Good Windows NT OS for IBM ThinkPad

theotherosproject

I managed to get an IBM ThinkPad X23 from a friend for free (except the power adapter; I got the original adapter from an "abandonware" shop). The battery is dead, it has to be plugged in all the time to avoid CMOS errors, but otherwise works quite well. I found all the drivers I'll ever need, too.
It came to me with Windows XP installed, but I want to try other Windows NT versions, somewhere between NT 3.51 and 2000. Maybe I want to experiment with Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs as well.

Anyone here has experience with older Windows on IBM ThinkPad series?

thinkpadman

I'll assume it's similar to this one:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X23

Windows 2000 would run quite well, I have it on a Pentium II 300Mhz Thinkpad (forgotten the model off hand) and it runs responsively. You'll have the most success with it if it has Wi-Fi, and for USB and AC'97 drivers I would think.

NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 would work as it's not new enough to use SATA, but you'll need to partition the drive no bigger than 4GB for C: and use the remainder of the drive as for installing if you wish to use NTFS.

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc750219.aspx

Regarding file systems, I thought it was interesting that my old ThinkPad with NT 3.51 had no trouble accessing files from a shared ReFS volume on Server 2012. In case you don't know ReFS is the file system to eventually replace NTFS first introduced in Server 2012. Makes me think it could become available in Windows 10.

BlueSun

thinkpadman wrote:

Regarding file systems, I thought it was interesting that my old ThinkPad with NT 3.51 had no trouble accessing files from a shared ReFS volume on Server 2012. In case you don't know ReFS is the file system to eventually replace NTFS first introduced in Server 2012. Makes me think it could become available in Windows 10.

That's because it's using SMB to access the files. The client OS doesn't need to know or care about the file system on the server.

While they certainly could release ReFS in the final release of 10, it certainly doesn't appear to be in the tech preview.

theotherosproject

thinkpadman wrote:

I'll assume it's similar to this one:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X23

That's correct. I also have some form of extension attached to it below, so I have an optical and a floppy drive.

thinkpadman wrote:

NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 would work as it's not new enough to use SATA, but you'll need to partition the drive no bigger than 4GB for C: and use the remainder of the drive as for installing if you wish to use NTFS.

I am aware of the limitation, but I do use a little "hack" to have a bigger NTFS partition: after installing Windows NT, I use GParted to extend the C: partition to around 7.8GB. There can be problems if the C: partition is bigger, as described here: http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/224526

BlueSun wrote:

thinkpadman wrote:

Regarding file systems, I thought it was interesting that my old ThinkPad with NT 3.51 had no trouble accessing files from a shared ReFS volume on Server 2012. In case you don't know ReFS is the file system to eventually replace NTFS first introduced in Server 2012. Makes me think it could become available in Windows 10.

That's because it's using SMB to access the files. The client OS doesn't need to know or care about the file system on the server.

That's good to know. I'm trying to research on compatibility between various OSes.

theotherosproject

Just to report my progress: I installed NT 3.51 with SP5 and NT 4.0 with SP6a.

For NT 3.51, I played around a bit with NewShell2, a bit awkward and buggy but more manageable for me than the default File Manager. Visual Studio 97 seems to set up only partially. I can't get the drivers to work here...

NT 4.0 died on me when I installed the video driver. After a reboot, all I have is a black screen. A BIOS update, which is suggested in the README, is in order.