Repairing a Vintage ThinkPad 

I've heard Internet Exploder but Device Mangler is a new one haha!

"It is now safe to turn off your computer" Now that is nostalgia...

That pointer behavior was a typical behavior for the pointer driver. Pointer drift was a really common issue with the touch point laptops. The driver checks every few seconds for any slow consistent motion. it will interpret this as pointer drift and zero it out. The next time the pointer drifts, just let it continue and the driver should zero it out in a couple seconds. Thanks for the video. Brings back memories. I worked in tech support and worked with a lot of old laptops and desktops from this era. Computers at this time were frustrating to work on, but it didn't seem so bad because earlier computers were even worse. PS: Also IBM was a Windows launch partner and was usually very good for having out of the box support when a new version of Windows would come out. This advantage would go away over time as new hardware was introduced.

In my vintage laptop repairs, I used to use CF-to-IDE adapters, but now I use SD-to-IDE adapters. I had much more luck with them on olders machines with quirky BIOS.

That deductive reasoning at 26 minutes was amazing. I would have just given up, probably.

"Let's look into the device mangler" Holy crap that laptop is a shredder.

I'm so happy I found this channel. I love rehabbing old computers and learning how the technology of my youth worked and getting old machines to have new purposes where most people would think it is just "old crap that belongs in the garbage". It's exciting to me when you figure out these old hurdles and get through each problem slowly and steadily. I run an old Mac Pro on OS X Lion as my Pro Tools studio and an old Pentium 1 laptop as my "book writing machine". I collect old Blackberry devices and wish I could still use them today (I tried as hard as I could to use them to the end haha). My obsession drives my girlfriend nuts sometimes but she knows it's just part of who I am haha...Thanks so much for doing this channel!!!

Back when laptops still used to be bulky, no matter what! And all that trouble just to play some SimCity2000 on a machine that actually fits it. Now that's passion. Also yeah, hello from Germany!

Oh god, I remember the ThinkPad series with such love, I used to get the laptops dumped for minor faults or upgrades - they were trash but man, it was my trash :D

I had an almost identical Thinkpad model when they were new and I badly broke it in one of my greatest blunders. This video made me really sad thinking about how I felt when mine died :

Me: Well I expect he will install Windows 98 in this thing... 17:07 *Sees Windows ME startup menu* NO GOD PLEASE NOOOOOOO

Back then, those S-video ports on laptops were a blessing, I used to connect my laptop to a huge standard def Sony Trinitron via S-video and play retro console/arcade emulators on a big CRT screen. (granted it was 480i, but still awesome at the time for emulation on a big CRT screen). Of course now that port is obsolete since we can use the VGA or even HDMI port along with a a converter and a program like CRTemudriver to get 15kHz RGB on those standard def CRTs. : )

The excitement of installing Windows pre-XP! Oh man, this is why I still love installing Linux distros like Arch. There's something about looking at those black and white text prompts and typing in commands to format a disk and run an installation. Makes you feel like a real computer wizard (which I guess you are if you can successfully install an OS through a command prompt!). This was a ton of fun to watch. Thanks for putting in the work, Colin!

The reaction when fdisk worked...Priceless! I love this kind of video!

A more sophisticated druaga1 video.

When I started it, I only thought it was 4 minutes. I only realized it was 40 after it was over.

My aunt gave me an old Dell Inspiron 5000 a while back, I was wondering what to do with it and this video came along. The perfect system for retro PC games! Great video, this is why your channel is so awesome!!!

You seemed much happier in the intro than you usually do in podcasts for some reason. Great video BTW.

This is one of the best videos of the channel. The entire troubleshooting is very interesting and I learn a lot with it.

This video is interesting, as well as educational. Thank you for the time and effort. I really enjoyed how you took the time to explain and show it all, these long videos are fantastic. p.s. Greetings from The Netherlands.

Found this channel today, amazing stuff. I could binge watch all of it. congratulations

Awesome video! I absolutely love these late 90s laptops. They are, in my opinion, some of the best laptops ever produced in terms of reliability and everyday usefulness. :)

That is an amazing video. You have inspired me to work on my old thinkpad as well. Keep up the work!!!

I love this stuff! I enjoyed this walkthrough repair and hope to see more stuff like this!

I find these videos so satisfying. With Colin doing stuff from the 90-00 and the 8-Bit guy doing 70-80. I'd love to see you guys do a collaboration video one day. Great Vid!!!

Beautiful vintage machine! Nice job in persistence.

I enjoy these kinds of videos. It's fun to see the struggle!

I just got an old Compaq Deskpro P800 up and running. I found an old IDE HDD and it is running fine. I love that old clunky sound of those old HDDs. paired with those little socket 370 heatsink fans that run at 100% the sound is just so retro.

Awesome video which brings back so many memories! The very first laptop I got to fix was one of these. Had to swap a board from a bad body into a good one. Took me several hours the first time around (it was a lot of screws) but after that I could work on any laptop. Got into Thinkpads and worked on many of them including some exotic ones (S30!). I also played with CF cards on one of my own Thinkpads back when SSDs were prohibitively expensive in mid 00s but I remember install Linux on them. Now I work on Mac laptops but this old PII-era Stinkpad is what started it all many years ago.

Nice job, loved the video. I just watched LGR restore one just like that, but it was a bit newer I think. That was really cool man, thank you!

This is like the fourth time I've seen a video in general about old Thinkpads. Looks like that's the next big think in retro computer collecting.

I didn't know that cf cards could work in 2 modes, removible modes & stay modus. So each cf card can have it's own bios with it's own settings such as removible modus ,FAT32 etc,,,, But you did a great job, i only wished you did & showed us how to remove those residues from that laptop. Not mentionen, everytime you say,,1999,,, i will get flashbacks.

Loved the video! All the hardware videos are the best. Keep it up :) Thanks!

Yes! More videos like this please. I can totally relate as a thinkpad t40 with windows 98 owner. I use mine to play old pc games.

I recommend opening it up thermal paste replacement and clean the motherboard down with some isopropyl to stop future corrosion.You can oil the fan also.

This was satisfying, the whole 40 min. I'd watch it again!

I really like your videos. I just wish other people make things understandable the way you do.

Please make more of these videos! very entertaining to see someone refurbish it and fail at some point but still succeed in the end!

All these errors bring back so many memories of countless hours of trial and error.

The beauty of your vids is that they're educational - in being that you can show the next generation of the technology that was ours back when we were young. And! you save another PC out of the land fill. It's like these old machines being that this was a business grade laptop is still far better in construction and build quality than the thin units that are a waste of money, this unit is built to a high quality standard that far and will out live any apple computer today.

Cool. And great timing as well, seeing I've spent most of my day off making a model T41 run Windows 98. Have to say, my BIOS looks a lot fancier, graphics and everything.

Whoa! After watching all your new stuff, I was NOT expecting that hair!!!

Oh boy you've got my nostalgia going. I had a stack of these at one point, the 390e and 390(x?) was pretty pretty decent, my brother had one that had a pentium 3 back in the day, and I used to have a docking station, but I finally sold it on ebay after giving away/selling all these lol

Well done sir..That was creative indeed!

Awesome work man, really good video!!!

I had a thinkpad 600 i never got working.My grandfather worked at IBM from 1980 to 2004. It was his

Great video. Totally something I would do if I found an old laptop.

Hey brother this a great video... I found myself doing the exact same things when friends and fam ask me to upgrade their old machines ... keep up the cool vids... I learned a lot here

I understand you were able to clear your throat and find the SanDisk utility for swapping firmware settings between "fixed" and "removable." :) Great work, This Does Not Compute. :)

We used those as step stools they were built so stinking strong. They had cool reading lights in the lcd bezel.

My biggest issue with these old laptops are the screens, which are absolute junk by today's standard. First you have the very obvious ghosting, which makes anything fast moving basically unplayable. Then the CCFL bulbs usually are on their way out, so the screens are probably sitting at like 60% of their original brightness. And like you said, they almost always have really bad internal scaling, so unless you want to play DOS games in a small window, you have to put up with a garbled mess on your screen.

Thanks so much for showing the ATCFWCHG.EXE tool. Now I made a 2GB CF compatible with my Pentium 200MHz MMX system!

These laptops were the Toughbooks of their day

Win98SE is often a better choice, as a half-step down from the much hated ME, but a half-step up from regular 98. Though Win2000 Pro is usually the top choice for this era machine. The extreme version would be a bigger CF card with multiple partitions that can multi-boot between Win2K, 98SE, and a lightweight linux distro, to cover all your bases.

I don't know what it is but i love giving new life to old machines. Even if all it ever does is become a word processor for some college student at least it has a use beyond its usefulness. Great vid!

I got the 600E. Damn a 12 inch laptop have both Floppy and Optical Drive. Kudos for IBM :O

Your camera may have the ability to change the CF firmware to "fixed."

These old Stinkpads required a separate caddy to enclose and install the hard drive. Caddys were different among the various models. When purchasing one of these vintage machines, always ask if the caddy is included. They usually pull the hard drives for security, but the caddys can be a PITA to find. Some are plentiful used or repro on eBay; some are not. Very informative video. I have used them since new, but learned some things here. The old Stinkpads were built like tanks. One weak spot now is the batteries are usually dead and replacements, if they can be found, are very expensive.

Thoroughly enjoyable video. Thank you.

I had one of those laptops. It was given to me and it was also missing the HD and that adapter. Since I got it free I didn't feel like buying a replacement adapter, so I disassembled the laptop and soldered the pins of the HD directly to the edge connector on the mainboard.

Windows installations these days are so boring, i kinda miss that process! Greetings from Brazil :)

I notice this with all laptops that use the nub. If you use it a lot or push to hard in one direction it will get stuck for a bit but register it a movement, as its getting unstuck. Just let it go for a bit and it should be fine. Great video and have fun.

i love old style laptops good old day's when they came out to buy them massive thanks.

Funny. I've never had a problem with my compact flash cards and f-disk before, and I've used them in several retro systems, including laptops. BTW, I found on amazon a CF card adapter that has the shape of IDE drives, in addition to an M.2 to IDE. While that one works in some of my devices, it doesn't boot in my oldest Toshiba Laptop, A P1 with 40mb (440CDT), while the compact flash does. The adapter I use is a SYBA DS-ADA45006, and the compact flash card I use is a UDMA 7 (which is the IDE specification) 16GB Extreame Sandsidsk 120MB/S, model number SDCFXS-0 16G

What was the boot up time, also fantastic video helped a bunch. The best I've watched so far.

Suddenly i keep getting all your old videos suggested

This video was really cool I greatly enjoyed it.

I had that exact same model. Great memories.

I was given 2 broken IBM Thinkpad T30s. Cobbled them together to 1 good one and it made for a good retro game LAN machine. Played a lot of StarCraft with friends only a few years back.

Ah, this is what i needed to see after a midterm! Now into more homework.

@33:44 Trackpoints do that, they come out of calibration sometimes. They automatically fix themselves when you leave them alone for a few seconds

Dang, i guess thanks for reminding me the painful 1+ hr long process of installing windows 98ish. The nostalgia just makes one forget all the bad parts.

I had the 390X. Brings back memories.

**restores a retro laptop** **installs Windows ME**

Very nice! I had this same model when I was younger. Wish I still had it!!...... A Disc on Module (DOM) would have been a good alternative to the original hard drive also.

Greetings from Germany ;)

Thinkpad HD caddies (cages) are among the most commonly salvaged (missing) and difficult to find parts. I want one for a much more recent model (E530), and the only one on eBay is in the UK and is about $20 with shipping.

Steven have a Thinkpad 500CDS restored and now use it. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

My dad had a thinkpad just like this(might have been the same model) with win98se on it. Fond memories.

fairly standard driver architecture, they have to have master/slave setups to pass a POST in the SCSI standard.

14:58 Hallo zurück!

In 2018, I still have and IBM Thinkpad 390E up and running !

Awesome work!!!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

perty cool thanks fore showing us this machine

It's stunning to me just how thick it is. I have a Thinkpad T61 from 2008 that seems razer thin compared to this.

Strange. I just got a Sandisk Extreme 32GB CF card for my Toshibas Tecra 520CDT (even a bit older than your IBM) and had absolutely no problem in getting it recognized by the machine and installing Windows 98 on it. I used diskpart on a Windows 10 machine to clean the existing partition off the card, then used disk management to initialize it. I did not create a partition or format it. I let the Windows 98 install create the partition and do the formatting. Worked a charm.

The actual drivers will offer much better performance in games, id really recommend using the ones on your CD in all cases.

Great video, your stuff keeps popping up in my recommended lists (maybe LGR/8bitguy/modernvintagegamer etc. got something to do with it). Subscribed.:) I got into old laptops because of LGR and the 8 Bit Guy. I have a Gateway 2000 Colorbook 486, a Triumph-Adler 486, Compaq Armada 1530 with a PI, a Dell C600 with a PIII, a Dell 9200 with a P-M and a Radeon 9700 (to relive my Win98 / XP gamng days), a IPC Mitac 6133 Celeron 433MHz and a Thinkpad 600E PII 366MHz. All functional (minus batteries), some as complete units, some with external displays. I'm slowly repairing what needs to be repaired or just install windows/DOS on a new M.2 to IDE drive adapter. I'm not sure I'm ever going to use these, but it gives me a lot of pleasure messing with them, tweaking them, getting them running again, improving them. It's also one of my cheaper hobbies. :D The laptops cost 160€, the drives so far about 200 including adapters (to IDE and SATA, 1x120GB, 3x32GB and IDE/SATA to USB).

Industrial Compact Flash is great for this type of usage as it's already configured as a "fixed Disk". I use Industrial Flash in my Compaq LTE 5100 laptop and it works fabulously.

I have the same laptop , is so old and the plastic is so brittle that it literally seems made of sugar , great video, new subscriber here. M

I can explain the vague and confusing master/slave label! The PCB stems from a dual-socket CF adapter where the jumper configures both sockets, not one. Depending on how they stacked the sockets, it was impossible to use some of the thicker CF drives in one of the sockets (yes, there are multiple types), but for compatibility reasons, that CF might still need to be specifically master or slave, so the jumper was necessary. Which incidentally meant they could reuse the same PCB for single-socket adapters.

perfect length for my study hall

oh, my goodness... i remember when thinkpad cursors used to crawl along the screen... the little nubbin in the keyboard was too sensitive and would just do that for a bit, as I recall...

I remember After Dark screensavers! Barely! :D

When you started to talk about the removable and fixed modes on the CF card, I decided that I'm going to make a comment about it asking what kind of bullshit is that, however I persuaded myself to watch till the end, and I got really surprised that this setting really mattered. I'm using CF cards in a variety of devices, from my Yamaha A5000 sampler, through my Compaq Armada 1530 to my Commodore Amiga 1200. On neither of these machines I had any problems with any of my CF cards, from the cheaper Verbatim ones, to the SanDisk Extreme IV in the A5000, so I guess it might also depend on the BIOS as well. Oh, and the Nikon D70 was my first DSLR as well. I still have it and use it from time to time, as my D3100 doesn't have a built-in focusing motor, and neither does my 70-300mm lens.

i quite enjoyed this little saga. what's the saga? it's laptops for the nerds. You can't even use it.

Hey Colin, it’s going alright thanks :-)

I put a 16GB industrial CF card in an old IDE laptop to reduce the heat generated and it worked well but I just swapped it for a mini PCI-E SSD in a 44 pin IDE caddy and the performance boost was dramatic! I wouldn’t personally buy second hand CF cards as many have relatively limited read/write cycles. CF form factor MicroDrives are a lot less limited but they are fragile.

I wonder if Haiku OS would be compatible with this ThinkPad. Looking at the minimum requirements and drivers, it looks like it would be compatible. If you're still tinkering with the ThinkPad Collin, you should try it out!

device mangler lol