Lucky find::: Two IBM Thinkpads - A30P and 760XL

[computerdude92]

Today at a sweet deal of $50 a piece at one of my favorite local PC shops, I found these two awesome vintage laptops to add to my collection. Both look very high end for their time! Anyone here have any memories using either one of these models? Please share if you do.





The 760XL has a Pentium MMX 166, memory capacity between 16MB-104MB, and 1MB video. A Windows 95 sticker rests on the underbody. My... this one is a brick.



The A30P has a **Tualatin** Pentium III-M at 1.2GHz, (Second fastest PIII-M ever made, best was 1.3GHz) The RAM ranges 128MB to 1GB, with whopping 32MB Radeon 7000, and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive! And if that's not to satisfy the cherry on top of the sundae... Windows 2000 was originally preinstalled, the best version of Windows at the time! Almost as good as WinXP!



The chargers are lost somewhere in the store, but I know I'll find spares online. Can't wait to test these babies out!!

Cheers!

 

[computerdude92]

I'm doing online research on the 1997 Thinkpad 760XL now and there's two things to note so far:

1. The proprietary 4-pin IBM charger is mad expensive on Ebay. Hopefully the charger can still be found at the PC repair shop later... My laptop needs 20v with 2.5A.

2. The hard drive uses a proprietary design for the internal connector. Is it possible to install a standard 2.5" IDE drive inside this HDD enclosure?

 

[Unknown_K]

The 760XL HD is standard IDE, but you need the caddy/connector. I assume the caddy wasn't included? The 75x and 76x series use the same caddies.

The A30P is also 1600x1200 IPS screen unless somebody swapped it out.

 

[computerdude92]

I watched this video and learned that the BIOS recognizes up to "just about" 8.1GB drives. Overlay software is the alternative if needed. The guy in the video carefully opened up the HDD caddy case and showed that it was designed to fit full height 2.5" drives.

I would need to use a shim or a second (inactive slim 2.5" drive) stacked inside for the connection to line up. These smaller capacity drives are harder to come by and I wonder how I would mount an IDE to SD card adapter board... probably I'd use adhesive foam pads and tape.

This Thinkpad 760XL is too old to natively boot from CD, and I don't trust floppy disks. So I'm returning it to the shop to grab something of equal value.

People have had success using Smart BootManager though:

How to boot a TP760 from a CD-ROM (really) - Thinkpads Forum

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I'm definitely keeping the 2001 Thinkpad A30P. I've never seen a fancier PIII laptop.

I wonder how far ahead in performance a Pentium M 1.6-1.8GHz is from the Pentium III-M 1.2GHz in the A30P? As we know, the Pentium M is derived from the PIII.

 

[Unknown_K]

They went from P3 to P4 mobile to PM so a few generations later and higher clock speed would mean it's much faster.