IBM Thinkpad (1400 S98-3097-2) TWO questions.

[ChrisGreaves]

This is not a critical issue for me.

I retrieved an IBM laptop from the recycling room last night; brought it home, plugged in a spare power block.
Waited, Watched, and Listened.
The green power light comes on, 2 or 3 orange lights come on.
The machine makes humming and clicking noises like a hard drive trying to start up, and after about 45 seconds gives in.

Given that this looks like a 1998 computer, it is almost certainly very small RAM, HD etc and probably of use only for email, web browsing, and some text input when on the road, right?
(And six times as heavy as a $150 tablet from Staples or Office Depot).

Question 1: Is there likely to be any component part at all of value within it?

Assuming the HD is trashed and won't boot (there is a teenage boy's iridescent eagle logo stuck on the case; this doesn't look a corporate device), when I start unscrewing things out of morbid curiousity,


Question 2: Is there a way unknown to me of seeing if the thing will at least boot from a CD?

I powered up again and used the F1 key as suggested here but couldn't raise a setup screen.
I did think to open the CD drawer and found a white "product recovery" CD there.

[HansV]

If it's really 10 years old or more, it's not likely to contain anything worthwhile. It doesn't seem worth bothering with...

[Leif]

Question 1: Is there likely to be any component part at all of value within it?

If you are really lucky, you may find a couple of tweeters to go with your Yamaha NS-AP100, but I suspect you would have to have plenty of otherwise-unprofitable time to salvage any value from it. If it is truly Windows 98 vintage, you are unlikely to be able to run any modern browser on it, and certainly not with any security. The battery is unlikely to be worth even carrying around, and startup time will have you in tears.

Perhaps you get some street cred if you could strip all the insides out of it and use it as a flat lunch-box for carrying a pizza while you are on the road...

[stuck]

Before you write it off completely...

I have an IBM ThinkPad 390 with a Swiss French/German keyboard on it. It runs Win98SE at the moment and when I plug in a wifi dongle it will connect to my home network and I can surf away using FF 2.0.20, see:
http://www.eileenslounge.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2982
OK, it weighs a ton and the battery is dud so it's not exactly portable but I've had fun with it.

You can still get Win98 compatible AV software (e.g. ClamWin) and if you are really dedicated there are various mods you can apply to the OS to enhance it and run more recent software. All the latest on Win98 is here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-959898seme/
For the true geek there is life in Win98 a while yet.

When I first encountered this laptop it was running Win ME but then it was upgraded to XP, yes XP! Had I not seen it and used it I would never have believed such machine would work. It's along story as to how it ended up in my study (irritating Mrs S no end!) and why I then installed 98SE.

Ken

[stuck]

PS Somewhere on the laptop will be a bar code and above it a TYPE number, e.g. on my 390 the TYPE is 2626-2SF.

You can use that (first four digits are enough) on 'Use Quick Path' link on the Lenovo Support web site:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/default.page

Ken