From: Andrew Bowman (andrew.bowman_at_deltascheme.com)
Date: Thu Apr 05 2001 - 10:00:27 EDT
Hi - I came across this mailing list whilst researching options for
upgrading an old ThinkPad 760L (9547-L01) that my wife bought from a former
employer some time ago. We're planning to use it for light work when we're
away from our desktops and as a portable backup archive for digital photos
(I have a 340MB IBM Microdrive in my camera - I love the huge capacity, but
still remember the pain of losing 400+ photos last summer when it gave up
spinning :-)
The 760L has an 810MB hard drive in a caddy - I'd like to upgrade this to
several gigabytes at least. Hunting around on the IBM site I've found
mention of the latest BIOS (v1.3 I think, which I have installed), the 1998
documentation for which mentions support for 5GB drives.
Here's my quandary - I can get a 5GB IBM drive for about 75GBP, whilst a
10GB drive costs just 4GBP more. What limitations are there in the BIOS re.
hd size? I know there is a limit at around 8GB for older BIOSes - does the
TP760 have this limitation? If so, would I be able to use 8GB of a 10GB
drive, or would it just not work at all? I know there are software solutions
(like MaxBlast and so on) for running drives larger than BIOSes support, but
I'm wary of this approach, and would much rather use a drive supported by
the BIOS.
Two other questions:
1) Is it possible to view the drive parameters in the BIOS? If so, I can't
figure out how to get to them - the BIOS setup seems to have very few user
configureable options.
2) Are there any issues with removing the original 810MB drive from its
caddy and replacing it with another drive? Or does the caddy have some kind
of hardwired information about the drive therein?
I'll be grateful for any help/advice on this - I've had a good hunt around
the IBM docs and the web in general, but haven't been able to find answers
to these questions.
Andrew.
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