From: Chris Schumann (whizkid_at_dwave.net)
Date: Wed Oct 07 1998 - 12:43:03 EDT
It's the drive electronics, alright. A new drive can be used, or a brand
with a different or non-existent password scheme (like Toshiba).
ThinkPads do not force you to use drives with this capability, thankfully.
It "should" be possible to desolder the chip that holds the password and
replace it, but depending on how determined the IBM drive engineer was,
that chip could very well be inside the disk's seal, so you'd need a
cleanroom environment to perform the operation. IBM would probably not do
it because of the cost, and not many of us have cleanrooms in our
workshops.
A "cheaper" method (for IBM anyway), would be to make a machine that
guesses passwords. Put on the drive and let it run for a few days, clear
the password and return it as fixed or sell as refurbished.
Chris Schumann <whizkid_at_dwave.net>
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