I didn't realized how dramatic the energy density improvements in lithium batteries has improved. A modern battery with that capacity would be well under half the size of this one.
That MIDI file was great. I worked at small town radio station in the mid to late 90's and toward the end of my career there, they invested in a PC for the production studio which did basic audio tracking. We had a library of MIDI music files to use as background for commercials, bumps, etc. I can definitely imagine some commercial for a local dentist office being read with that music in the background.
I think that kind of happy "accident" happens because while in general terms these machines will only include what is required for their intended purpose, being pricey ones there's no desperate pressure to hit a price point seeking the absolute cheapest parts.
@@christophermorin9036 that's a very accurate description of it! i knew it reminded me of something i've heard before but i couldn't remember what exactly
funny, @4:50 what seems to be the wifi card with the blue sticker says ministry of traffic and watermanagement. it is an old laptop of the dutch government, that is why it was probably erased badly, as is custom to completely destroy the device. and it would explain the black felt marker on the chassis
Interesting note: This Laptop was actually used by the Dutch Government. At 4:47 you can see the sticker that indicates that it was from the "Ministerie van van Verkeer en Waterstaat", so basically it served at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
@@AffidavidDonda So what you are saying is that at 4:47 you do not see a very clear, bright blue sticker that states "ministerie van verkeer en waterstaat"?
@@Joshuadrooney I see this sticker clearly, but it does not mean it was used by ministerie van verker en waterstaat - it just means the modem is OK to be used in NL. Same with the Canadian sticker to the left.
It's because the Windows driver uses the custom ESS general MIDI patch set, which takes advantage of the added features of the ESS variant of FM synthesis (20x 4-operators voices where each voice can output stereo sound, I think by assigning 2 combined operators to each stereo channel). By replacing the ESFM.DRV file in the Windows' system directory with the one took from an ES688 card's driver, where the FM part was usually handled by a genuine OPL3 as the ES688 chip doesn't have any FM synth by its own, the ESS FM synthesizer will be put in OPL3 compatible mode and will play the standard Windows OPL3 sounds. The ESS FM synthesizer is quite faithful to the original OPL3, is one of the most accurate clones actually. If you keep the ESFM.DRV files from both the native driver and the ES688 one, by means of a batch file you can swap them to switch the FM mode in Windows whenever you want.
Very cool laptop. Congratulations on fixing the USB port! While lenovo has done a great job of continuing the Thinkpad line, i think the IBM branded ones look and feel more durable.
I like all of your videos but really love the ones with ThinkPads. I have been a long-time TP owner and user. In fact, I would like to see if you can get your hands on the first ThinkPads, which were Microchannel bus architecture. The 700 (black and white), the 700C, then 720C. Great little systems and of course the Microchannel modularity was great! Keep up the great work!
Your USB port repair reminds me of a MBA trackpad repair I did last year. I had one part with shattered glass and another with a bad PCB. So I transplanted the glass. There was a grounding strap which I accidentally tore, but it was easy enough to replace from the donor.
This form factor needs to come back now that we have the hardware to enable it to overcome the shortcomings of these old ones. I just bought the upcoming 10" GPD Win Max 2 with an AMD 6800U, 16GB DDR5 6400, and 1TB NVMe. Closest thing to a true successor to these old netbooks that finally delivers on their promise.
If it does they need to make the keys with proper size & have a nice crisp travel to them. That's what really makes these enjoyable. Although my gf does have something similar from lenovo with win10 on it.
I seriously don't get why laptop keys are so far apart as a standard. It's annoying just from that alone but having no feedback is a let down as well. It looks like they have mechanical keyboards now on gaming laptops but they're still placed way far apart. You'd think they could make a really nice 10" to 14" laptop that would be the ultimate portable rig with a standard desktop key layout that thinkpads had until 2011.
@@mookitty2396 it starts at $999 USD for the spec I outlined. The $1,299 version has the 6800U with 32GB RAM and 2TB. Yes, it starts shipping in September.
Totally agreed, we need more of those tiny form factors. I would love to have a phone with a flip out keyboard. There was one that Samsung made some years back that was really cool. It had a clicking slider mechanism that was just fun to play with. I remember seeing an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the 90's where there was a clam shell style computer that ran Windows, and it was small enough to fit in your pocket. I miss the days when manufacturers were adventurous.
Hi Colin. I have mine 240x with a bulky battery. it makes laptop to sit on an angle which makes typing more comfortable. And it works! Overall it is a beautiful piece of engineering! Just forgot to say I love your channel!
I still have two 240Xs from the time we configured up PLCs on site back in the day. One suffered a fall from the top of a ladder which broke a hinge and smashed the casing, so with the help of eBay I rebuilt it; this video brought back fond memories of that time although I do recall having the official IBM 240X service manual to aid the disassembly. Great video, keep them coming!
Ultimately, the problem with those PCMCIA-based CD ROM drives is that they require the proper driver to be initialised before they’ll work. I have one of these 240s and also have had the same problem. The original restore floppy works with the drive though. Installing Windows on there can be a royal pain in the backside.
Funny how you mentioned installing Windows from the hard drive as a trick as I always used to do this. Copy it on, install and leave the setup files there for being able to add and remove features without the CD. These are nice little Laptops. The older Thinkpads just have some sort of aesthetic appeal to them.
Awesome episode - the 240x has always been special to me. Years ago I had set one up for my sister who was traveling across the country and wanted something she could journal with and dial up to check email. Have been looking for one to add to my collection for quite some time now. Thanks again!
Nicely done as usual, Colin. Don't feel bad about breaking the pins! We all make mistakes in big repair projects and the important thing is you managed to get it working.
I scored a 240 off eBay in early 2000s for $150-ish, which despite its poor battery served well as a basic portable Linux machine (with PCMCIA Wifi card), and as a handy serial terminal for configuring switches, PBXes, etc. I used a silent CF card w/adapter in lieu of a hard drive. Eventually its LCD went bad, probably the flex cable, so I removed that, and the 240 then had a 3rd, sedentary life as my home router, automation controller, weather station, Asterisk phone system, solar power logger & mini-server. It happily ran for years from ~12-14V DC solar-bank power straight into its battery terminals, pulling only 7W. I swapped the internal modem mini-PCI with a 10/100 Ethernet card as second NIC (NIC1 being Cardbus), but had to solder a Cat5 cable directly to the card's transformer due to lack of a pass-through port, passing this out through the Kensington lock port. Had to do some BIOS hack also for those to coexist, but can't remember details. The VGA output was split 3 ways (R, G, B each going to a different small mono CRT, with sync's paralleled), and under Linux the PS/2 port could accept two separate keyboards, one into the 5th & 6th DIN pins normally meant for a mouse. When those 100Mb NICs became a limitation, this was replaced with an ARM-based SBC, but then put in another 2 or 3 years at a friend's place in a simliar utility role before finally being retired. Nice little machine!
On that first machine, they were just running DOS 7.0. It shows the Windows loading screen even if you never had Windows. Also there are USB mass storage drivers for DOS in case you ever find yourself in this situation again 👍
I bought my ibm 240x while on holiday for less than £10 as spares and repairs. I repaired it and I still have it. I took the modem out and fitted a WiFi card and shoe horned a pair of WiFi antennas into the lcd display. It works really well.
it can also be some sort of oxidation or loose connection. i once had an X40 not power up, with the power connector being my first instinct, and after reconnecting the keyboard (which in this case also includes that button), the laptop powered up. that was a few years ago and it still works fine. it could also be a bad button, though somewhat rare i reckon
I got a Thinkpad subnote in 1995. I had picked it out myself (from a magazine ad) for school, thinking the size would be perfect. I remember it was like an inch thick. It had the external drives, but it used some type of proprietary or uncommon connector. It was a nice product, well built, but the system ended up being more difficult to use than I expected. And within two years developed a red vertical line on the screen. I want to say it was the 500 series.
I had to replace the main fan on a larger model ThinkPad. It made this unholy grinding sound when it kicked on. Just that single component was a massive pain in the butt. Took like 2 hours to do. I can't even imagine the pain of replacing as many components as you did and on tinier models. You did a great job of it.
I went through a very similar process recently with two mid-2102 MacBook Pro 13s. I bought the two off ebay "As is parts only" and was able to swap parts like the logic board (and others) to create a functional computer. I enjoyed the process, one reason I like watching your videos.
Wild video! Really enjoyed this- I had a TP240 back in the early 2000s as my secondary machine. My main was a TP600- so the 240 felt SO portable! Not great performance- but it’s a shame TP keyboards aren’t as good now as they were then!
I have had my trusty X220 for 11 years now and it's the best all-round computing device I have ever owned. I run Gentoo Linux on it, it goes everywhere with me and I will never be another "phone zombie" walking around, peering down at a tiny screen and bumping into all the other phone zombies for not looking where I am going. "Civilised" mobile computing is done sat down with an X220 and a coffee out of everyone's way, whilst occasionally looking out the coffee shop window to laugh at the phone zombies.
The X220 is the real deal. Probably the best Thinkpad ever. It's sad that Lenovo dropped the ball after the X240 with those underpowered CPUs (The X230 is still fine though). I'm still using a T420 and it's a great laptop ever after 11 years.
I'm surprised none of ThinkPads you've came across had the BIOS password lock in place. It's kinda fun shorting pins at the right time to clear the password.
Could you figure dell latitude dseries how to short them out they were good laptop just to get stuff done and optional dock my dad have i want those laptops and run linux mint use it for basic work.
My first "own" laptop was a Compaq Presario 1270, with a K6-2 350 MHz and 128Mb of RAM which I updated to 192, and then updated to XP, using PCMCIA cards between a USB 2.0 (the 1.0 onboard USB was broken exactly at the same spot) and a WiFi b/g or a 10/100 Ethernet. Managed to get me to my first years of university and made my first steps programming on that. Now, my current work has a old school Thinkpad which I intend to appropriate the next day they clean inventory
Was given a 240X by my brother in law when I got into uni. That machine got me through University and the first year and half of work after uni. P3 500E, 128MB, 12GB HDD. Ran win2k and later xp. Loved this thing to bits. Speedy enough for 2K and earlier versions of XP. It only died when the battery expanded in storage and cracked the body. 😞
I was born in 94 so I don't remember much other than the Iconic N64 days, it sounds similar to Oingo Boingo's, home again, just synthesized, it feels like 90s hold music which doesn't sound too bad, I wouldn't mind hearing now on hold actually but we got stuck with Cisco's Default music instead still in 2022 none the less , props to cisco for the icon but the tone of that it makes being on hold feel dragged out longer than it needs to be. With this I be can reminded of similar catchy snes music at least, like Paperboy 2
Interesting subject. ThinkPad 240's and it's newer iterations were nice. In the late 1990's into early 2000's I worked at Ogilvy & Mather who were at the time Ad Agency for IBM. I worked for a consultant firm at O&M handling their Laptop Support. The 240's and 240X's were used limited to a few higher executives. They were issued with a different IBM Floppy Drive than the example you have. Also the External Bays that housed the CD-ROM drive and flopper drive you have likely were issued when the ThinkPad 600 Series debuted. Or circa ThinkPad 570 Series. The IBM CD-Rom drives sometimes needed driver installed for them to work. I have a funny story about two TP 240's. Both were run over by vehicles. 1) a O&M executive was in Paris and it was run over maybe by a taxi. 2) the other the executive leaving home in advertently left the laptop bag a the rear of their vehicle loading up to leave for work and drove over it. This 240 was delivered to me with it's screen in the shape of a rainbow. I was able to cobble together these two 240's to work and access their data from the two hard drives. I actually have a photo of the second executive holding the laptop before I picked it up to attempt getting access (or worse case scenario sending it out for) data recovery. You video brings back good memories of my time as IT Support.
Jumped when I saw the Xyratex sticker on the hard drive. I worked there from the end of the time when it was an IBM Hard Drive fab plant and transitioned into Xyratex in the mid late '90s. Management buyout, we went from making Hard drives to reworking them. There is a good chance I was there at the same time as this drive. Heck I might have even handled it! The plant was huge, clean rooms with hundreds of people working in the on any given shift. Thousands working there in its heyday as an IBM facility. Havant Hampshire, near Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
youre cadence and and annunciations reminds me a lot of Patrick Bateman especially when he's taking you through his morning routine. odd comparison i know but its also rather comforting sounding
That Inudstry Canada sticker you see a few times in the teardown is indicative that at some point, this device was owned and provisioned to end users by the Government of Canada. Today, simmilar stickers would say "Shared Services Canada"
I think the neatest thing about ThinkPads is that at a glance, a Thinkpad from 1998 wouldn't look that much out of place next to modern Lenovo ThinkPads, aside from the ports and overall thickness. Talk about a design that just works! The only giveaway is the quality and aspect ratio of the display
IBM's little notebooks are great machines. My first laptop was a new X20 with Windows 2000 on it. I got it brand new at an IBM employee sale for $200. That was over 20 years ago and last I tried it thing thing still worked (I need to pull it out again). That was replaced by an X60. You CAN but more than the listed maximum amount of RAM in those things, but it's not a good idea as while they will report the RAM accurately they actually run more slowly.
I was given this laptop back in 2006 when I was an I.t apprentice, used to take out the hard drive out to reinstall the os had windows 2000 running on mine. Good old days little money though, was a good little laptop in its time.
This is a good video Collin nice work 👍 This type of computer should come back in a limited release availability as a commemorative anniversary product… I’d like to see a 10, 11 or 12” type of Thinkpad from Lenovo w modern ports and serviceability
If you are doing this with many machines of this vintage you may find a floppy with PC DOS and USB support and/or a PCMCIA to CF card adapter quite useful.
Ah, the dead thinkpad has a sticker of a Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and water management, I think that's the reason they used a marker to hide something.
My cat's ears went back when the high notes started in Passport, so I guess we don't like it in this house. Excellent repair though, and I'd love to see a video on the CD-ROM repair.
The holy grail of the 240 line is the ThinkPad i1124 - it has a silvery-gray finish and very similar to the standard black 240Z models, which are almost as rare. It was Japanese-specific though, unlike the other 240s.
I absolutely adore Brickpads of all vintages, the oldest and first one I had was a Z60m Brickpad and the newest one is a Thinpad E560. None of them were gaming or production laptops but I'm surprised that the 560 is able to support some light gaming of Fallout 4 and New Vegas considering it's running on an i5 and Intel's 520 graphics. It also was the first used Thinkpad that had both a working battery and CD drive, it was like winning $3 from the lottery.
Putting baking soda in superglue instantly cures it, not really good for breaks like that. BUT it's very good for adding reinforcement around a break like that. Put superglue on there and dust baking soda over it, let it sit for a couple seconds and then clear out the excess. Becomes basically like an instant "plastic" weld.
I had one of those. Wanted a Vaio 505 series. But spotted the 240 as a good deal. Bought mine brand new when released, and I used it until I sold it in 2004. Great Japanese design.
I've restored a bunch of 240s. I love the 240s, although some of the plastic can feel a bit light and brittle. The portable drive bay only works on very specific thinkpads. I think maybe the 755 or maybe 560 series. I have a couple of new ones and used them in specific circumstances, but generally they're not compatible with most thinkpads. The portable drive bay 2000 was much more compatible. The reason the Win98 splash screen shows up briefly is because someone has reformatted the hard drive using a Win98 SE boot disk. This is a useful disk to partition and format for FAT32 and get a basic bootable system on a hard drive but it does somehow copy over the Win98 splash screen which always shows briefly on a machine that's been reformatted using this disk. Finally, in my experience the weak part of the 240s was the LCD screen. I think only SVGA and all the ones I've seen are aging badly and going a bit dim in places - the CCFL tubes must be wearing out. Great video!
Nice machine, I actually have a version of that Toshiba Libertto but with awider screen running win 98 SE, Still works with 2 PCMCIA card slots and has a Unique Docking port to the rear, though I have nothing to Dock to it sadly. And keyb too small for any real work though usable for the odd document to put together on a train to work if that is your thing. The Thinkpad has a near real size keyb and bigger screen so much more usable. Great to see old hardware minded and kept working. Win 98 will still run Office 97 which is not that much changed for basic work from office 21. Some will totally disagree.. but a Word doc, Normal Excel sheet of general Powerpoint Presentation can a least be started and winished later on your main PC if need to.
In case you don't know this trick, for a system that won't boot, a simple test is to remove the onboard battery as well as the external one. Then plug in A/C power. System is designed to boot at that point, even though date, time, etc. will not be correct. This is not just for Thinkpads, but for many, if not all laptops.
I ended using a 32GB MSATA SSD with a 2.5 inch PATA to MSATA adapter when restoring the X32 last time. So much faster and most importantly, reliable for daily use.
I was thinking the same while watching the video. I have a few older macs I’ve upgraded to msata cards within a pata 2.5” enclosure. Plenty of supply on Amazon!
i got one a few months back but i tought the sound was broken hardware side cos it looked fine in the device manager but watching your video i realized the driver it had installed was completely diferent, located the one you mentioned there and it works now, thanks! mine didnt came with the cd or floppy drives, any idea if i can find a generic one with that same conector that works? i found one thats a diferent brand but i couldnt get it to run, for now im relying on usb drives and virtual drives to have it run stuff that need cds but id like to have the real thing in case the hdd gives up and i have to reinstall
Oh nice. I have a 240 that still works and holds a decent charge. Granted I do have the 2.8AH extended battery. Love it and my 380XD. Need to get a battery for the 380XD though. Both are in decent condition for the age.
Love these little Thinkpads - have a Pentium III 240X version. Unfortunately the screen back light has died although works on an external monitor. Pity you are not in the UK in would have made an offer on your spares laptop screen.
I truly wish that my soldering skills were as intricate as Collins. I just make a mess with the solder when trying to cap and uncap and other small jobs on boards. I'm fine with wiring but I wish I can learn how to get better at smaller stuff like Collin is.
That is a lot of work and time to save one laptop from the recycling center. But I'm not into restoring old machines just to restore them, they have to be currently useful or off to the recycling center they go.
Thanks for this video, it was quite useful. I have a Thinkpad 240 that I managed to get Windows 98 running on it by putting the installation cabs onto the hard drive on another PC, making the disk bootable and then putting it back into the 240. I have an external floppy drive that works with it but not a CD-ROM drive (apart from a USB one and the 240 won't boot from USB) and I hadn't worked out that the way to connect a CD-ROM was via a PCMCIA card. So that's useful to know. I haven't done much with it as of yet, I picked it up in eBay very cheaply a couple of years ago and it works fine except for a couple of pressure marks on the screen. Linux is my normal daily driver OS with a bit of retrogaming in old DOS and Windows OSes up to XP - I may put a very light Linux build on it with no desktop and just use it as an SSH terminal to other machines in my home network as it does have the good IBM Thinkpad keyboard.
If you have a junkyard near you, Chrysler infotainment systems from 2008 all the way to 2012 or so with the touchscreen and buttons on either side of the screen use a bog standard 30GB IDE laptop drive. I got one myself and while the OS is custom, you can reformat the drive as a totally normal IDE drive and it will work in older laptops, like the Latitude S500GT I still need to get a replacement keyboard for sadly.
I didn't realized how dramatic the energy density improvements in lithium batteries has improved. A modern battery with that capacity would be well under half the size of this one.
That MIDI file was great. I worked at small town radio station in the mid to late 90's and toward the end of my career there, they invested in a PC for the production studio which did basic audio tracking. We had a library of MIDI music files to use as background for commercials, bumps, etc. I can definitely imagine some commercial for a local dentist office being read with that music in the background.
the sound chip in that thing is actually really nice! way better than other business laptops from that era that you've shown on your channel
I think that kind of happy "accident" happens because while in general terms these machines will only include what is required for their intended purpose, being pricey ones there's no desperate pressure to hit a price point seeking the absolute cheapest parts.
Reminds me of a Sega Genesis lol. I like it.
@@christophermorin9036 that's a very accurate description of it! i knew it reminded me of something i've heard before but i couldn't remember what exactly
funny, @4:50 what seems to be the wifi card with the blue sticker says ministry of traffic and watermanagement.
it is an old laptop of the dutch government, that is why it was probably erased badly, as is custom to completely destroy the device.
and it would explain the black felt marker on the chassis
Saw that also, just right now 😊 Agree.
Heh! Good eyes. Must of been used for a while before it was wiped.
I really like these old/retro laptop videos, even the other ones are really high quality! you deserve a lot more attention!
Interesting note: This Laptop was actually used by the Dutch Government.
At 4:47 you can see the sticker that indicates that it was from the "Ministerie van van Verkeer en Waterstaat", so basically it served at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
no... this is just a homologation sticker on a modem... possibly more stickers like this from all countries this machine was offered...
oh, there is a Canadian one below :)
@@AffidavidDonda So what you are saying is that at 4:47 you do not see a very clear, bright blue sticker that states "ministerie van verkeer en waterstaat"?
@@Joshuadrooney I see this sticker clearly, but it does not mean it was used by ministerie van verker en waterstaat - it just means the modem is OK to be used in NL. Same with the Canadian sticker to the left.
@@AffidavidDonda The Ministry of Waterworks and Infrastructure licenses technology in your mind?
i love the percussion on that midi chip. that slap bass is something else entirely, though, lol.
It's because the Windows driver uses the custom ESS general MIDI patch set, which takes advantage of the added features of the ESS variant of FM synthesis (20x 4-operators voices where each voice can output stereo sound, I think by assigning 2 combined operators to each stereo channel). By replacing the ESFM.DRV file in the Windows' system directory with the one took from an ES688 card's driver, where the FM part was usually handled by a genuine OPL3 as the ES688 chip doesn't have any FM synth by its own, the ESS FM synthesizer will be put in OPL3 compatible mode and will play the standard Windows OPL3 sounds. The ESS FM synthesizer is quite faithful to the original OPL3, is one of the most accurate clones actually.
If you keep the ESFM.DRV files from both the native driver and the ES688 one, by means of a batch file you can swap them to switch the FM mode in Windows whenever you want.
Very cool laptop. Congratulations on fixing the USB port! While lenovo has done a great job of continuing the Thinkpad line, i think the IBM branded ones look and feel more durable.
I bought an almost perfect ibm 240 for 15$, one of the best purchases in my life. Too bad even HOMM 3 does not run smooth enough for me.
One of my favourite games also - perhaps it's time to dig out HOMM 2 and run it in MS-DOS on the 240. (I have one of those also.)
Really? I played HOMM3 on a Thinkpad 380XD (P-233MMX/96Mb RAM) with no problems
@@xfragboix Was that on Windows 98? I am trying to remember what the earliest OS HoMM3 supported... I know it was Windows only.
@@xfragboix I got 380XD as well, For some reason 380xd runs HOMM way better, not 100% smooth but way better
@@lezoriq 380XD has a Pentium 233 MMX with 32 MB and 380ED has a Pentium 166 with half the RAM. that's probably why
I like all of your videos but really love the ones with ThinkPads. I have been a long-time TP owner and user. In fact, I would like to see if you can get your hands on the first ThinkPads, which were Microchannel bus architecture. The 700 (black and white), the 700C, then 720C. Great little systems and of course the Microchannel modularity was great! Keep up the great work!
Your USB port repair reminds me of a MBA trackpad repair I did last year. I had one part with shattered glass and another with a bad PCB. So I transplanted the glass. There was a grounding strap which I accidentally tore, but it was easy enough to replace from the donor.
This form factor needs to come back now that we have the hardware to enable it to overcome the shortcomings of these old ones.
I just bought the upcoming 10" GPD Win Max 2 with an AMD 6800U, 16GB DDR5 6400, and 1TB NVMe. Closest thing to a true successor to these old netbooks that finally delivers on their promise.
If it does they need to make the keys with proper size & have a nice crisp travel to them. That's what really makes these enjoyable. Although my gf does have something similar from lenovo with win10 on it.
its 1200 and wont ship until next month
I seriously don't get why laptop keys are so far apart as a standard. It's annoying just from that alone but having no feedback is a let down as well. It looks like they have mechanical keyboards now on gaming laptops but they're still placed way far apart. You'd think they could make a really nice 10" to 14" laptop that would be the ultimate portable rig with a standard desktop key layout that thinkpads had until 2011.
@@mookitty2396 it starts at $999 USD for the spec I outlined. The $1,299 version has the 6800U with 32GB RAM and 2TB.
Yes, it starts shipping in September.
Totally agreed, we need more of those tiny form factors. I would love to have a phone with a flip out keyboard. There was one that Samsung made some years back that was really cool. It had a clicking slider mechanism that was just fun to play with. I remember seeing an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the 90's where there was a clam shell style computer that ran Windows, and it was small enough to fit in your pocket. I miss the days when manufacturers were adventurous.
This channel always impresses when it comes to video quality, those 4K macro shots ❤️
Hi Colin.
I have mine 240x with a bulky battery. it makes laptop to sit on an angle which makes typing more comfortable. And it works!
Overall it is a beautiful piece of engineering!
Just forgot to say I love your channel!
I still have two 240Xs from the time we configured up PLCs on site back in the day. One suffered a fall from the top of a ladder which broke a hinge and smashed the casing, so with the help of eBay I rebuilt it; this video brought back fond memories of that time although I do recall having the official IBM 240X service manual to aid the disassembly. Great video, keep them coming!
Came for the repair, stayed for the Passport!
Ultimately, the problem with those PCMCIA-based CD ROM drives is that they require the proper driver to be initialised before they’ll work. I have one of these 240s and also have had the same problem. The original restore floppy works with the drive though. Installing Windows on there can be a royal pain in the backside.
Yes I agree. I had one back in the 2004 or so and it didn't work till I installed Windows and some drivers. I guess under DOS it would be the same
Love your videos Colin! Please come to Australia in the near future!
You have the magic touch, I have never had any luck removing the screen bezels without cracking them, amazing work!
15:50 ohh my, i havent heard this sound since 2004 I guess, I had windows95 and lot of childhood memories are opened in my mind now, thank you!
That battery is 1/5 of the capacity of the battery in my 13" MacBook Pro. What a nugget!
Alright Colin. We need to talk about your gorgeous focus pulls. Because 10/10.
Funny how you mentioned installing Windows from the hard drive as a trick as I always used to do this. Copy it on, install and leave the setup files there for being able to add and remove features without the CD. These are nice little Laptops. The older Thinkpads just have some sort of aesthetic appeal to them.
They really do
I recall reading about the Toshiba Libreto 120S in 1996 and how amazing it was for it’s time.
Awesome episode - the 240x has always been special to me. Years ago I had set one up for my sister who was traveling across the country and wanted something she could journal with and dial up to check email. Have been looking for one to add to my collection for quite some time now. Thanks again!
Nicely done as usual, Colin. Don't feel bad about breaking the pins! We all make mistakes in big repair projects and the important thing is you managed to get it working.
I scored a 240 off eBay in early 2000s for $150-ish, which despite its poor battery served well as a basic portable Linux machine (with PCMCIA Wifi card), and as a handy serial terminal for configuring switches, PBXes, etc. I used a silent CF card w/adapter in lieu of a hard drive. Eventually its LCD went bad, probably the flex cable, so I removed that, and the 240 then had a 3rd, sedentary life as my home router, automation controller, weather station, Asterisk phone system, solar power logger & mini-server. It happily ran for years from ~12-14V DC solar-bank power straight into its battery terminals, pulling only 7W. I swapped the internal modem mini-PCI with a 10/100 Ethernet card as second NIC (NIC1 being Cardbus), but had to solder a Cat5 cable directly to the card's transformer due to lack of a pass-through port, passing this out through the Kensington lock port. Had to do some BIOS hack also for those to coexist, but can't remember details. The VGA output was split 3 ways (R, G, B each going to a different small mono CRT, with sync's paralleled), and under Linux the PS/2 port could accept two separate keyboards, one into the 5th & 6th DIN pins normally meant for a mouse.
When those 100Mb NICs became a limitation, this was replaced with an ARM-based SBC, but then put in another 2 or 3 years at a friend's place in a simliar utility role before finally being retired. Nice little machine!
On that first machine, they were just running DOS 7.0. It shows the Windows loading screen even if you never had Windows. Also there are USB mass storage drivers for DOS in case you ever find yourself in this situation again 👍
How well do the DOS USB drivers work on different chipsets?
@@zoomosis I've had success on every machine I've used them on. I haven't tried anything newer than about 2002 though.
I bought my ibm 240x while on holiday for less than £10 as spares and repairs. I repaired it and I still have it. I took the modem out and fitted a WiFi card and shoe horned a pair of WiFi antennas into the lcd display. It works really well.
Did you check the power socket on the dead board? The most common fault is that connector getting damaged or the soldering falling.
it can also be some sort of oxidation or loose connection. i once had an X40 not power up, with the power connector being my first instinct, and after reconnecting the keyboard (which in this case also includes that button), the laptop powered up. that was a few years ago and it still works fine.
it could also be a bad button, though somewhat rare i reckon
I got a Thinkpad subnote in 1995. I had picked it out myself (from a magazine ad) for school, thinking the size would be perfect. I remember it was like an inch thick. It had the external drives, but it used some type of proprietary or uncommon connector. It was a nice product, well built, but the system ended up being more difficult to use than I expected. And within two years developed a red vertical line on the screen. I want to say it was the 500 series.
I had to replace the main fan on a larger model ThinkPad. It made this unholy grinding sound when it kicked on. Just that single component was a massive pain in the butt. Took like 2 hours to do. I can't even imagine the pain of replacing as many components as you did and on tinier models. You did a great job of it.
I went through a very similar process recently with two mid-2102 MacBook Pro 13s. I bought the two off ebay "As is parts only" and was able to swap parts like the logic board (and others) to create a functional computer. I enjoyed the process, one reason I like watching your videos.
Nicely done Colin! That's some delicate repair work there
I love your vintage ThinkPad videos!
I use to own a nice tough 1994/1995 thinkpad … I miss those days 🥲🥹‼️
Wild video! Really enjoyed this- I had a TP240 back in the early 2000s as my secondary machine. My main was a TP600- so the 240 felt SO portable! Not great performance- but it’s a shame TP keyboards aren’t as good now as they were then!
Stop, you’re making me miss my X40
I’m a simple man. I see a ThinkPad, I click Like! 👍🏻
watched this video using my x220, glad to see the 240 still has some life left in it ^^
I have had my trusty X220 for 11 years now and it's the best all-round computing device I have ever owned. I run Gentoo Linux on it, it goes everywhere with me and I will never be another "phone zombie" walking around, peering down at a tiny screen and bumping into all the other phone zombies for not looking where I am going.
"Civilised" mobile computing is done sat down with an X220 and a coffee out of everyone's way, whilst occasionally looking out the coffee shop window to laugh at the phone zombies.
The X220 is the real deal. Probably the best Thinkpad ever. It's sad that Lenovo dropped the ball after the X240 with those underpowered CPUs (The X230 is still fine though). I'm still using a T420 and it's a great laptop ever after 11 years.
@@marciomaiajr I have a T420 also (and quite a few other Thinkpads!), another good machine.
I'm surprised none of ThinkPads you've came across had the BIOS password lock in place. It's kinda fun shorting pins at the right time to clear the password.
Could you figure dell latitude dseries how to short them out they were good laptop just to get stuff done and optional dock my dad have i want those laptops and run linux mint use it for basic work.
@@WilliamHollinger2019 man I don't know. I just found guides on how to do it on some Thinkpads I had.
My first "own" laptop was a Compaq Presario 1270, with a K6-2 350 MHz and 128Mb of RAM which I updated to 192, and then updated to XP, using PCMCIA cards between a USB 2.0 (the 1.0 onboard USB was broken exactly at the same spot) and a WiFi b/g or a 10/100 Ethernet. Managed to get me to my first years of university and made my first steps programming on that. Now, my current work has a old school Thinkpad which I intend to appropriate the next day they clean inventory
Pretty cool IBM. I've been working with a IBM PC 300GL. Motherboard woes. Thanks for the cool video.
Was given a 240X by my brother in law when I got into uni. That machine got me through University and the first year and half of work after uni. P3 500E, 128MB, 12GB HDD. Ran win2k and later xp. Loved this thing to bits. Speedy enough for 2K and earlier versions of XP. It only died when the battery expanded in storage and cracked the body. 😞
I was born in 94 so I don't remember much other than the Iconic N64 days, it sounds similar to Oingo Boingo's, home again, just synthesized, it feels like 90s hold music which doesn't sound too bad, I wouldn't mind hearing now on hold actually but we got stuck with Cisco's Default music instead still in 2022 none the less , props to cisco for the icon but the tone of that it makes being on hold feel dragged out longer than it needs to be. With this I be can reminded of similar catchy snes music at least, like Paperboy 2
Interesting subject. ThinkPad 240's and it's newer iterations were nice. In the late 1990's into early 2000's I worked at Ogilvy & Mather who were at the time Ad Agency for IBM. I worked for a consultant firm at O&M handling their Laptop Support. The 240's and 240X's were used limited to a few higher executives. They were issued with a different IBM Floppy Drive than the example you have. Also the External Bays that housed the CD-ROM drive and flopper drive you have likely were issued when the ThinkPad 600 Series debuted. Or circa ThinkPad 570 Series. The IBM CD-Rom drives sometimes needed driver installed for them to work. I have a funny story about two TP 240's. Both were run over by vehicles. 1) a O&M executive was in Paris and it was run over maybe by a taxi. 2) the other the executive leaving home in advertently left the laptop bag a the rear of their vehicle loading up to leave for work and drove over it. This 240 was delivered to me with it's screen in the shape of a rainbow. I was able to cobble together these two 240's to work and access their data from the two hard drives. I actually have a photo of the second executive holding the laptop before I picked it up to attempt getting access (or worse case scenario sending it out for) data recovery. You video brings back good memories of my time as IT Support.
The old IBM Thinkpads were really good, I used them back in college! Too bad IBM sold their PC line to Lenovo, hate that company!
Quality video as always, Sir!
Jumped when I saw the Xyratex sticker on the hard drive. I worked there from the end of the time when it was an IBM Hard Drive fab plant and transitioned into Xyratex in the mid late '90s. Management buyout, we went from making Hard drives to reworking them. There is a good chance I was there at the same time as this drive. Heck I might have even handled it! The plant was huge, clean rooms with hundreds of people working in the on any given shift. Thousands working there in its heyday as an IBM facility. Havant Hampshire, near Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
youre cadence and and annunciations reminds me a lot of Patrick Bateman especially when he's taking you through his morning routine. odd comparison i know but its also rather comforting sounding
When your hard drive sounds like LEGO bricks, you're in trouble.
I really like that music on the ThinkPad.
Watching this video on my X230 T. Love ThinkPads!
Dont forget the 570 ... sure it was THE ultrabook by this year. Impresive.
That Inudstry Canada sticker you see a few times in the teardown is indicative that at some point, this device was owned and provisioned to end users by the Government of Canada. Today, simmilar stickers would say "Shared Services Canada"
I think the neatest thing about ThinkPads is that at a glance, a Thinkpad from 1998 wouldn't look that much out of place next to modern Lenovo ThinkPads, aside from the ports and overall thickness. Talk about a design that just works! The only giveaway is the quality and aspect ratio of the display
Absolutely loved this episode!
IBM's little notebooks are great machines. My first laptop was a new X20 with Windows 2000 on it. I got it brand new at an IBM employee sale for $200. That was over 20 years ago and last I tried it thing thing still worked (I need to pull it out again). That was replaced by an X60.
You CAN but more than the listed maximum amount of RAM in those things, but it's not a good idea as while they will report the RAM accurately they actually run more slowly.
Audio quality with its song sounds exactly like a 1990s television show outro.
I recognize that screen at 0:52. The previous owner must have been a fan of Phil's Computer Lab.
I was given this laptop back in 2006 when I was an I.t apprentice, used to take out the hard drive out to reinstall the os had windows 2000 running on mine. Good old days little money though, was a good little laptop in its time.
AWESOME WORK! Thank you! 💪
This is a good video Collin nice work 👍
This type of computer should come back in a limited release availability as a commemorative anniversary product… I’d like to see a 10, 11 or 12” type of Thinkpad from Lenovo w modern ports and serviceability
The midi sound is actually pretty good.
Peak laptop design.
Love videos like this! Thank you
The activity led lights remeber me of my first computer
Ooooooooo yes, anything ThinkPad related is gonna get a watch from me
I remember about ten years ago mini netbook laptops were the rage. They were everywhere.
They were all 800x480 shit.
I just kept looking at that battery, definitely would have changed it as it was in pieces already.
If you are doing this with many machines of this vintage you may find a floppy with PC DOS and USB support and/or a PCMCIA to CF card adapter quite useful.
Ah, the dead thinkpad has a sticker of a Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and water management, I think that's the reason they used a marker to hide something.
My cat's ears went back when the high notes started in Passport, so I guess we don't like it in this house. Excellent repair though, and I'd love to see a video on the CD-ROM repair.
I like these little IBM machines very much.
(I have to look, where I put my X20, that I saved from being thrown away, a few years ago...)
I liked the sound chip!
The holy grail of the 240 line is the ThinkPad i1124 - it has a silvery-gray finish and very similar to the standard black 240Z models, which are almost as rare. It was Japanese-specific though, unlike the other 240s.
I absolutely adore Brickpads of all vintages, the oldest and first one I had was a Z60m Brickpad and the newest one is a Thinpad E560. None of them were gaming or production laptops but I'm surprised that the 560 is able to support some light gaming of Fallout 4 and New Vegas considering it's running on an i5 and Intel's 520 graphics. It also was the first used Thinkpad that had both a working battery and CD drive, it was like winning $3 from the lottery.
Putting baking soda in superglue instantly cures it, not really good for breaks like that. BUT it's very good for adding reinforcement around a break like that. Put superglue on there and dust baking soda over it, let it sit for a couple seconds and then clear out the excess. Becomes basically like an instant "plastic" weld.
I had one of those. Wanted a Vaio 505 series. But spotted the 240 as a good deal. Bought mine brand new when released, and I used it until I sold it in 2004. Great Japanese design.
I've restored a bunch of 240s. I love the 240s, although some of the plastic can feel a bit light and brittle. The portable drive bay only works on very specific thinkpads. I think maybe the 755 or maybe 560 series. I have a couple of new ones and used them in specific circumstances, but generally they're not compatible with most thinkpads. The portable drive bay 2000 was much more compatible. The reason the Win98 splash screen shows up briefly is because someone has reformatted the hard drive using a Win98 SE boot disk. This is a useful disk to partition and format for FAT32 and get a basic bootable system on a hard drive but it does somehow copy over the Win98 splash screen which always shows briefly on a machine that's been reformatted using this disk. Finally, in my experience the weak part of the 240s was the LCD screen. I think only SVGA and all the ones I've seen are aging badly and going a bit dim in places - the CCFL tubes must be wearing out. Great video!
I like how mid sounds. Clear and kinda "metallic"
And now I want to buy some more retro ThinkPads! It'd be great to get 98SE on one of these.
good video, thank you
Nice machine, I actually have a version of that Toshiba Libertto but with awider screen running win 98 SE, Still works with 2 PCMCIA card slots and has a Unique Docking port to the rear, though I have nothing to Dock to it sadly. And keyb too small for any real work though usable for the odd document to put together on a train to work if that is your thing. The Thinkpad has a near real size keyb and bigger screen so much more usable. Great to see old hardware minded and kept working. Win 98 will still run Office 97 which is not that much changed for basic work from office 21. Some will totally disagree.. but a Word doc, Normal Excel sheet of general Powerpoint Presentation can a least be started and winished later on your main PC if need to.
In case you don't know this trick, for a system that won't boot, a simple test is to remove the onboard battery as well as the external one. Then plug in A/C power. System is designed to boot at that point, even though date, time, etc. will not be correct. This is not just for Thinkpads, but for many, if not all laptops.
i love thinkpads, my first notebook was an ibm thinkpad 600e
I ended using a 32GB MSATA SSD with a 2.5 inch PATA to MSATA adapter when restoring the X32 last time. So much faster and most importantly, reliable for daily use.
I was thinking the same while watching the video. I have a few older macs I’ve upgraded to msata cards within a pata 2.5” enclosure. Plenty of supply on Amazon!
A lot of bumps on the road, the life of a retro repairman😉
Those Travelstar drives barely survived 2-3 years back in the days, I had to swap mine twice.
I miss the old IBM ThinkPad I had back in the late 90s early 2000s. It originally had windows 98, and I eventually upgraded to xp.
i got one a few months back but i tought the sound was broken hardware side cos it looked fine in the device manager but watching your video i realized the driver it had installed was completely diferent, located the one you mentioned there and it works now, thanks!
mine didnt came with the cd or floppy drives, any idea if i can find a generic one with that same conector that works? i found one thats a diferent brand but i couldnt get it to run, for now im relying on usb drives and virtual drives to have it run stuff that need cds but id like to have the real thing in case the hdd gives up and i have to reinstall
Oh nice. I have a 240 that still works and holds a decent charge. Granted I do have the 2.8AH extended battery. Love it and my 380XD. Need to get a battery for the 380XD though. Both are in decent condition for the age.
Love these little Thinkpads - have a Pentium III 240X version. Unfortunately the screen back light has died although works on an external monitor. Pity you are not in the UK in would have made an offer on your spares laptop screen.
I truly wish that my soldering skills were as intricate as Collins. I just make a mess with the solder when trying to cap and uncap and other small jobs on boards. I'm fine with wiring but I wish I can learn how to get better at smaller stuff like Collin is.
I was vibin to passport lol
I don’t even bother with mechanical drives on my builds anymore. M.SATA In an IDE enclosure is my go to for something like this.
That is a lot of work and time to save one laptop from the recycling center. But I'm not into restoring old machines just to restore them, they have to be currently useful or off to the recycling center they go.
Thanks for this video, it was quite useful.
I have a Thinkpad 240 that I managed to get Windows 98 running on it by putting the installation cabs onto the hard drive on another PC, making the disk bootable and then putting it back into the 240. I have an external floppy drive that works with it but not a CD-ROM drive (apart from a USB one and the 240 won't boot from USB) and I hadn't worked out that the way to connect a CD-ROM was via a PCMCIA card. So that's useful to know.
I haven't done much with it as of yet, I picked it up in eBay very cheaply a couple of years ago and it works fine except for a couple of pressure marks on the screen.
Linux is my normal daily driver OS with a bit of retrogaming in old DOS and Windows OSes up to XP - I may put a very light Linux build on it with no desktop and just use it as an SSH terminal to other machines in my home network as it does have the good IBM Thinkpad keyboard.
Plop boot loader might be able to boot this thing from USB.
@@Jackpkmn A good point, though I haven't use Plop boot loader in years - thanks for jogging the memory about it, will take a look.
If you have a junkyard near you, Chrysler infotainment systems from 2008 all the way to 2012 or so with the touchscreen and buttons on either side of the screen use a bog standard 30GB IDE laptop drive. I got one myself and while the OS is custom, you can reformat the drive as a totally normal IDE drive and it will work in older laptops, like the Latitude S500GT I still need to get a replacement keyboard for sadly.
I recognize 0:52 as Philscomputerlab's DOS Starter Pack.