6 ms·

Thinkpad 701 overclocking and AMD-X5 133 MHz mod (2014)

83 points by PascLeRasc 11y ago

tclmeelmo 11y ago
Why have we not seen the butterfly keyboard used since that Thinkpad, or have I not been looking carefully enough? The design seems to have been positively received and fondly remembered. Have the problems it solved been solved in other ways (like proliferation of widescreens)?
- atemerev 11y ago
  Because it is expensive and contains quite a lot of moving parts, requiring precision engineering and possibly manual assembly. I doubt these were scalable to mass production. (Additionally, it contributed to the thickness of assembly — tho those who don't remember, Thinkpad 701 was _incredibly_ thick). I owned a 701c, the keyboard was clearly better than anything available today.
- atemerev 11y ago
  Another example is "Big Berta" (IBM T220/T221), a 21" screen with full 4K resolution available back in 2001! It offered PPI resolution better than modern Retina displays. It was insanely expensive, though.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Pics just in case http://sishardware.com/unt/4293-ibm_t220t221_22___2__display_monitor_4k_3__840_x_2__400.html http://sishardware.com/unt/4293-ibm_t220t221_22___2__display...
    - mrbill 11y ago
      More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
- chiph 11y ago
  Back when IBM had an outlet store in RTP (at the Morrisville outlet mall), I asked one of the employees there about the keyboard and why it wasn't carried forward to new models. He said they had a lot of returns on them, as the cam that controlled the sliding-puzzle-action when the lid was opened wore more quickly than expected. It really was a unique design and got the Thinkpad line a lot of good press, so I think it was successful in that aspect.
Joeri 11y ago
I'm wondering what the best software for this would be given a 133 mhz cpu and 72 mb of RAM. Do you try to trim down a modern linux distro, or do you use an OS of a similar vintage? No possibility of getting a modern browsing experience on those specs, so probably the vintage OS offers the best experience.
- cturner 11y ago
  Plan 9 would run well. Netbsd would be solid, particularly if you don't care about X. Openstep if you could find a CD. Minix. That's an amazing amount of RAM for that era, and OS/2 4.0 would probably run well on it, with no need to hunt for graphics drivers. Get Turbo C or Turbo Pascal for DOS, Word for windows, solid multitasking. BeOS/intel won't run - that needed pentium arch or above. BeOS would fly on an old pentium thinkpad with that much RAM though. Network stack is patchy, but the media API remains impressive.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  There's no way youre using a modern linux distro here. Even something like puppylinux which is designed for "old" computers expects around 256mb of ram. 72mb of ram doesn't get you much nowadays. Maybe you can install Damn Small Linux and get some basic functionality. Someone on /r/sysadmin tried reviving an old 486 laptop recently and I believe he could only get DSL to work, but had significant driver problems. I think he had much less ram, like 16mb or so. 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily and maybe even Windows 2000 or even XP, though I'm not sure how usable XP would be even if it did boot. edit: I found someone running puppy on 64meg of ram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI
  - gtk40 11y ago
    I've run Puppy on <128mb of RAM, although not recently. You probably would have to use Dillo or Links as a web browser instead of a Mozilla based browser.
  - xhrpost 11y ago
    If you ditch the GUI you can go pretty low. VPS advocates used to see it as a challenge to reduce RAM usage. Here's one going down to 4mb https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Comment_309202 https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Commen...
krylon 11y ago
Hehe, I have a 701 sitting around here. Still works, to a degree. On the other hand, the battery is long gone, there is no floppy, no CD ROM, no builtin ethernet, so I cannot get any data on or off that device or install a different operating system. Hence, I am stuck with Windows 95 and Office 95. I am keeping it because I kind of like having a 20 year old laptop, but it is not actually useful. But the keyboard is awesome. And it had 24 MB of RAM, while my first PC in 1996 came with 8. Must have been pretty expensive back in the day.
- keenerd 11y ago
  > On the other hand, the battery is long gone There are businesses who will take your old battery, crack it open and put in fresh cells. Or you can do it yourself. > there is no floppy, no CD ROM, no builtin ethernet, so I cannot get any data on or off that device or install a different operating system. You have a 16 bit PCMCIA slot, and you can still find cards for that if you look hard enough. (I picked up an original Orinoco wifi card for under $10.) Remember, the gold stripe on the card means 32 bit. Avoid those. And the standard way for working with these old computers is to get an external HDD case and swap out the drive. Or anything that you can use as a USB-IDE adapter. Then you can install whatever you want. Though you really shouldn't use spinning rust that old. I typically use a 16GB CF card in a CF-IDE adapter. (I do this in my 600E, for example.) It works very well since the protocols are the same. Edit: So maybe CF cards don't work in the 701, see http://www.os2museum.com/wp/butterfly-conservation/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/butterfly-conservation/
  - saganus 11y ago
    > Or you can do it yourself. Isn't this dangerous? I am genuinely curious since I've always considered batteries to be something to be handled with care. I mean, it's not like you are carrying around a pack of TNT, but I would've never thought of opening it to replace the cells. For example, do the batteries have internal circuitry that could cause problems if you put in the wrong kind of cell?
    - dsr_ 11y ago
yuhong 11y ago
This is an old mod. I think there was several companies doing this mod back in the late 1990s.

83 points by PascLeRasc 11y ago

Why have we not seen the butterfly keyboard used since that Thinkpad, or have I not been looking carefully enough? The design seems to have been positively received and fondly remembered. Have the problems it solved been solved in other ways (like proliferation of widescreens)?

atemerev 11y ago
Because it is expensive and contains quite a lot of moving parts, requiring precision engineering and possibly manual assembly. I doubt these were scalable to mass production. (Additionally, it contributed to the thickness of assembly — tho those who don't remember, Thinkpad 701 was _incredibly_ thick). I owned a 701c, the keyboard was clearly better than anything available today.
atemerev 11y ago
Another example is "Big Berta" (IBM T220/T221), a 21" screen with full 4K resolution available back in 2001! It offered PPI resolution better than modern Retina displays. It was insanely expensive, though.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Pics just in case http://sishardware.com/unt/4293-ibm_t220t221_22___2__display_monitor_4k_3__840_x_2__400.html http://sishardware.com/unt/4293-ibm_t220t221_22___2__display...
  - mrbill 11y ago
    More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
chiph 11y ago
Back when IBM had an outlet store in RTP (at the Morrisville outlet mall), I asked one of the employees there about the keyboard and why it wasn't carried forward to new models. He said they had a lot of returns on them, as the cam that controlled the sliding-puzzle-action when the lid was opened wore more quickly than expected. It really was a unique design and got the Thinkpad line a lot of good press, so I think it was successful in that aspect.

Joeri 11y ago

I'm wondering what the best software for this would be given a 133 mhz cpu and 72 mb of RAM. Do you try to trim down a modern linux distro, or do you use an OS of a similar vintage? No possibility of getting a modern browsing experience on those specs, so probably the vintage OS offers the best experience.

cturner 11y ago
Plan 9 would run well. Netbsd would be solid, particularly if you don't care about X. Openstep if you could find a CD. Minix. That's an amazing amount of RAM for that era, and OS/2 4.0 would probably run well on it, with no need to hunt for graphics drivers. Get Turbo C or Turbo Pascal for DOS, Word for windows, solid multitasking. BeOS/intel won't run - that needed pentium arch or above. BeOS would fly on an old pentium thinkpad with that much RAM though. Network stack is patchy, but the media API remains impressive.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
There's no way youre using a modern linux distro here. Even something like puppylinux which is designed for "old" computers expects around 256mb of ram. 72mb of ram doesn't get you much nowadays. Maybe you can install Damn Small Linux and get some basic functionality. Someone on /r/sysadmin tried reviving an old 486 laptop recently and I believe he could only get DSL to work, but had significant driver problems. I think he had much less ram, like 16mb or so. 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily and maybe even Windows 2000 or even XP, though I'm not sure how usable XP would be even if it did boot. edit: I found someone running puppy on 64meg of ram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI
- gtk40 11y ago
  I've run Puppy on <128mb of RAM, although not recently. You probably would have to use Dillo or Links as a web browser instead of a Mozilla based browser.
- xhrpost 11y ago
  If you ditch the GUI you can go pretty low. VPS advocates used to see it as a challenge to reduce RAM usage. Here's one going down to 4mb https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Comment_309202 https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Commen...

krylon 11y ago

Hehe, I have a 701 sitting around here. Still works, to a degree. On the other hand, the battery is long gone, there is no floppy, no CD ROM, no builtin ethernet, so I cannot get any data on or off that device or install a different operating system. Hence, I am stuck with Windows 95 and Office 95. I am keeping it because I kind of like having a 20 year old laptop, but it is not actually useful. But the keyboard is awesome. And it had 24 MB of RAM, while my first PC in 1996 came with 8. Must have been pretty expensive back in the day.

keenerd 11y ago
> On the other hand, the battery is long gone There are businesses who will take your old battery, crack it open and put in fresh cells. Or you can do it yourself. > there is no floppy, no CD ROM, no builtin ethernet, so I cannot get any data on or off that device or install a different operating system. You have a 16 bit PCMCIA slot, and you can still find cards for that if you look hard enough. (I picked up an original Orinoco wifi card for under $10.) Remember, the gold stripe on the card means 32 bit. Avoid those. And the standard way for working with these old computers is to get an external HDD case and swap out the drive. Or anything that you can use as a USB-IDE adapter. Then you can install whatever you want. Though you really shouldn't use spinning rust that old. I typically use a 16GB CF card in a CF-IDE adapter. (I do this in my 600E, for example.) It works very well since the protocols are the same. Edit: So maybe CF cards don't work in the 701, see http://www.os2museum.com/wp/butterfly-conservation/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/butterfly-conservation/
- saganus 11y ago
  > Or you can do it yourself. Isn't this dangerous? I am genuinely curious since I've always considered batteries to be something to be handled with care. I mean, it's not like you are carrying around a pack of TNT, but I would've never thought of opening it to replace the cells. For example, do the batteries have internal circuitry that could cause problems if you put in the wrong kind of cell?
  - dsr_ 11y ago

yuhong 11y ago

This is an old mod. I think there was several companies doing this mod back in the late 1990s.