New Owner: A31 Battery and Hard Drive

[schoene]

Hello,

I recently obtained an A31 and have been quite pleased so far, with only a couple of exceptions:

1. The battery only lasts for one hour. Is this normal or does it need a new battery?
2. The hard drive is only 20gb; may I please have some advice on upgrading this (i.e. max size, recommendations, etc)?

Thank you in advance and I apologize in advance if this has been covered elsewhere; apparently I'm doing something wrong with the search engine.

Search term used: a31 hard drive ignored: drive hard

[RealBlackStuff]

New(er) batteries can be bought in our Marketforum (place a WTB ad = Want To Buy) or get one on eBay.
You can replace the HD with another IDE/EIDE/ATA/PATA (they're all the same) 2.5" up to 320GB.
Any drive will work, as long as it is NOT SATA.

[schoene]

New(er) batteries can be bought in our Marketforum (place a WTB ad = Want To Buy) or get one on eBay.
You can replace the HD with another IDE/EIDE/ATA/PATA (they're all the same) 2.5" up to 320GB.
Any drive will work, as long as it is NOT SATA.

Thank you for the reply.

So one hour is indeed low? How much uptime do you think I can expect from a newer one? Is there anything specific I should look for in batteries?

Sorry if these questions are stupid; this is not only my first Thinkpad but also my first laptop.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[ajkula66]

Even when they were new, A31 machines barely got two hours out of a battery. They are power-hungry bums.

My advice to you would be to check occasionally in Lenovo's outlet, since I have gotten a couple of new-old-stock batteries there a few months ago, and they might show up again. Then again, they might not...

An hour from a used battery is not bad IMO, and I doubt that you'd get much more from a third-party-eBay-replacement...

[A31]

My battery lasts half an hour at best!!

Upgrading the HDD is easy, I upgraded mine from 20GB to 80GB. Under the PCMCIA slot there is a door, undo the two screws and pull... then just take the HDD out of the caddy and insert the new one.

A31 is IDE/PATA.

[schoene]

My battery lasts half an hour at best!!

Upgrading the HDD is easy, I upgraded mine from 20GB to 80GB. Under the PCMCIA slot there is a door, undo the two screws and pull... then just take the HDD out of the caddy and insert the new one.

A31 is IDE/PATA.

Thank you for the reply and instructions.

I've been looking at HDDs. I would like to get a 320gb but I'm waiting on a deal.

If I'm reading your sig correctly, you have the same model I have, so how are you carrying 1.5gb RAM? Isn't the max 1gb?

P.S. Is it possible to run two batteries on A31s?

Thanks again,
Rachel

[RealBlackStuff]

A31 and A31p can take 2 x 1GB RAM.
Apart from the main battery, you can take out the CD/DVD drive and put in a small second battery, the Ultrabay battery.
See e.g. here: http://cgi.ebay.com/Genuine-IBM-ThinkPa ... 0337805908
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4JTSXC
However, these batteries are all old(er) and won't help out for more than maybe 1-2 hours if you are lucky.

[A31]

If I'm reading your sig correctly, you have the same model I have, so how are you carrying 1.5gb RAM?

1x 1GB DDR SODIMM chip + 1x 512MB DDR SODIMM chip = 1.5GB RAM

Only reason why IBM claim(ed) the A31/p could only take 1GB RAM is because when the A31/p was launched, back in 2002, there was no such thing as a 1GB DDR SODIMM RAM chip, only 512MB chips (2x 512MB = 1GB), but now there is such thing as a 1GB SODIMM, like RBS said above, the A31/p can take up to 2GB RAM.

Apart from the main battery, you can take out the CD/DVD drive and put in a small second battery, the Ultrabay battery.

I think I am right in saying (and I'm sure ajkula66 will correct me if I am wrong!!) that for usage of the UltraBay battery, you do not need to remove the optical drive as the UltraBay on the A30/A31 is on the opposite side of the optical drives, therefore, I don't think you need to remove the optical drive if you want to use the UltraBay battery.

[RealBlackStuff]

A31 and A31p have an Ultrabay 2000 slot on the left, this can also take an extra battery.
The Ultrabay Plus slot on the right does NOT support an extra battery.

As it happens, both slots support optical drives....

[jronald]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Genuine-Original-IB ... 3efe7315d0
Here is the battery and this is a good vendor but I have purchased 6 or 8 from PCSurplusOnline for as little as $6.99 but I cant find any on their site right now. That said with the the Ultra Bay and a reworked OEM battery I have tweaked my A31p with NoteBook Hardware Control and gotten a little more than 3.5 hours surfing and listening to MP3's.

Ron

[FrankK-F]

schoene,

You made a good choice with your A31, that in its time was IBM's mobile work station, their top-of-the-line offering. The 3-spindle design was abandoned unfortunately in subsequent mobile work stations.

I have two of them with several copies of Dock-II .. and still use them actively ... even as I moved my hungry apps to a W500 (with a fast CPU and 8GB but somewhat dumbed-down connectivity) . My experience with A31p is that it runs well with WXP ... not Vista and W7.

My battery life has been almost 2 hours (UXGA screen, 2GB memory, 320GB HDD+160GB HDD); except for field trips my machines are on their docks.

Enjoy!

[A31]

A31 and A31p have an Ultrabay 2000 slot on the left, this can also take an extra battery.
The Ultrabay Plus slot on the right does NOT support an extra battery.

As it happens, both slots support optical drives....

So you could put the extra battery in where the optical drive goes and then move the optical drive into the UltraBay plus then...

[RealBlackStuff]

Check here to see if your UB2000 drive also fits in the UBPlus slot.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ultrabay

[schoene]

Thanks to all for the many excellent replies. This is a very helpful forum.

How do I know if I have an Ultrabay? Currently the left side of my laptop hosts an Iomega zip drive (ugh!).

Warmly,
Rachel

[ajkula66]

You do have an Ultrabay. Just remove the ZIP drive and you'll have a spare slot.

[A31]

Iomega zip drive (ugh!).

that drive does not deserve to live in an A31, or any ThinkPad for that matter!!
If you have a caddy, you can put a second 2.5" IDE/PATA hard disk drive in the UltraBay 2000 (the left hand bay). You can get the caddy's from eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/IDE-2nd-HDD-Caddy-F ... 27b0a3add8