapter to use the card as a HDD. Before I inserted the card I powered up the Thinkpad and used the "F1" option to check the BIOS settings and set the boot order to HDD first. Everything looked good so I powered down and inserted the card. When I next powered up the screen displayed the menu and I again selected the "F1" option. However, this time the BIOS menu was not displayed. It was stuck at the BIOS message. I then tried the "F12" option and it stuck at that message. I tried the adapter with the jumper set to master and slave. No difference. I changed the boot order to CDROM first and put an old W98 SE install disk in it. This resulted in a message saying no HDD was present. What do I need to do to get it to recognize the CF card as a HDD? Thanks.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

While I've not tried this myself, I believe the problem is basically that the CF card is seen as "removable" and not a "fixed" drive. Googling reveals:

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/making ... 98749.html
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1863875
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive

[Norway Pad]

Hi and welcome.

I am not sure if you noticed the thread describing my efforts last weekend, but it seems like I probably ran into the same problem. http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=112670 My Win2K install cd recognized the card, though, and the first time I tried, the install seemed to go fine. But the laptop refused to boot from it. I don't know much about your i-series, except that it's the older notebook with a 10.4" screen, right?

I was convinced this had to do with the master/slave jumper settings, but after reading rkawakami's links here (Thanks a lot!), I realized that the issue might be that the adapter/CF card unit is seen as a removable drive, and that there are issues connected to booting from removable drives on older hardware. After all, it seems to work fine in the X40, as described by Neil. I used a Kingston Ultimate 266X card, which is described to automatically change ID, but in my case it didn't work. Which card did you try?

So after reading the Thinkwiki page, there are two advices that in my eyes stands out:

Most CompactFlash cards by default identify themselves as removable media instead of fixed disk. Which is fine for Linux, but not for Windows.

If you have to use a CF card that has the type bits set to Removable and want to install Windows XP you can work around it as follows:

• -Use Linux to partition the drive with a FAT32 partition (you can boot from one of the LiveCD/LiveUSB distributions for this), and set the partition bootable.

• -Start the install of Windows, during install you will be given the opportunity to migrate to NTFS

• -After the install is finished you will need to install the Hitachi microdrive disk drivers (google for XPfildrvr1224.zip), which will mask the removable bits and should allow suspend and other operations that fail on a removable drive to work.

And if that doesn't work, it might be an option to invest in a different CF card:

Transcend 133X/266X/300X

These cards are known to identify themselves as fixed disk via CF-IDE adapters without any manual intervention, and is of good value, and speed (for 266X/300X).

Although the Transcend cards with an acceptable size that I found on eBay were 133x and 400x. 133x will probably be too slow, and I'm not sure if the 400x ones share the capabilities described above, as 400x isn't mentioned. (Any experiences, anyone?)

I will do some experimenting here when I'm done with some house projects. I will report back, feel free to do the same, Thinkpaduser72.

God luck!

[Thinkpaduser72]

I appreciate the links provided by rkawakami; I followed them all and learned a lot about CF cards as HDD. I downloaded the program “ATCFWCHG.COM” which will set the CF card as a fixed device instead of a removable one. However, when I ran it from a DOS window I received the “Error 20” response, the same as others reported on various user groups. Norway Pad's post implied that this doesn't apply to Linux which is what I am attempting to install on my Thinkpad so the fixed/removable issue may not apply. I did insert the CF card into a card reader plugged into the USB port on my Dell desktop running Windows XP and I was able to run Linux successfully on it. This is not an option on the Thinkpad since its BIOS does not include a choice for USB as a boot device. Since my adapter does not include any active circuitry I did a continuity check on it and compared it to a schematic on CF to IDE pinouts I found on the internet from Sandisk and it agreed exactly. I need to do more research before I continue but I haven't given up yet.

[Thinkpaduser72]

After further research on the use of CF cards as HDD I found in the CompactFlash boot drive entry on the Thinkwiki.org web site the following:

"ATTENTION!
Many of the adapters sold in eBay may not be usable for x40 as their #1 pin is on the left side (looking from the top, usually marked by a white diagonal line). The #1 pin should be on the right side as the Addonics series. Flipping the insertion of popular "V B1" adapter works but there is no guarantee of performance and space may not permit. On the other hand PA-CF18H adapter has been reported to work fine and may be a good alternative for Addonics converters. Please read page 15 of the forum discussion link below this page".

Although this was in reference to the x40 I wondered whether this might be applicable to my Thinkpad. I proceeded to disassemble the keyboard and frame in order to measure the voltage on the HDD connector pins to see if they where I expected them to be. They were not. To make the interface to the CF to HDD adapter compatible it was necessary to plug the adapter in upside down. Once I did this the BIOS recognized the presence of an HDD and I was able to boot to it. I then installed W98SE and the Thinkpad was finally operational. I was not able to load Linux on it yet but that is another story. Thanks again to those who responded with advice, especially for the link to the Thinkwiki website.

[Norway Pad]

Good job!

I haven't gotten around to play more with the 770Z, but I will use your experience as a suggestion. The one adapter I have (A red, dual CF one. Addonics?) has a missing pin at the same place as the regular harddrive misses one. While the other one (Green, single CF one) has two full rows of pins, and can be plugged in any way. I think I tried the single one both ways, but I will test again and verify.