To Travelstar or to Hitachi, that is the question...

[aarontring]

OK, engage maximum verbosity!

The local Goodwill got in another batch of "scraptops." Having no impulse control, I bought 4. I passed over a 701c (that was the hardest, just for the simple gee-whiz factor; I played with it for a good 20 minutes) and a 380z-ish for a Toshiba Tecra 8100 and Winbook xl2 that are going to donate parts (DVD-ROM and memory), but I did grab (literally) a 600e and 365csd. All the computers, except the Toshiba which stubbornly refuses the advances of my IBM power adapter, will post, and the two non-TP had HDDs. I now have enough parts to build one complete 365xd, and the 600e is going to be Frankenputered for my older son for school work. He was going to get something newer, but he slammed my wife's new HP laptop shut after a game "cheated." I figure a $5 Thinkpad will stand up to his abuse.

To the meat o' my question: The Winbook came with a 10GB Hitachi HDD, while the Tecra came with, ironically, a 12.07GB Travelstar identical to the one currently running in my 390X. Obviously, the Travelstar works in the 600e, but it appears to be blank, and I didn't get to installing an OS after fighting 161, 163, 173 errors all night. Some electrical tape, the CMOS battery from an older Gateway tower that hasn't gotten to the recycling place yet, and a LOT of patience, BTW. For some reason, though, the Hitachi isn't recognized. There is no adapter in a 600e, like my 390x has. The Hitachi drive is a less-slim factor drive, but it actually fits better than the Travelstar. I know I had a hell of a time finding memory that my 390x would recognize, but is there a laundry list of Thinkpad-compatible parts that I'm just not finding?

And, I know this is a different topic, but it's still for the 600e: is there a better Linux kernel for the high-range PII lappies? I couldn't get PCLOS or SimplyMEPIS to run in LiveCD mode. Both hung up at different points in the boot up. I'm not eager to put XP on this old a machine, and I can't find any of the copies of 9x I've hung onto all these years.

I know that's a lot for one post, but I'm still coming down from the high of all of this. I appreciate any light anyone can shed on this.

Thanks,
Aaron

[loyukfai]

Drive: Suggest to run full surface scan on them and check the result first.

RAM: IIRC, the 600s are quite picky about the RAM module. See this thread for an example. There are probably more information on this forum and the Net.

No idea about 365XD through.

Linux distro: Haven't setup a Linux box for some time, but there seem to be some POI if you Google for "thinkpad 600e linux live distro".

Cheers.

[aarontring]

OK, I had a day suddenly free when my truck died. Thought it was the alternator, but it turned out to just be the battery, and both are easy RRs. Fortunately, the battery in my project Chevelle is the same size and style as the one in my Jimmy, and the Chevelle is down until I can find one [censored] plug pin that'll probably cost me a buck when I find it, but that Chevy hasn't produced in over forty years... As I was in the middle of it, that all tied together neatly in my mind to what I'd just done with the CMOS battery on the 600E, but the words aren't coalescing on the page with as much obvious symmetry.

Regardless, the fix took way less time than I thought, but, since the "good" battery had been sitting in a dead car for three months, I suddenly found myself with an afternoon on my hands until my wife got home. So, I took out the 32MB DIMM that was giving me a total of 128MB (131 and change in BIOS for some reason) and swapped it with a 64MB from that WinBook to give me a total of 160 (again, 161 and change), stuck in the 12GB Travelstar and my XP disk. Granted their time estimates during install and setup were a bit low, but it installed and ran. The intro video was a little choppy, but really not that much worse than in the old Gateway PIII 1.0GHz I spent the weekend resurrecting. (With 3.5" HDDs going for 20 cents a gig on some discount websites, I think it'll make a nice server for music and video purchased online...)

Long story short, it ran, it seems solid, and I'm about to do the same to Ol' Faithful, my 390X. At 450MHz (PIII) and 256MB RAM, it's a little faster than the older Gateway that so generously donated its CMOS battery to the 600E, and it was running XP just fine.

One thing I did notice, and I'm curious if it means anything: I've read that IBM used a titanium alloy in the construction of the bezels and cases. I've never felt that my 390x was fragile, like when I sit down to my wife's dual core HP, but it feels more like carbon fiber or some other kind of fiberous epoxy compound. The 600E, on the other hand, is definitely a rubberized skin over a metal shell.

I know the E can't have an internal wireless card, since it has no mini-PCI slot, but does anyone know where to find some kind of structural details on the various lines? The pdf specs on ThinkWiki are good, but I don't see anything that in-depth. I know I could just get another PCMCIA card. I'm pretty careful with my computers, but I still feel like I could break the antenna off of my Linksys card if I look at it too hard.

[loyukfai]

Hardware Maintenance Manual for the 600...

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... 9n1033.pdf

You may also consider the 3Com WLAN adapters with XJACK. The antenna is not particularly heavy-duty, but it is retractable.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0251773752

Moderator edit: Shortened URL to prevent horizontal scrolling

[aarontring]

OK, I hadn't really "read" the HMM; I just skip to the section I'm working on at that time. I'll check it out once I get everything loaded back onto my 390X. I just did a "clean" install of XP on it, and I'm also letting the 600E "ripen" a little before I pull it out for it's public debut. Also, I'm currently the proud parent of what will be 3 different TPs, and I still only have the one PS. I haven't tested the 365 battery I just got, the 600 battery lasts about 20 minutes, and I get about an hour on the 390 battery. Assuming that they're all original, I count myself pretty [censored] lucky, but I digress.

As for the wireless card, I am going to switch from Linksys, once I know what I have to support, computer-wise. This copy of XP is currently running on three different computers that I own, one that I "refurbed" (blew all the dust out of) for a friend, and will probably run on one more before I'm done. The only Vista machine is my wife's, it needs to be compatible with the "Airport" on her best friend's iBook, and it may have to be supported by Linux, if MS gets picky with me about stretching the EULA on my XP. Other than that, I'm just going to probably look at strength and reliability. I have trouble with this Linksys at 4 machines, but it's always the Mac that drops off first. (It's technically 5, but I don't count the "main" computer that runs a direct patch cable into the router; I ran out of adapters and had about 30 feet of Cat-5 from my old job.)

Thanks for the link, though. I like the retractible antenna. I was going to look for this one I'd heard of that didn't protrude at all, but I didn't like the sound of that for reception. This one looks like a fairly elegant solution. Only question is: is 3Com better than Linksys? That's rhetorical; I'll investigate that myself, but it's the first question that came to mind...

Thanks.

[u.mac]

One thing I did notice, and I'm curious if it means anything: I've read that IBM used a titanium alloy in the construction of the bezels and cases. I've never felt that my 390x was fragile, like when I sit down to my wife's dual core HP, but it feels more like carbon fiber or some other kind of fiberous epoxy compound. The 600E, on the other hand, is definitely a rubberized skin over a metal shell.

The case and bezel of 600 family are made of "IBM UltraCarbon (tm)" - it's what you say... carbon fiber. Crank the bezel, and you'll see...

The bezel underside looks like metal (600e + 600x) or colored light brown (only 600), thickness is only few microns... and both are conductive (for EMA?). May be, that the conductivity is the matter for harness with 600x WLAN antennas, if they are contacted to bezel - so some user says "works perfect" and other say "will not work". It's a cheep trick, to take off this layer around the antennas

[aarontring]

Yeah, I noticed that coppery color inside the 390, but I figured it was the base, or raw I guess, color for whatever epoxy compound it was made from. I suppose that means I'll have no better luck with my 390 than the fellow member who grafted a whip antenna where his 600's (X, if memory serves) modem jack was because his internal antenna project had lousy reception.

BTW, since I'm going to do it next on the 600, I should be able to get away with saying this here: I tried to put AVG Free on my 390X, which I'd had on it under W2K but have just done an "clean" XP install on (delete partition, format, install new OS). I had an error in mid-install saying that AVG couldn't install because it needed the correct version of Windows, and that I should upgrade to 2K or better. I was still in the process of bringing XP up to date, but I thought I was up through SP2. Turns out I wasn't, and once I was AVG Free installed without a hitch. Just FYI for anyone using AVG Free and thinking of upgrading to XP, though I'm sure most here who want to have done so already.