From: Alan King (Alan_at_nc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Apr 28 2001 - 05:35:56 EDT
Hi, my name's Alan King, and I recently picked up a 701cs bare off
EBAY at good deal pricing, and then found the list searching for info.
Looked pretty fun so I joined up..
Probably what most of you here will find most interesting is that I
worked there for a year, in the 94-95 time frame. In the "Personal
Systems Help Center", in Mobiles Technical Support. I remember the 750
being the older but good model, the 755 and 360 being the slightly newer
good models, and the 500 and 510, and the old PS/2 700 and 720, and the
older PS-Notes. I was there when the Dock 2 was the hot new thing, and
the 755CD and 701 were announced then got up and running. While lots of
things have changed, I still bet I have an ok idea of what's going on on
the other side of the phone when you call in there. It isn't anything
like you'd imagine from outside, almost all of the older posts in the
archive I've read were way off conceptually. BTW is Easyserve still in
NC? I'm assuming it is still where it was, just a different ownership,
but could easily be in SD for all I know for sure.. Ha I remember
making 40 calls a day (considered reasonably good), seemed to take
forever to get to that point even though it wasn't that long. Then
doing that was nothing, even got to 86 or so calls a day once, although
that has to be basically smooth, mainly parts number requests or
transfers to other groups. Can't do two hour troubleshoot and
walk-throughs and do that many. Didn't ever make a 100 call day though,
that was pretty rare. Thought I'd make it on the 86 call day, but then
it died and not many calls for the last hour or two...
As for the 701cs, got it, bootable but no real OS on the drive. Got
an adapter and SYSed the HD to Win98, then copied the \Win98 directory
from the 98 CD. Also got a $20 Ethernet adapter (Nice deal from Best
Buy this week, Linksys 10/100 PCMCIA adapter for $40 -10 instant -10
mail in, works very well.), so copied the driver disk into \lan
directory. Also copied setup and other root files from Win98 CD to HD.
Put HD back into thinkpad, booted, ran setup and installed, piece of
cake. Did lan card driver install now I can talk to the desktop,
everything's really easy from there, just isn't much left to do for what
I need. Lan driver install did say it couldn't find a file in the
Windows directory, but was really on the Lan disk, still pretty easy
install over all. No floppy or CD, just a HD adapter for the desktop
IDE cable to get files on..
Whoops did have to flash the bios before that though, was only on rev
C not O. Battery was bad, got no AC adapter with computer. Cut battery
open to see for 'battery' replacement, ha is simple as heck, just a
Dallas Semi monitor IC and batteries. Hmm won't flash without AC and
battery. Don't want to wait for batteries, so used a homemade
adjustable supply for AC adapter at 15.5V, cobbled up another supply at
~10.8V and connected wires to the + and - on the empty battery case.
Made a bios update disk, but I don't have a floppy drive. So deleted
the 2 system hidden files on the HD, copied from the floppy, then copied
all the Bios floppy files. Put back into 701, booted on AC, put in fake
battery and flashed the bios no problems. (If something did happen I
knew I could get the board out and redo the flash chip, AC fail still
wouldn't stop me..) Then did the Win98 stuff. What to do with it now
that it's running something modern? Anyone know where to get an AMD
5x133 surface mount chip without buying 100's quantities from AMD? That
will be my next little electronics project, why pay $$$ when I can do
the work and the chip probably isn't $25.. Hmm anyone know some old
converter or system with the surface mount 133 in it? Might have to do
a transplant to get the right chip.
Before any of this, soon as I got the HD adapter I did copy over just
Dos games and progs to the drive, booted and ran all the stuff that was
great 5 years ago. Even on the shadowy cs screen, it's fun to see all
those old games etc, forgot how neat the Keen's and Doom and etc. were.
Haven't pulled those up in a LONG time. Even some of the newer
lightweight emulators run ok on the DX75, the Atari 2600 emulator wasn't
too slow, doubt it could do a real arcade game emulator justice though,
will have to try Hive on it. Got to get a DX5-133 in there, then
overclock it to see if it works. Had one in a desktop running at
200MHz, and that lasted me till I got my AMD K6-2 450 and stacked
motherboard for $120. That only requires nudging the system clock up to
40MHz. Damn keep forgetting this is 25 not 33 MHz system, probably
won't make it to 40 at all. Was like a Pentium 133 or 166 for much less
cost at the time for my desktop, that AMD 133 system still works fine
too. The 701 is amazingly decent once it boots, and hooked into the 100
lan to desktop for browsing over the cable modem it's pretty neat, just
needs more screen to be acceptable. I might even have to hunt up a 770
or newer model and just scrap the desktop idea all together, a good
enough LCD screen that close and I'd be happy, and I really like the
idea of carrying the desktop when I need to mess around with a friend's
system, don't really 'need' portability though or I'd have had a good
laptop long ago..
I program PICs in assembly for fun, next thing on the agenda is a 701
battery chip interface to the parallel port, anyone out there got a few
701s and lots of batteries? I'll send you one to get the info off some
new and used batteries so I can look at the data and refurbish mine.
Then I'll teach you all how to solder to batteries directly without
ruining the battery or blowing yourself up (and without buying tabbed
batteries) so you can replace your cells whenever you need.. 9 $1 or $2
7/5ths AA NiMH cells are still half the price of even a cheap $39 701
battery. Just can't wait to get my hands on and re-furb a Li-Ion
battery pack and show how it's done. Still doesn't appear economical,
the cells themselves are still not cheap enough to be worth it much, but
it no doubt can be done..
Can't wait to tell some of the stories I remember, some made me laugh
till I cried, some still do even just thinking about them. "Do I need a
safeskin for my Thinkpad's keyboard?" "What gets on your Thinkpad?"
"Milk and manure." "What are you doing with your Thinkpad?" "I use it
in the barn to keep track of my dairy cows." "Did you really need to
wait on hold for 45 minutes to see if you needed a keyboard protector to
protect your TP from milk and manure?" And the funniest part is there's
no real exaggeration in this example, it's pretty much correct as I
remember it, although I wasn't the lucky CSR that got this call. While
most TP users are rather smart, back in 94/95 era the world was a lot
less computer literate, there were some really bizarre and funny calls
at times. There was at least once, I almost peed in my pants from
laughing too hard. Not that the customer was that bad, just the
combination of her and the kinda smart ass guy she was talking to was
just unbearably funny, they made for a good comedy team. But that was a
different story..
Alan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Thu Jan 23 2003 - 09:57:04 EST