My latest acquisition (how to get Thinkpadman excited)

edited March 2017 in Hardware
My latest acquisition, an IBM Thinkpad 380XD.

233mhz Pentium with MMX technology,

64mb RAM,

5GB HD, Cd and "3.5 inch floppy drive..

Also has a 56k data/fax modem inside via a PCMCIA card, but missing the dingle for it. Original power adaptor as well!

Oh, and it also came with a rather nice old laptop bag from Targus.

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Fully working, and in pretty god shape in general as well.

Paid $70 Canadian for it, but still pretty cool, I think.

I now finally have one laptop made during the Windows 3.x days, one made during the Windows 95 days, and finally one during the Windows 98 days. So one laptop designed for and running each 1990's MS-DOS Based Windows Version!

I will be saving up to acquire an IBM PC 5150, those are in the multiple hundreds but it may be worth the months of saving.

Comments

  • edited March 2017
    Nice laptop I have the same laptop which I got off ebay for $88, has the same CPU , I also put a 128 kb edo stick in it and a 40gb hard drive that works if you use a special program, since this can only support up to 8gb in 16 bit based O.S including win 9x, 32 bit O.S like anything windows Nt, don't need a program. Mine is also tft and also I upgraded the CD drive that was dead to a DVD drive with CD-RW.
  • edited March 2017
    You paid $88 (I'm assuming USD) for something with a dead drive? I wouldn't.
  • edited March 2017
    The CD drive worked for a few days than it died. Everything else works fine. It only had a 1gb hard drive seems like it was replaced since I knew 4gb or 8gb was the only option. Its weird that the hard drive is very slow. Did benchmarking on it got less than 1mb/s for read/write. Its even slower than a USB 2.0 flash drive. That 40gb drive I put in it gets over 50mb/s for read/write. Lovely how things have changed.
  • Yeah,

    Change is good, but I'm gonna try to keep it original as long as I can.
  • Firstly guys it's fine to use quotes, but please take out the tags. It's painful to read the flow of the conversation having to scroll past the same images 3 times.

    @popeyewinter - I like playing around with these. I have well and truly enough of ThinkPad 380s at home - need a box just to store all the AC adapters. I quickly counted 18 ThinkPads and 2 Toshiba Satellites of similar vintage.Their build quality is good, though I find the Toshiba easier to work with for disassembly. Initially I bought one ThinkPad from a local seller. The same seller placed another listing afterwards for another one so I bid again. I then received an e-mail asking me how many do I want. I ended up agreeing to take 20 plus ThinkPads for $20 AUD each. When I tested each one, they all had Windows 98 SE with most scrubbed off but enough to realise theywere used for Santa photos in department stores.

    3 different ThinkPads from the 380 series I've shown here for comparison. One is the 380XD like yours.
    https://socket3.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/ibm-thinkpad-380-series-on-speedsys/
  • @thinkpadman

    I also agree with you.

    A few of users use quotes so much.
    I don't prefer to use it if possible.
    It is also paintful and irritated.
  • ..........Their build quality is good, though I find the Toshiba easier to work with for disassembly. Initially I bought one ThinkPad from a local seller. The same seller placed another listing afterwards for another one so I bid again. I then received an e-mail asking me how many do I want. I ended up agreeing to take 20 plus ThinkPads for $20 AUD each. When I tested each one, they all had Windows 98 SE with most scrubbed off but enough to realise they were used for Santa photos in department stores.

    I've got another box of dead and dismembered Toshiba laptops here, ready to go out to the trash bin. I suppose - looking at eBay pages, I could make a small fortune on just the screens, but it's just not something I care about.

    One thing I agree with you on the Toshibas is that they are very easy to take apart and put pack together (sometimes, multiple times!!!).

    And I had always thought the quality of the chassis on IBM Thinkpads was much better than Toshiba.
  • Learn when to use or not use quotes, people. Posts pruned.
  • Quoting best practices: Excise parts and split up quote blocks as needed, including removing images and nested quotes, and only quote when needed, such as responding line-by-line or responding to posts further back in the thread.

    This has been a PSA brought to you by the Scrollbar Manufacturing Society of America.
  • 02k-guy wrote:
    One thing I agree with you on the Toshibas is that they are very easy to take apart and put pack together (sometimes, multiple times!!!).

    The two Toshibas, 300CDT and and 330CDT which are practically the same are what I have. Similar specs to the ThinkPad 380XD. The 300CDT's motherboard died, and fortunately and to my surprise managed to get not one but two brand new motherboards for this laptop from the US. They were still in their OEM packaging. So the process of swapping the motherboards wasn't so bad - just fiddly screws and remembering where they go. ThinkPads on the other end are trickier and a number of models have the motherboard split in two.
    02k-guy wrote:
    And I had always thought the quality of the chassis on IBM Thinkpads was much better than Toshiba.

    Yes and this reflected in their pricing back in the 90s.
  • Yes and this reflected in their pricing back in the 90s.

    In the late 90s is when I did the computer shows as a vendor. Thinkpads were highly sought after. You could just about name your price for one - even a dog-eared and "only dropped twice" model
  • @OP (popeyewinter): Nice find there, the only Thinkpads I ever came across of were newer models, The oldest being a T42p and the newest being a T400 that I've needed to fix for a friend, Never spotted any older models in person but if I ever find one somewhere, I'll try to get one so I know what they're about.
    02k-guy wrote:
    I've got another box of dead and dismembered Toshiba laptops here, ready to go out to the trash bin. I suppose - looking at eBay pages, I could make a small fortune on just the screens, but it's just not something I care about.
    If one of these dead Toshiba laptops is a 3xxCDT series, I may be interested since I could probably use its screen to upgrade mine from a DSTN to a TFT, and maybe a spare hard drive cover if possible, Just so we don't clutter this thread, PM me if you're interested in sending me something.

    I have a Toshiba Satellite 315CDS that I bought off CL for $45 a few months ago, It came with accessories (including: PCMCIA Ethernet adapter w/ cable, Recovery CDs, spare trackpoint caps, and the original AC adapter), It runs the recovered installation of Windows 95 OSR2.5 perfectly fine, It even has a Sound Blaster compatible sound processor which makes it good for DOS gaming.
  • @OP (popeyewinter):
    If one of these dead Toshiba laptops is a 3xxCDT series, I may be interested since I could probably use its screen to upgrade mine from a DSTN to a TFT, and maybe a spare hard drive cover if possible, Just so we don't clutter this thread, PM me if you're interested in sending me something.

    Nope don't have. But you do remind me that I've got several recovery CDs for that gen Toshi & some HP too I think, and I ought to image them and put them up on archive.org.

    Time, need more time. Anybody seen my clock stretcher?
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