Hey everyone, it's Colin! How's it going?
I recently picked up this old ThinkPad. Let's see what it takes to get it up and running again.
[♪ Music - Intro ♪]
This is an IBM ThinkPad 390E from 1999
and it was a pretty mainstream kinda laptop during its day.
There were a few different configurations you could get on this particular model.
This is a low-end one. It comes with a 12 inch LCD, but it could also be had in a 13 and 14 inch version,
which also got you a little bit better resolution.
This one has a 300 megahertz Celeron CPU, but the higher-end models came with up to a 333 megahertz mobile Pentium 2.
Base RAM on these was 32 megabytes. Some of the higher end ones came with 64.
And you could get these with up to a 6.4 gig hard drive.
Obviously, this is an older type of machine before IBM started doing the touchpads in the palm rest,
so all you got was the little TrackPoint nubbin thing here on the keyboard.
But what's particularly interesting about this machine is its bay configuration.
Obviously, this particular computer has been used for quite a while.
I actually picked it up off of the e-waste pile, so I saved it from getting recycled.
It's overall in really good condition.
Surprisingly enough, it had the power supply with it, which doesn't always happen when you're grabbing stuff off of recycle piles.
But it's just got a few, you know, kinda basic scratches and some label residue and stuff like that...
from use, but it's overall in really good shape.
On the bottom is kinda typical IBM construction,
so there's these connectors here for plugging it into a docking station.
Here's the cover for, I believe, the RAM.
The battery comes out just by pushing this tab and sliding it forward,
and surprisingly enough, this battery still works. I'm- I'm quite surprised by that,
I left the machine plugged in for a while and it actually powered on...
um, with the battery in there and the AC adapter unplugged.
But this flex bay is really kinda curious.
So it's the same type of latching design...
and then, this entire bay that has the floppy drive and CD-ROM can come out.
This is a 24x CD-ROM, but you could get different modules that would go into this bay on the side.
And...
You can see, if I flip this thing up...
There's this flappy door, so you can stick a wide variety of things, not just different kinds of like floppy or CD drives.
But this thing was compatible with another battery.
Um, I've read that they also made additional hard drive carriers that you could stick in here.
And then things like Zip Drives and LS120 and all the- the supposed successor to the floppy that never really took off.
Also, one curious little note from back in the day when laptops were being made,
like, you know, these bigger style, this has got feet. *Chuckle*
Fold out, fold out little plastic feet. Been a long time since I've seen laptops with feet on 'em.
On this side, pretty typical layout. There's a built-in 56K modem,
sound, in and out with an actual like, analog volume dial. It's been a long time since we've seen that too.
Couple of PCMCIA card slots.
This one came with, I believe, this was an Ethernet, yeah. A 10/100 Ethernet card.
I do have the dongle for that, I think, somewhere? I'll have to look for it.
Around back, pretty straightforward compliment of ports.
Uh, this is, I believe, PS/2, serial, VGA, your standard parallel port, AC adapter in...
And then on this side: USB, the door is missing, so I'm not sure if this is S-Video or PS/2.
Actually, that I believe is S-Video out for hooking up to like an old TV to present or whatever.
Infrared for syncing with things like Palm Pilots, and then your power switch.
Nothing around front except for a couple of latches.
It's also been a long time since we've had laptops with latches to hold the screen closed.
When I first got this machine and powered it on,
I figured the hard drive was just blank.
Which is a good thing, right? If you're gonna send a machine out to get recycled, you wanna wipe the hard drive on it.
But, you know, I'd go into the- into the BIOS on here and I'd wanna look at the system specs.
And like I said, you know, I know that this thing has the 300 megahertz Celeron
because its got the sticker on the corner here and it actually says so, I believe, during- during boot.
And obviously, it's got the 12 inch display.
And here's, you know, the CPU and the speed.
One thing that's really kind of frustrating about this machine is it doesn't list anything about its internal hard drive capabilities.
Um, it'll tell you how much memory is in here.
And this one has actually received a memory upgrade. It's got 160 meg in it, which is totally awesome!
But nowhere in here do they talk about like... anything to do with the hard drive. So... okay, fine.
I guess IBM figured, you know, "There's only one hard drive bay, so...
What would there be for you to configure regarding the hard drive in this thing?"
Something curious also is this is from the day before operation systems had, you know, really decent support for laptops.
I believe this machine typically shipped with Windows 98. So all of your power saving features are actually in the BIOS here.
Um, settings for, you know, how long the machine goes before it turns off the screen or spins down the hard drive
or, you know, goes into sleep mode or whatever. Um, you actually set all those things in the BIOS...
instead of in the OS, which is very interesting.
So when I first powered this machine on, after going through the BIOS and not seeing any settings about the hard drive in there,
any ideas as to what its capacity was, I figure, "Okay, I'm just gonna let the machine finish booting...
You know, maybe- maybe it'll tell me somewhere in there. Maybe there will actually be an OS on this hard drive, who knows?"
So, I let the machine sit and basically, it never boots.
Uh, it just sits here at this blinking screen and then goes to "Operating System not found,"
so I figure, "Oh- Okay. They wiped the hard drive. If I wanna figure out what its specs are, its capacity, all that, I need to pull it out."
Now, the hard drive bay on this machine is actually quite serviceable, which is rather surprising.
It's this little door here in the back.
(And of course, I've got it loosened to make life a little bit easier for us here.)
And then this door comes off and then your hard drive goes *in there*!
But, when I took the door off, I saw...
that, which is...
so unfortunately, they had taken the hard drive out before putting the machine on the recycle pile.
The bummer though is you can't just stick any normal IDE laptop hard drive in here as-is.
This is a very specific size bay, there's no way to screw the drive in.
There's no holes in the bottom to screw the drive in or anything.
And... it's tough to see in there, but it's also not a standard connector on the inside.
So in order to get a hard drive working in that bay, first thing I needed to buy was this little adapter
and it basically takes you from the standard IDE pin arrangement
to this kind of edge connector/proprietary thing that IBM was doing. And this was easy enough to find.
It was all about I think, $4 shipped off of eBay, from somewhere here in the US.
But then, I got to thinking...
"You know, what kind of hard drive do I even wanna put in this thing? It doesn't even have anything in it now, so I can kinda blank slate this a little bit.
Do I wanna put in a really big hard drive in there? Maybe I can stick a whole bunch of games or multiboot different OSes or something like that?"
But then I got to thinking, "You know, do I really wanna stick a mechanical hard drive in this thing?"
So that, you know, the lack of having a spare part...
and my general reluctance to want to put another mechanical drive in this thing that ultimately, is gonna fail.
And I should note that I'm not necessarily like a purist when it comes to getting this machine back to its like original specifications.
I'm not trying to restore this thing back to factory condition or anything, I just wanna get it up and running again.
So that all kinda combined to lead me to go pick up one of these, and this is a CompactFlash card.
What's interesting about CompactFlash is that it's actually based on the same kind of set of protocols as IDE hard drives.
There are a few differences here and there... and, you know, it-
Obviously, there's major differences in capacities, like this is an 8 gig card and it's only like this big.
But, in general, these are compatible with computers that are just looking for a regular IDE hard drive.
And apparently, a lot of people will do this kind of conversion
where they'll get rid of a mechanical drive and swap it out for a CompactFlash card,
cause obviously this is solid state. It's gonna be way more reliable in the long term.
And if you can read the label on this card, it says "Mettler-Toledo" on there.
And, I don't know what specific product came out of, but I know that company makes things like industrial and commercial scales.
Basically, embedded kind of computing devices, so...
If they went and put a CompactFlash card in an embedded computing device,
obviously I'm on the right track because they know that doing this works.
So I picked up a lot of these cards. I think I got 3 or 4 of 'em.
These were not brand new, but I think I paid maybe $25-35 shipped for that entire lot of cards.
Which I think is a decent deal and 8 gig of space is still gonna be plenty for a machine like this.
Now in order to get that card to work in the computer, I need one more piece and that is... this.
This is a CompactFlash to IDE adapter.
And these are surprisingly inexpensive mostly because they appear to be really simple.
Uh, this one cost me, I think, $3 shipped from China.
Obviously it took forever to get here, but... you know what, it looks like a really simple device.
I'm not seeing any sort of like active electronics on it or anything.
Um, it just- you know, you just stick the card in *here*...
And then you plug the other end into, you know, your IDE cable or directly into your laptop or... into an adapter deal like this.
And then it should just work. Um, there are... some jumper settings here that you can use and...
Just looking at it... they're saying jumper 1-2 is Master/Slave and then jumper 2-3 is Slave/Master.
Why are they having the second word on there? Slave and... Master.
I would think that it would just be like jumper 1-2 is "Set this as master," jumper 2-3 is "Set this as slave."
Solder... pads, this...
Those are the same...
Oh! Ohhhh, interesting!
So this company- This is very crafty. Okay, so here's what's going on:
This board- this PCB can actually get used for multiple products.
So this is obviously a single card board, right?
You just stick- you can only stick one CompactFlash in here and it'll just present as one drive to your computer.
But if you look at the back, they've got the same solder pads here in these four corners as for this connector.
I suspect they sell another version of this adapter with a second CompactFlash card reader on the back.
So you could have two drives.
So you could have like, you know, effectively, a C: drive on one card and a D: drive on the other as separate hard drives.
And then this jumper basically flips as to which card is identified as Master and which one is identified as Slave.
That's really crafty! Okay!
So anyway, the idea is you know, I'm gonna drop the card into the adapter here,
and then I stick this guy on the end, and then... that's it!
Looking at that bay in the back of the computer, I can't necessarily just throw this in as is
because that's a pretty big hard drive bay. Obviously it's designed for a full 2½ inch drive and this is a lot smaller.
I'm afraid this thing's gonna be kinda flappin' around back there and it may fall out.
I don't suspect this edge connector holds on very tightly.
So I picked up one more thing and this was actually quite a bit harder to find.
This is the metal cage that the original hard drive would go into.
This particular model of laptop seems really kinda standard, you know, it seems like a really typical kind of mainstream model, but...
It's really hard to find parts for this online!
It took me a while, I finally found a seller that had this cage on it, you know, in stock and available.
And, it was from a seller in Germany, so I guess hello to all of my German viewers.
Um, some e-recycling, you know, e-waste kinda shop.
It cost me $20 shipped from there, so not terribly expensive.
But it was the only one that I could find. I couldn't find anybody in the US selling this drive cage.
And maybe this cage is swappable between multiple ThinkPad models.
I dunno, I couldn't find any information about it, but...
Anyway, this is the last thing that I think I'll need in order to get this all working.
Now... something I'll have to figure out is how do I get that to stay in there...
You know, like, cause otherwise it's just gonna rattle around and stuff. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
First things first, I wanna make sure that this works in the laptop
before I commit to figuring out how to adhere all of this down. Because, who knows?
Maybe they're doing something weird and this whole setup won't work, and I'll have to... you know, switch back to using a regular mechanical drive.
I took a piece of capped-on tape, stuck it to the back, and then... made like a little pull tab out of it.
Right, so this is all taped together. It won't fall apart on me.
But now I can pull it out of the back of the computer,
you know, without needing to stick it in that cage.
I'm not sure if you're gonna be able to see this, and we'll see how well I can do this...
Yeah, see, it maybe- Okay, so I can feel it. It's in the edge connector, but it's in there really loose...
And... not sure if you can tell... it's really dark. But it's kind of... it's really loose in there.
Doesn't wanna stay put, so I definitely need to figure out a better permanent solution,
but for testing and getting this thing up and running, it should work just fine.
Alright, so let's plug in power here.
And just for grins, let's try turning it on.
Alright, uh, that's kind of what I was expecting, so operating system not found.
Let's try getting a boot CD in here and see we can maybe get a copy of Windows installed or something.
Okay, attempt number 2, I've got a Windows install disc in there.
*BEEP*
Let's see...
Yeah, I wanna boot from CD-ROM.
Uh... Let's just start Windows setup from CD-ROM, why not?
Let's see if the thing's formatted and just...
maybe doesn't have an operating system on it.
Not install- Does not have an hard disk. Your hard disk is not- Okay.
So the hard drive is... probably completely unformatted, so let's quit setup.
Uh...
Is fdisk on here?
"No fixed disks present."
Okay.
I'ma have to do a little bit of research.
Okay, so I did some digging. Here's what I was able to find out.
Yes, CompactFlash cards work great as boot disks for laptops, you know, anything that needs IDE...
Except, and now, my memory is being jostled after seeing this message about no fixed disks present,
the keyword "fixed" is what got me thinking.
CompactFlash cards can have two modes:
They can have what they call "Removable Mode" and then "Fixed Mode."
It's largely just a function of the way the firmware on the card has been set up.
Removable mode, obviously, is for if you wanna use this in something like a digital camera or, you know, whatever,
where you're gonna be frequently plugging in the card and removing it.
And... especially if you wanna be able to hotplug the card into something like a card reader on a PC,
so that you can, you know, maybe pick pictures up off of it, whatever.
And I remember doing that a lot when I would have digital cameras that would use this format.
Apparently, most CompactFlash cards ship in "Removable Mode".
But... Windows in particular and some other operating systems actually need
any drive that they can install to to identify as a fixed disk.
Which has a slightly different set of commands or something like that, I guess?
It basically makes it behave more like a traditional hard drive instead of, you know, removable media.
Now, in doing a little bit of digging, I'm lucky in that I bought a SanDisk card,
because at one point, SanDisk offered a utility that you could,
you know, boot off of and run to convert between the two modes.
Now, if you go to SanDisk's website today, they've got a knowledge base article that talks about this,
but they then go on to say that they no longer sell CompactFlash cards that are set as fixed from the factory,
and they also no longer offer a utility that lets you flip back and forth between the two modes on the cards.
And, one other little note is... I read some reports from people who have gone down this rabbit hole,
and found that not all of the SanDisk cards are compatible with the utility.
So SanDisk doesn't have that utility available anymore,
but I was able to *Cough* find it on the Internet, so...
Lemme get a boot disk going and we'll stick the card in there and see what we can do to get it converted.
Oh, I gotta say, when this thing's first booting up, like with the fan going on the side and the CD-ROM drive spinning up,
this computer is like, really really noisy.
Okay! Um, well yeah, I wanna boot to DOS, so I guess I can choose DOS.
Alright, so let's um...
Okay, so this first utility is the one that I am looking for.
It got shortened 'cause it's- the characters are too long, but...
It's "ATCFWCHG"...
is the name of the program and if you pass some parameters after it,
then it will supposedly switch the mode on the CompactFlash card, assuming it can see it.
So... let's see...
Uh... "~1"...
And then... it's "/p" for "primary," as in like the primary IDE...
and then "/f," as in fixed.
Let's see what that comes back with.
The CD-ROM drive in this thing is being weird, I dunno what's up with that. It's like, spinning up and down...
over and over, and now it seems to be having trouble reading. Is the disc dirty?
I just burned it, I dunno. Lemme um, lemme turn this thing off and back on again.
The joys of working on old computers!
Okay, take two, I blew the dust off the disc and off the laser lens and- and hopefully that uh... that does it here.
"CFWC~1"...
"/p" for primary, "/f" for fixed.
Alright, it ran...
Uh, oh...
Fail, error... #7.
But I- it sees the card.
08G, 8 gigabyte. Okay, so this utility...
It can see the card...
But it... didn't want to do it.
That sucks.
*Sigh* Alright, so I went digging around in the closet and I actually found one of my old camera bags...
another CompactFlash card!
Um, I didn't realize that I had this in there, otherwise I- you know...
wouldn't have bought... the ones off eBay.
But, this is a 2 gig card. I'm hoping that's plenty, it probably will be, right?
Um... it's a bit slower, this one says it's 15 megabytes per second, the other one I think said 50, but...
at this point, I think anything's gonna be faster than an original IDE drive.
Um... I remember using cards like this with one of my old digital cameras, so...
Hopefully this one will work with this utility, it'll fit, you know, kind of in that same time range as to when that utility was common.
I don't know when that program was written
and there's no published spec as to which cards that program is compatible with,
so... it's- I think just gonna be kind of a trial and error type of a deal.
Um, I think this card is probably from sometime in the early 2000s, would be my best guess.
But let's get it swapped into that adapter and then run this utility again, and see what we get.
Okay, I got that card swapped into that adapter instead, let's give this utility another shot...
Cross fingers, we'll see what we get here. "ATCFWC~1 /p /f" for fixed.
Here we go!
Ohhhh... Ohh! I think we did it!
That's a much better result than we got last time with that error message, so let's swap out the discs here...
I'm just gonna do this right now, let's swap out CDs, so that was my boot disc.
*Disc Clatter sounds*
Let's put the Windows disc back in there.
Let her spin up for a second.
Three finger salute! Control-Alt-Delete, here we go!
Alright, so I'm off on my Windows install disc, I just booted straight into DOS mode instead of Windows setup,
'cause I have a feeling I'm gonna need to wipe this CompactFlash card.
I'm quite sure I used it in a digital camera in the past, so that's... probably not gonna make Windows so happy,
so let's fire up fdisk and- and format this thing.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh...
That's... not good.
Wait a minute- wait a minute, hang on, hang on...
When that utility runs...
to change between "fixed" and "removable" mode, what I read is that it sets a bit...
in the firmware of the card.
Right?
'Cause the firmware can be in both modes. You know, either or.
And its basically just telling the firmware the card to switch between the two.
I just did a soft reboot on this laptop... so, the computer never turned off and back on again.
I wonder if you have to power cycle for that change to take effect.
Hang on, I'm gonna just turn the computer off all the way...
Okay, so I turned it *off* completely and back on again, let's see what we get...
Ohhh! Ah *Chuckles*, it's seeing it now!
I wouldn't get here if it didn't see the drive!
"Your computer has a disk larger than 512 megabytes."
Ohh, go figure! Okay!
So, you know... the- the kind of joke with tech support about "Have you turned it off and back on again?"
Yeah, there's a reason why that's a good suggestion, 'cause that totally fixed this problem, *Chuckle*
it literally just turn it off and back on again.
What do we have?
It's seeing the whole thing! Two gig, FAT16, wow...
Oh yeah! This was from my old digital camera, Nikon D70S!
That was my first DSLR that I owned, so this was an original card that I had from that, so...
I'm gonna need to wipe this disc, so let's go and delete the partition.
Yes, I want to delete that one...
Uh... volume label? Oh, that's right, they make you make you type it in...
to like, be *really sure* you wanna do it.
Am I sure?
I'm pretty sure I got all the pictures off of this card from...
That's gotta be over 10 years, that's probably- This card is probably... 13, 14 years old?
I- I imagine I got all the pictures off of it, so yeah, go ahead and wipe it.
Let's create a new primary DOS partition...
Well, we're verifying the integrity. That's pretty quick!
See, and that's the nice thing, right? It's a card like this is gonna be faster than a mechanical drive, for sure.
Yeah, I wanna use the maximum area...
We have to verify it again, I dunno why.
"You MUST restart your system for changes to take effect..." okay.
Alright, I've rebooted the machine, but I'm back into...
just the DOS shell here because...
I think...
I... need to set...
The partition as active. I don't think the Windows installer will do that for me.
Oh, it already is. Okay, well, that was a waste of time.
Okay, this time, I am booting from the CD-ROM,
but I'm gonna boot from the Windows- go straight into Windows setup,
'cause my hard drive should be ready to go at this point.
Let's... cross fingers this time.
And what version of Windows am I installing, you wonder? Well, Windows ME, of course!
I mean, I've... put up with enough crap on this computer so far, I've...
had to figure out why it didn't wanna see...
the CompactFlash card and then dealing with the whole reboot and all that stuff.
Why not continue to, you know... cause myself pain and suffering by installing Windows ME on this machine?
So... yeah, Enter to Continue. Uh, format the drive, yeah, I probably should do that.
A routine check on my system, okay. Well, if you say so.
Boy, talk about like, making things hard on myself. I forgot how long it takes to install these older versions of Windows.
I thought it'd be like, 20 minutes. Well, you know, it's over an hour later and it's finally done.
It just sits there and wants to spend all its time detecting hardware and installing drivers, okay, whatever.
Windows is installed on this thing, I still have some more work to do with it, but whatever.
I wanna deal with that hard drive situation, so I'm gonna go ahead and shut this thing down,
and then we can figure out the best way to deal with that drive.
So, you'll remember that I had set up... this little pull tab.
It's a little warm! Forgot that that was actually warm.
Anyway... so let's come up with a more permanent solution for keeping this inside that hard drive bay,
I don't want it to accidentally fall out or whatever while... I'm moving the machine or something.
So... if you recall, I also bought this. And this is the cage that the original drive fits in.
Here's the bottom part and... there are like little tabs here that...
the mechanical hard drive would get held in by, it just kinda goes and locks into the holes on the side of the drive.
This adapter setup doesn't have that.
In fact, there's really no way to mount this to here with, you know, its own thing.
I'm suspecting it needs to sit in there... kinda like that.
But what am I gonna do to keep it in there? Well...
This is my secret weapon for a lot of stuff and this is called 3M VHB tape, that stands for "Very High Bond."
It's actually the same stuff that they use to hold like molding and trim and logos and stuff on cars on the outside,
Um, it's like this foam double-stick tape, but it's really strong
and it comes off clean if you ever need to. It's not like that cheap foam tape.
So I'm going to use some of this to hold this guy in place.
The question is... can I get this thing lined up properly?
So, let's take the old pull tab deal off the back here...
and I'm not going to bother taping the card into the adapter
simply because that card seems to fit in there, pretty uh, pretty sturdy.
Doesn't seem to wanna come out too easily.
I don't think I'm gonna need a whole lot of this tape...
So let's go somewhere kinda like that.
Before I commit, let's line this up... and I think...
I think this adapter needs to be on the outside.
So the idea is when this is all done and put together...
it kinda sits... something...
like that, maybe?
Urrgh...
There we go!
Okay! Let's see...
what we can do here. Something like...
that, I feel.
'Kay, close it up.
*Click*
'Kay, can we... there we go! Alright, it's in.
It's in.
Thumbs up.
Now we can get this cover back on...
*Clicking Noises*
Now I'll just use a spudger to screw it back in.
And... let's... finish getting this thing set up!
Alright, we're all booted up. Um, I don't remember putting a password in when I set it up, so...
I'm assuming it's blank.
What's really nice about this machine is when the fan isn't spinning and the CD-ROM drive isn't spinning, this thing is perfectly silent.
like there's absolutely no noise coming out of this computer
cause of that CompactFlash drive, which is another super awesome thing...
for, you know, if you wanna play old games or whatever, you won't have all this extraneous noise and stuff going on.
Okay, finally, to the desktop. Um...
Alright, let's... what is going on? Hang on a minute.
Do you see this?
What is that?
It... moving on its own? Wha?
Now it stopped.
The pointer was moving on its own.
I wouldn't be touching anything and it would be just kinda creepin', but now it's done?
Okay, anyway, so that kinda speaks to what I think I need to do next.
Um, I burned a CD for drivers.
I got the drivers for this thing, and I got- gotta give this community some credit for sure.
thinkpads.com; plural ThinkPad.
Um, they've got like a *tooon* of drivers for all these different models of ThinkPads on their site.
including these really older models, it's not all just newer ones. Obviously, they talk about newer machines there, too, but...
They've got just tons and tons of these older drivers, so I was able to go through and find like, all the drivers and BIOS updates and everything.
And... they were just right there, so I burned them all to a CD... and yep, good, it sees it.
Yep, and there's all my files and everything.
But, I'm not sure how many of these are actually nneeecessary?
So, let's- Oh, it's been a while since I've used one of these TouchPoints, um... TrackPoint, whatever they call 'em.
Let's get into Device Mangler here and see... how much stuff I'm missing.
I don't think I'm missing anything.
Normally, I'd be seeing exclamation points where stuff is missing, with you know, it saying "Unknown Device" or whatever.
Um... let's just make sure it's not using generic drivers.
No...? That's- That's right.
'Kay, I can install a monitor file.
Oh, let's check networking.
Wow, yeah, it sees my uh... sees the card bus adapter, sees the infrared port...
Uh, sound card? Yeah, sound card's there.
There's some random utilities here too. Let's install the monitor file.
I don't think that's actually necessary 'cause this screen is showing the correct resolution.
One of the things to remember with these old displays, these old laptops, is...
They don't necessarily all do video scaling,
so if I were to go into the display properties and change this from like 800x600 down to 640x480,
it wouldn't stretch the image out to the full size of the screen,
it would just show 640x480 kind of in a box in the middle of the display.
Okay, so it did it install that or did it just extract it somewhere?
I wasn't paying... attention 'cause I was talking to you guys, so...
Let's go back into here and see if that device changed.
So yeah, let's try and give it a new monitor file here.
I'm gonna have to specify... Uhh...
It's not in there, it's gonna be...
It's going to be in the C: drive. No, there is no... Thank you.
Oh, drivers? "WIN?"
"MONITOR!" Uh... "WINME."
Oh, okay. Well, so there is no monitor file to worry about.
So yeah, I'm done with drivers. Okay, thaaat's cool. I- I don't have to worry about that after all. Um...
I guess 98 needs drivers, but maybe Windows ME doesn't, even though they published Windows ME drivers?
Not sure.
The next step is we need to put some software on this guy before we call it done.
And, if you know me, which, at this point, if you've been watching for a while,
you probably do, you should know what software I'm gonna be installing next.
Of course, it's gonna be SimCity 2000 because why would it not be SimCity 2000?
Oh, I can make sure that the sound works this way too. Alright.
Uh... yeah, just put it all in there, why not?
Yes. Uh...
'Kay.
Yes.
There we go! Ding-ding-ding! *Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding*
Cool.
Kinda quiet, but...
But we've got sound, so yeah, all the drivers are done, we've got...
good old SimCity 2000 on here.
Let's go check how much hard drive space that took up. So remember, I put a 2 gig drive in there.
2 gig flash card.
And... oh yeah, this thing- Windows only took up 500 meg, that's like nothing.
So I got plenty of room for more games or whatever I wanna put on here.
And that's about all there is to it with this one.
The old ThinkPad 390E from 1999 is back in action and it actually doesn't perform too badly!
Obviously, the RAM upgrade that it came with was a big help,
but that CompactFlash card is definitely gonna lend some reliability for the long term.
Those old mechanical hard drives are just gonna keep dying as time goes on
and they're gonna become harder and harder to find.
Yeah, I spent a few bucks getting this thing up and running again...
that adapter was $3 or $4 to go from IDE to CompactFlash,
the little edge connector was $4, that drive cage was about $20.
I ended up not needing to buy the CompactFlash card
after all because I just found one that I didn't realize that I had.
But even if you had to go buy one of those cards, it's a few bucks.
This is generally a really inexpensive type of conversion and the benefits are great!
The fan is turned off on this machine, I don't have a disc in the optical drive, so it's completely silent,
and it's gonna be good to go for quite a few years going forward.
So, if you like this episode, I would appreciate a thumbs-up,
be sure to subscribe if you haven't already.
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at thisdoesnotcomp, and as always, thanks for watching.