Trying to revive a 365XD; couple of questions

[rkawakami]

My wife asked me to look at a co-worker's 365XD (2625-6R3) that was said not to work anymore. No more explicit explanation as to what was the matter than that. Upon power up, it threw the 173 and 163 errors, which I understand to be the CMOS backup battery. It also displayed a 1780 error (hard disk), which was to be expected as I heard the hard disk struggling to spin up (it was pulsing; starting and stopping). Opened the keyboard, took out the drive, re-booted and got the I9990305 error (no operating system). Re-installed the drive, went into the BIOS, verified the revision (1.05) and ran the diagnostics. Everything passed except for the hard drive. Figuring that the drive was dead I tried a spare drive I had laying around and this time no 17xx error; it just froze at the splash screen.

Okay, maybe the 365XD BIOS didn't like my Windows XP drive . Hey! I have a PCMCIA external CDROM drive (1969-010) and the 365XD BIOS appeared to have a PCMCIA device in the boot list. Connect it up, change the BIOS boot order to only enable PCMCIA, load a bootable CD with memtest86+ on it and.... nothing... except for the standard picture of a floppy disk with an arrow pointing at the F1 key. Hmm.. okay, maybe the old drive doesn't like CD-R disks. Look through my old CDs trying to find a bootable CD... find a Windows 98 but it still doesn't work with the PCMCIA CDROM drive, even though the disk is bootable in a T23.

Put the original drive back in and whaddya know, it starts to boot Windows 95!. However, it barfed and said that HIMEM.SYS was not found. It's right; I looked all over the disk and it's not there. So, now I'm close to getting this dinosaur to run again, however I have no idea why it didn't boot the original drive, even after being removed and re-installed TWICE. I don't know if the owner has the external floppy drive or not, but that seems to be the only way I have of getting the HIMEM.SYS file onto the system. I do have these...

Questions:

- Exactly how much do I have to tear apart on the 365XD in order to change out the backup battery? I've seen it listed in the HMM, but it's conveniently not shown where it's at.
- Will/should the 365XD boot from an external CDROM drive connected to the PCMCIA port? I'm using the IBM 00K1124 cable and the 1969-010 CDROM drive. I''ve just connected the drive to a T23 and it works fine. I can read commercially pressed disks (data and music) AND I can even read a data CD-R burned a couple of weeks ago on a 700MB Maxell blank. I've tried both slots in the 365XD but I have no way of determining if they are working beside the BIOS diagnostic (which says it passes).
- What is the purpose of the switch under the keyboard? The system appears to work the same whether or not the keyboard is up or down.

[phool@round]

Backup Battery Checkout
(Nonrechargeable)
1. Turn off the computer and unplug the AC Adapter
from the computer.
2. Open the Memory-slot cover. -- (It's on the bottom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isn't there a non removable floppy drive and cdrom drive on the 365XD? Since you didn't mention it maybe they gave up the ghost and where removed.

It sounds like you have a 760ish type in your grip. There isn't a keyboard switch on the 365XD. On a laptop where the palmrest and keyboard are one liftable piece the switch is used to suspend the laptop when the keyboard is lifted so you can swap out the floppy/cdrom drives or add a second battery.

[leoblob]

I use a parallel port CD ROM for my 365X.

I replaced my battery, but I can't remember how. If you can't find it (try phool's idea first) post again, and I will go into mine let you know.

[phool@round]

A 365XD has one USB port on the back, maybe a pen drive or usb cdrom can be used to load files?

I use Smart Boot Manager on floppy to boot bootable CDroms on my 760's internal cd drive. It doesn't work on pcmcia drives though, I've tried.

[rkawakami]

The BIOS reports the same type number (2625-6R3) as on the bottom label so I'm pretty sure that the 365XD above the keyboard between the LCD hinges is correct.

The system has only keyboard/mouse PS2, VGA, serial, parallel jacks and what I assume to be an external floppy jack on the back panel. No USB, although there is what looks to be a docking port connector. The memory module is under the keyboard (and the insulator sheet) and a "non-removable" CDROM is screwed into the system. The 12mm-high hard drive, in a secure caddy, is wedged under the edge of the CDROM drive. There is no other room for any more spindles to be installed.

If I can't get the system to boot from the PCMCIA CDROM or figure out a way to access it from DOS, then the only route I see if getting the missing HIMEM.SYS file onto the laptop would be through the external floppy drive. When Win95 fails to load, I've got complete control over the system via DOS. I've run Scandisk on it and nothing seems to be wrong (although I did find a couple of file00xx.chk files already in the root directory). I've seen a couple of external floppy drives for the 365XD on eBay so I'm considering that option if the owner doesn't have one. I'm calling tonight or tomorrow after I look over the system some more and test some old EDO modules.

[phool@round]

LOL, I downloaded a combo HMM that had several models including a 385XD which I obviously liked more than the 365XD. Ok, sailing with the wind here.......

If you have an external 2.5 USB hard drive enclosure and place the 365's drive in it sans enclosure top (12mm) you could hook it up on another system and check/flop files that way.

Oh, the switch you asked about is to put the laptop in suspend mode while the keyboard is lifted, swapping cd for floppy or vice versa. If it's not doing anything then the switch has been bypassed possibly. It will cause erratic boot up problems like the screen not lighting or the disk won't load the OS and other heart burn. Worth taking another look at just to be sure it's not muddled up.

[jhkaska]

Go here to download the maint manual:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... PDMQ7.html

The file is titled tpvol3.pdf

If the above link doesn't work then a Google search for the pdf file will take you there.

Page 114 of 630 shows where to find the backup battery. Last time I changed mine, I still had trouble getting it out so be careful that you don't break something getting it out. I studied it for several minutes before I finally figured it out. It has been a while but I seem to remember it being hidden in some sort of plastic inclosure. Buy the battery at Radio Shack for less than $5 rather than ordering on line for the quoted price of $20 to $25 from most online dealers.

The floppie Drive for the 365XD is an exterior unit that plugs into the back of the laptop.

The above maint manual should help you with many of the questions that you have. Good luck.

[rkawakami]

jhkaska, thanks for that note. I already had the HMM and I looked through it (not closely enough obviously) and did not see that page. I saw the backup battery listed in the parts list but couldn't tell where it was at. Battery has been extracted and measured at 0.5V. A trip to Fry's is in order for tomorrow. Thanks again!

[rkawakami]

Update: After getting the proper external floppy drive and grabbing a copy of the himem.sys file off of a machine at work, the system now boots Windows 95. There's a missing .DLL for one of the apps but it's not a problem at the moment. System appears to work fine; scandisk reports no errors or bad blocks. Hard drive seems to be okay after that first hiccup.

I've found a couple of 32MB EDO modules at work and will attempt to install them into the system and see if I can get memtest86+ to run on this thing. Also hoping that the EDO module that SaberX has up in the Marketplace is actually a 64MB version....