Dekkia's Blog

THINK

2024-11-23, 15:07:13

Onto my next Victim: A IBM Thinkpad 755C.
(The C stands for Color, whoah)

A Thinkpad 755C. It has pretty much the same footprint as a piece of A4 Paper and is time-appropriately thick. There's no touchpad and the keyboard fills up 85% of the lower shell. It also has the iconic keyboard nipple. The screen-to-body ratio is comically big by today's standards.
A Thinkpad 755C. It has pretty much the same footprint as a piece of A4 Paper and is time-appropriately thick. There's no touchpad and the keyboard fills up 85% of the lower shell. It also has the iconic keyboard nipple. The screen-to-body ratio is comically big by today's standards.

15:09:17

The Battery is dead (ofc) and the contacts inside the laptop are slightly corroded.

A recess where a battery could sit with three gold-colored contact pins at one side of it. The pins have a green mist ontop of them.
A recess where a battery could sit with three gold-colored contact pins at one side of it. The pins have a green mist ontop of them.

15:10:36

The battery and the 3,5" Floppy drive can be removed without tools.

The HDD probably too, but I've yet to figure out how. Right now it's floating around in the case rather loosely.

15:13:19

According to the service manual (which is excellent compared to what you get nowadays) there's a pull tab on the HDD.

I guess they replaced the one in mine and didn't care about the next person who works on it.

15:16:25

Got it out.

It's an IBM DHAA2405 with a total of 344MB of storage.

A 2,5" HDD by IBM
A 2,5" HDD by IBM

15:23:18

It has one of those Mini-IDE connectors, which makes sense on a small disk like that.

Lucky for me I have a USB adapter for that.
So let's plug it into a 15 year newer Thinkpad to see if I can dump it.

15:26:44

And it doesn't do anything.

Four pins are free when plugged into the adapter, so it might be jumpers.

15:38:17

Ok, according to a random website I found no jumpers means slave, jumpers to the outermost pins means master and jumpers to the two pins facing the PCB means cable select.

I guess I should go for cable select and let my adapter figure it out. But I already know that it probably doesn't like slave-drives otherwise it would've done something.

15:45:11

Obviously I don't have any jumpers that small.

15:46:04

I only have big ones for full-size disks.

15:57:07

Fine, I'll build my own jumper with *checks notes* different types of tape I guess.

I would've been quicker if the sticky side of copper tape was conductive too.

The bottom-side of a 2,5" IDE HDD plugged into an adapter. The upper rightmost pins have a contraption made from capton-tape and copper-tape wrapped around them.
The bottom-side of a 2,5" IDE HDD plugged into an adapter. The upper rightmost pins have a contraption made from capton-tape and copper-tape wrapped around them.

16:06:05

Putting it into the other state also does nothing.

I refuse to beliefe the Drive is dead, so I bought another USB adapter and actual 2mm jumpers.

Another one for the shelf I guess.

16:07:01

But at least I can still play around with the Laptop itself.
I don't need a Battery or a HDD to turn it on.

But I do need a Power Supply, which I also don't have.

16:37:59

I did some research, and it's basically impossible to find an OEM charger because IBM and Later Lenovo loved using different connectors and you now can't google anything.

16:39:29

But I found out that some universal power adapter kits still contain a fitting connector, but with a very wrong pinout.

I ordered one of those just to see what I'm dealing with and after that I'll try to make a correct one myself.

2024-11-27, 13:59:44

I got the new IDE/USB adapter in and it also doesn't work.

When testing it with a different (older) laptop hard drive It worked just fine.

14:00:30

The disk doesn't even spin up, so I guess it's joever for that one.
I'll be replacing it with an SD-Card adapter.

2024-11-30, 12:59:17

I built a custom power connector.

The back of an old Thinkpad with a square 3D printed block sticking out. Four cables are exiting the block, two of which are connected to power-clips from a lab PSU.
The back of an old Thinkpad with a square 3D printed block sticking out. Four cables are exiting the block, two of which are connected to power-clips from a lab PSU.
A lab PSU supplying 20 Volts at 0.47 Ampere
A lab PSU supplying 20 Volts at 0.47 Ampere

13:08:00

It even boots far enough to ask for a floppy.

Except that the drive isn't installed and I've yet to make sure it's working before I put it in.

A big Window-like box with cyan background, dark blue text and a white boarder. Ontop it says ERROR with a hand thats striked trough. Below are the error codes 00173 and 00163. As part of the white border there are buttons for OK and Cancel. There's also a cursor in the shape of a duck.
A big Window-like box with cyan background, dark blue text and a white boarder. Ontop it says ERROR with a hand thats striked trough. Below are the error codes 00173 and 00163. As part of the white border there are buttons for OK and Cancel. There's also a cursor in the shape of a duck.
A black and whit screen with a stylized floppy drive and a stylized 3,5" floppy below. There's a surprisingly small arrow between them pointing form the disk to the drive. There is also some sort of selection that can be done with F1 to F12.
A black and whit screen with a stylized floppy drive and a stylized 3,5" floppy below. There's a surprisingly small arrow between them pointing form the disk to the drive. There is also some sort of selection that can be done with F1 to F12.

13:09:18

But I don't want to get ahead of myself:

First I want to finish the power plug by adding a 20V USB PD Trigger board to it so I can use it more conveniently.

14:33:18

The error codes only mean Time and Date was not set (163) and Configuration data were lost (173).

That's very likely just a dead battery.

16:08:23

I think I went a bit overboard with the adapter design.

A 3D rendering of a Power-Adapter for the old hexagonal ThinkPad plug. It gets bigger facing away from the laptop and has the old RGB IBM logo on it.
A 3D rendering of a Power-Adapter for the old hexagonal ThinkPad plug. It gets bigger facing away from the laptop and has the old RGB IBM logo on it.
The same adapter as in the other picture, but rotated to show the side that gets plugged into the Laptop.
The same adapter as in the other picture, but rotated to show the side that gets plugged into the Laptop.

17:00:17

Sometimes owning a 1500€ 3D Printer pays off. The colors are not accurate because that's just the filament I had on hand.

The same Power-Adapter from the previous post but this time as a real thing instead of a rendering.
The same Power-Adapter from the previous post but this time as a real thing instead of a rendering.

17:01:33

Anyways, I now can plug a USB-C power brick into a ThinkPad from ~1995.

20:24:15

The floppy drive has issues reading. It mostly works and only fails sometimes.

So for the time being I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 in a VM and copied it over to the SD card it boots from.

It's in German because that's what the keyboard layout is.

Write in Windows 3.1 saying "black sphinx of quartz judge my vow" and "follow dekkia@dekkia.com on the fediverse.
Write in Windows 3.1 saying "black sphinx of quartz judge my vow" and "follow dekkia@dekkia.com on the fediverse.

20:40:44

It's even Y2K compliant.

That means I don't have to update the system software.

The clock in Windows 3.1 with today's date and time
The clock in Windows 3.1 with today's date and time

20:42:11

And I'm already using the Laptop for what it's built for: gaming.

The iconic end screen of solitaire where the cards leave a trail while falling down.
The iconic end screen of solitaire where the cards leave a trail while falling down.

2024-12-01, 08:29:06

In other news: I just spent 50€ on OS/2 3.0 Diskettes because the German-Language version I want isn't archived anywhere online.

I want the original installation experience, because installing it from CD in a VM and copying it to the SD would've been too easy.

08:29:54

That's by a wide margin the most I ever paid for an operating system.

10:14:38

Here's the 3D model for the adapter BTW:

printables.com/model/1093275-t

2024-12-03, 18:41:03

The Disks I bought weren't for the German Version.
Or at least the setup is in English.

19:00:49

Just checked: The German CD version has a German Setup.
So I got the boring normal english version.

(Or maybe this is a quirk with the floppy release. But probably not)

19:01:25

Guess I have to install it to see.

19:20:21

This, this is just great.

Error message in OS/2 saying "The program pointed to by the SET RUNWORKPLACE= line in CONFIG.SYS could not be started. With buttons for OK and Cancel.
Error message in OS/2 saying "The program pointed to by the SET RUNWORKPLACE= line in CONFIG.SYS could not be started. With buttons for OK and Cancel.

2024-12-18, 17:27:49

Time heals all wounds (and broken OS/2 installations)

I just picket the laptop up again with the intention of installing NetBSD on it.

I turned it on without a floppy inserted, and it booted right into the "insert disk 7" menu.

17:28:12

So I guess I'm installing OS/2 now.

17:52:38

How do I tell this OS to shut up?

2025-01-07, 16:05:19

I'm working on a 3D printed replacement shell for the internal battery.

That shell of course also needs some OEM-ish stickers.

A sticker that looks looks like a generic warning-label on a Battery. There are some customizations however. Instead of IBM it says DIY, instead of the manufacturer it says "Manufactured for an IBM laptop in someones workshop". There's a "trans rights are human rights" hidden in the wall of text and there's also "reduce reuse recycle" in three different languages.
A sticker that looks looks like a generic warning-label on a Battery. There are some customizations however. Instead of IBM it says DIY, instead of the manufacturer it says "Manufactured for an IBM laptop in someones workshop". There's a "trans rights are human rights" hidden in the wall of text and there's also "reduce reuse recycle" in three different languages.