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> 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 your

by 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
  It's not particularly dangerous. If you can jumpstart a car, you can do this. The key is to remember that laptop batteries are rarely produced by people with actual battery expertise. Instead, they string together a certain number of (usually) AA-sized battery cells to produce the appropriate voltage and put that in a custom case. Crack open the case, read the numbers, order replacement cells, swap, check with a voltmeter, close it up and try it out.
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- keenerd 11y ago
  The 701 uses NiMH cells so it is very easy to work with compared to a li-ion pack. Here's an example: http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/battery/ http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/battery/
  - saganus 11y ago
    Aha! very interesting. I had seen pictures of opened battery packs before, and I definitely thought they looked like regular AA batteries. But I also never thought that it wasn't only the looks. It would be nice to have this same analysis done for different models. Like having a database for battery pack models where you could find the ordering of the batts, the chips that they have etc. Also, what would've happened if the corrosion actually had killed the chip? then what? can you find parts to replace those?

by keenerd 11y ago

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
It's not particularly dangerous. If you can jumpstart a car, you can do this. The key is to remember that laptop batteries are rarely produced by people with actual battery expertise. Instead, they string together a certain number of (usually) AA-sized battery cells to produce the appropriate voltage and put that in a custom case. Crack open the case, read the numbers, order replacement cells, swap, check with a voltmeter, close it up and try it out.
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keenerd 11y ago
The 701 uses NiMH cells so it is very easy to work with compared to a li-ion pack. Here's an example: http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/battery/ http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/battery/
- saganus 11y ago
  Aha! very interesting. I had seen pictures of opened battery packs before, and I definitely thought they looked like regular AA batteries. But I also never thought that it wasn't only the looks. It would be nice to have this same analysis done for different models. Like having a database for battery pack models where you could find the ordering of the batts, the chips that they have etc. Also, what would've happened if the corrosion actually had killed the chip? then what? can you find parts to replace those?