Soon to be X22 owner, need some answers

[Intergalactic Captain]

I'm a long time lurker here, finally broke down and registered an account. I apologize in advance if I'm breaking any first-post etiquette.

So, a few weeks ago my T40 motherboard decided to kill itself - The rearmost capacitor under the power connector exploded taking out several more components in an irrepararble fashion, very similar to what someone else posted int the T4x forum a short time ago. Considering it only cost me $150, I wasn't about to drop that much and more for a new board. So, after some ebaying, I found myself a stopgap - an X22 2662-95U for just under $50 shipped. I've been hooked on thinkpads since my first A21e 6 years ago, but this my first venture into the X series.

First and foremost, it needs a new HDD. Geeks dot com is selling a 100gig for ~$30 for some odd reason - I'm placing an order with them later today on an unrelated matter and would like to pick up this one as well... Will the X22 take a 100gb drive, or is the cap lower?

Second, save for the board, all the rest of my T40 parts are still good. Everything about it was stock, and I'd like to put the wireless b mini-pci card in the X22 - Am I going to have to deal with the no-1802 hack, or should it straight-up work? I'll have to wire it for antennas anyway, and would like to reuse the card and save a couple bucks.

Third, the ram issue. From the item description, it appears that this has 128 on board and 128 in the socket. Is there any definitive way to tell high-density from low-density ram if all you have is a picture? I'm aware of the 4 chips/side vs 8 chips/side thing, but is this ALWAYS a rule? I'm looking to pop a 512 in there and max it out, and I refuse to pay retail for anything, even if it means taking a risk.

Finally, it occurs to me that it's going to be somewhat of an adventure setting up XP on this thing. I wired up a 3.5 -> 2.5 adapter the other day to use my old laptop hdd's in a cobbled together desktop - Would it be possible to pop the new drive in a desktop, do a standard XP install on it, and then pop it in X22 and reconfirgure it? If not, what's the next best option?


Thanks in advance for the help...I'm not quite the computronical wizard that I used to be, but I hope to be a contributing member to the forum in the future.

[maxstang]

Welcome. I've only been lurking here myself! I'm sure some of the others will answer your questions about the wireless card and HD size. I put a 60 gig in my X24 and it didn't seem to care. As far as running XP, I ran it successfully on my X20 before I upgraded and really had no issues. I did what you suggested and used an adapter to hook the HD to my desktop to format the HD and then transfer the XP installation files and then used a floppy to boot it using the ultrabase. I then installed XP from the HD itself and removed the install files when done. Worked well. Afterward, you'll want to download the IBM specific software and drivers for the X22 from the Lenovo site so all your peripherals work correctly. Have fun!

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

As for RAM, you can put ANY PC133 512Mb chip in there and it will work, high/low density issue only applies to machines originally running PC100 when installing PC133, and X22 has PC133 to begin with.

What HDD have you found for $30 that is 100Gb? And if it's PATA/IDE (not SATA) you'll be able to install it with no issues.

As for the wireless card, it all depends on a number of factors. Personally, I'd forget all about antennae, and stick with PCMCIA, but that's me.

Hope this helps.

[Raceboy]

Installing antennas to X22 is a norbainer, just open LCD lid and wire them up. I did it and personally NEVER would use PCMCIA card again. As for no-1802 error, it depends, I never had issues but you'll know for sure when you install it. But hey, using no-1802 cd or floppy is easy.

XP runs very nicely on X22.

[Intergalactic Captain]

It looks like geeks took down the HDD link, but IIRC it was a recertified seagate IDE drive. Got my fingers crossed though, I won a lot on ebay last night w/ 2 100's and 2 40's that may or may not work. Worst comes to worst, I can make my money back selling them one at a time (I'm not dishonest, some people really buy busted HDD's).

But, from the sounds of what you guys are saying, everything's in order. Still not sure what I want to do with the T40 though - I can make my money back selling the parts, but I just know that as soon as I do I'll find a dirt cheap motherboard...Beautiful machine, but definitely the most fragile thinkpad I've ever touched.

Speaking of which, how much can the X22 take? This is going to be a traveling laptop, and will probably be dropped, thrown, and treated generally improperly on a regular basis. My T22 stood up to whatever I threw at it...I'm guessing that being smaller means less flex, but how well are the X22's really built?

[underclocker]

I had an X22 that I used for travel for five years! I say it's pretty [censored] solid. The only weak area, which I had with other X2x's, is the hinges. One area of the hinge is made of a very thin metal (aluminum?), that can explode due to the tension of the spring and contamination of the lubricant.

Luckily, they can be found for about $20 and replaced rather easily. I replaced hinges on an X23 without the full tear down that is suggested by the HMM.

The X22 is a great model due to it's Pentium III-m CPU (fast with larger cache) and cool running. No flex and quite solid. You can use any IDE drive you like, I preferred an 80GB 4200rpm Travelstar with 4MB cache for cool running and quick times in and out of hibernation. I ran with only 384MB of RAM and XP, no issues.

I eventually upgraded to my current travel machine, an X40, which is about 3/4 lb. lighter, but not much faster for basic tasks. Due to the weight savings, I'm keeping the X40.

[maxstang]

I agree. I used an x20 for 2 years on the road, followed by an x24 for another 2 years. I found them very rugged and reliable. The x20 survived an entire glass of wine in the keyboard while running! My only issue with these models is the lack of USB 2.0, and the limited amount of RAM. I transfer a lot of large files (music etc) and the USB 1.0 is crazy slow. I'm really enjoying the speed that my x31 has, both because of the 2 gigs of ram and the USB 2.0.