T21...need advice

[abtmrw]

Hello,

1st post here. I need some help with a thinkpad t21.

I got this t21 from a friend. It came with the official AC adapter, which seems to work.
The laptop has no battery, but boots up and runs with the AC adapter. Hardware wise,
everything seems stock, except maybe the DVD Drive. I don't know if t21s came with DVD or CD drives.

This t21 has:
Windows XP Pro
PIII CPU 647 MHZ
128 MB RAM
20 GB HDD

I don't have a laptop, so I want to use the t21. There are a few problems though:

No battery (I can get one on ebay)
No recovery discs (don't really need them?)
Hard Drive problem (90% sure I need a new Hard Drive)

I started up the laptop a few times, and it was fast at the BIOS and XP loaded slowly but
everything seemed OK. I attributed this to the low amount of memory and stock slow HDD.
Upon booting it a few more times, the computer would freeze and the Hard Drive would
make a few clicking noises every time it froze. If I held the Power Button down for a few
seconds, the laptop would restart. This makes me think that the only real problem I have
is a busted HDD. Could it be anything else?

Since, I'm pretty sure it's the HDD, I want to buy a new, bigger, and faster one. What
kind of laptop HDD do you guys recommend?

A new HDD means I need an OS. Since this thing has an old CPU and only 128 RAM, I'm thinking of running Windows 98. On the bottom of the laptop there is a product key for Windows 2000. Should I go with 98, 2000, or a RAM upgrade for XP? Will XP run
well with 512 RAM, a PIII 647 MHZ CPU, and a newer HDD?

Also, I don't have the recovery CD, but I think all the drivers I need are here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4S5RRJ

If I install the OS and the drivers in that link, the t21 will run just as intended, right?

I really like this laptop. I hope to use it mainly for work and light multimedia.
Any help would be appreciated.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Your best bet to determine if there's a problem with the hard drive would be to run a diagnostic on it. That can either be done with a copy of PC Doctor for DOS or the driver manufacturer's own software (if available). The PC Doctor program can be downloaded as a three disk floppy set from here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4YZM3F

or I host the same set of diskettes but on a bootable CD image (.ISO) file:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/ibm_t22_pcdiag.iso

There's a non-destructive Fixed Disk diagnostic which should find any read errors on the drive. You may also be able to run a diagnostic program provided by the maker of the drive; most Hitachi drives can use DFT ( http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm ), Seagate has Seatools for DOS ( http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/suppor ... s/seatools ), etc. That said, you probably should just stick with PC Doctor as there are also many other diagnostic tests provided by that program which will check the system's CPU, motherboard, memory, I/O ports and so on.

Assuming you do need another hard drive and if you want to stick with XP, then definitely get the system up to 512MB. There have been some fairly good deals on eBay recently for low density 256MB SODIMMs (~$15 each).

I personally would not run anything earlier than Windows 2000. Since I have not tried to install a retail copy of XP onto my Thinkpads, I don't know if you would get everything by downloading the drivers from the web site. I'm pretty sure that you can't/won't be able to load the DVD player, if you need one. From my understanding it is only available from the factory recovery disks. And yes, some T21 systems came with a DVD drive.

From your description of the CPU speed (650Mhz), I'd guess and say that you actually have a 800Mhz CPU. The slowest T21 came with a 750Mhz Speedstep CPU. An 800Mhz PIII CPU should clock down to 650Mhz when running in the Speedstep mode. To be sure, what's the seven character TYPE number on the bottom of the system? It should be in the format of 2647-xxx.

[abtmrw]

First of all, thanks for the help.

I have a floppy drive for this t21 as well, so I'm going to to make the PC Doctor floppies to find out for sure, hopefully.

I plan to do that first, so I don't end up wasting money, but it's good to know that memory shouldn't be too expensive.

I'm not sure what to do about the DVD Drive. I could try getting the driver off the laptop before it froze. The easiest solution to this problem would be to somehow get the recovery CDs, but my friend doesn't have them and nothing is available online. Lenovo doesn't have them. Is there anywhere I can buy them?

Currently, I'm assuming that a new HDD will fix the freezing, so Windows 2000 or XP is what I'm leaning towards. Any advice on the issue with the DVD Drive and other drivers?

The TYPE number is: 2647-8BU

Thanks.

[RealBlackStuff]

Check your PM messages.


Product: ThinkPad T21 2647-8BU
Original description: PIII 800MHz (256KB), 128MB RAM, 20.0GB HDD, 14.1 TFT 1024x768, 8x-2.3x DVD, 3Com Combo, TV out, Li-Ion Batt, W2000

[jronald]

Run the 2kPro, on that machine I think you will be happier with it
I am still running a few copied around my home
You can not beat it on slightly slower machines

Ron

[abtmrw]

I know that the the HDD is broken. After the diagnostics confirmed this, I took it out and there was a rattling noise coming from inside the HDD.

I want an HDD with at least 5400 RPM. Since I'm going to start with XP, will 7200 be a better choice?

I'm looking to get something under $100. I figured out what type of HDD I need. Can anyone recommend a HDD? Something that's been verified to work well with this or similar models?

Anyway, I'm going to start with a new HDD first, because everything is "fine" right now. After I run XP for a little bit, I'll get the RAM and battery.

jronald, I would like to run 2000 since I'm sure it would run smoother, but I'm being helped with setting it up with XP and the drivers. I'm trying to get this t21 running with as little hassle as possible. However, if XP won't run well with a faster HDD and more RAM, I'm going to see about Windows 2000.

Thanks.

[Harryc]

RAM, battery, hard drive, WIndows 2000, whatever else it needs .... at the end of the day you'll have spent a considerable amount of $$ and you'll have a working T21, but it will still be slow 8 year old technology with an aging unsupported OS. For $250 or slightly above you can get a Thinkpad manufactured within the last 5 years that is SO much faster....just food for thought. Take a look at some of the offerings on our own Marketplace forum. Here's a good example -
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77805
Good luck

[nikki605]

Listen to Harry. I have a T21 (see my sig) that I put a lot of upgrades into over the 8 years that I've owned it. At one point, I reloaded it with WinXP and it was still pretty zippy. But after SP2 & SP3, its not as quick. Even with the 7200RPM HDD, it spends a huge amount of time paging to disk. The max memory of 512MB is just not enough. Mostly I use it for web surfing only. No heavy duty video, games or other such apps. It just can't handle it.

I don't regret having done the upgrades over the past several years, but if I was starting with a stock T21 today, I wouldn't bother.

[abtmrw]

Thanks for all the advice. I really did consider just buying a another laptop.

However, I did some calculations and I estimated my total repair cost for this notebook to be about $150. More or less depending on the HDD. My current desktop is about 5 years old, so It's not that fast either. As long as this laptop suits my basic needs with either XP or 2000, I'll be happy. If not, I'll definitely end up buying another laptop...most likely a thinkpad.

[pianowizard]

abtmrw, I recommend you to sell this T21 and then buy a more modern laptop. On Craigslist, you can probably get $60 to 70 for it. You can easily get a much faster laptop for under $200 these days. It's not worth upgrading this T21. Let's say you end up selling it for $60 and getting a much newer laptop (e.g. a Dell D610) for $200, then it's like getting the latter for $140. Repairing and fully upgrading the T21 would cost over $140, and it would still be much slower than a Dell D610.

[abtmrw]

Well, you guys seem determined.

I guess it's better that I have a faster laptop. I'll take a look around here. I'm not a fan of DELL, but I really like thinkpads now.

Thanks for the help, guys.

[RealBlackStuff]

Before you do, would you care to show us your repair calculations?
$140-150 seems way too high...

[abtmrw]

I haven't looked at any laptops yet...I'm traveling.

I did the calculations pretty quickly:

HDD: $50-70
RAM: $30
Battery: $30
Other: $10-20

I'm actually going to keep this laptop. I will probably put it together little by little, just to keep as a backup of sorts.