IBM ThinkCentre Windows XP Build

Upgrading an IBM ThinkCentre A50 and getting Windows XP installed.
Check me out on Patreon: / clabretro
00:00 Intro
02:08 Case Overview
05:12 Fixing Shipping Damage
05:30 Pulling Everything Out
11:20 Pentium 4 Inspection
13:36 Seeing if we Post
15:39 Hard Disk Options
17:00 Cleaning and Reassembly
19:48 XP Integral Edition Overview
21:37 Switching to IDE to CF Adapter
22:59 RAM and Video Card Upgrades
25:10 Final Install on an SSD
26:46 Tiberian Sun!
27:48 Log Into a Dell R510 IDRAC
28:16 Comparison to a Modern Lenovo ThinkCentre
30:21 Future Plans and Closing Thoughts
Rack stuff
StarTech 25U Rack: amzn.to/3mEB7hS
Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD UPS: amzn.to/3KZW3Jw
1U 24 Port Patch Panel: amzn.to/3Nm0bFa
1U Brush Panel: amzn.to/3mExAA3
1U Rack Shelf: amzn.to/3oaDclT
Note: The above are Amazon affiliate links. It doesn't cost you extra, but I'll receive a commission which will help keep the content coming. I only link to things I've personally ordered.
Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[@sweet_proportions]

I love how enterprise branded workstations look, this strict office corporate style somehow gets me. And they also usually have great features like tool less disassembly, you really feel that a real person put thought into designing these chassis. I've gotten a Dell Precision a while back just because of it.

[@clabretro]

totally agree!

[@joetoney184]

Sata DOMs usually use a JST 2 pin connector with 5V and GND, integral power stata doms didn’t really show up until Intel Haswell servers.

[@clabretro]

Good call, I'm gonna pick up a power adapter and give it another shot.

[@jdarmst]

Came here to say this. If you need one, I have a bunch from work.

[@clabretro]

I picked up a few cables on eBay today, but thank you!

[@dylan8495]

I was just working with some of these today and didn't know the name of the power connection and came up on this vid by accident. THANK YOU!

[@arizonapalms]

I enjoyed this look at the ThinkCentre. My first "server" one of these I bought for $100 but a tad newer since it had PCIe and ran FreeNAS on it. It's funny, the entire time I didn't even think about the tiny ThinkCentre's that I use nowadays for labbing and running VMs. We've come full circle.

[@EnronnSierra]

I remember back in March of 2000 my dad got a IBM Aptiva manufactured in 1999. Came with a 15 inch monitor, 64 MBs of RAM, 500 MHz AMD K6 CPU, 10 GB IDE hard disk. Came preinstalled with Windows 98 SE, Lotus Smartsuite, WorldBook. I loved that computer so much. We eventually upgraded it to 128 MBs of RAM, installed a new modem because lightning killed the one it came with. Also added a Plextor CD-RW to make our own mix music cd's. I think the CD-RW is what eventually killed it, it just had too much installed. It was upgraded to Windows ME, Windows 2000 Professional and eventually Windows XP. It just brings back so many memories spending hours on it at my dads office browsing the Internet using Netscape. The keyboard was a joy a to type on. I remember when I got the the Britney Spears ...Baby One More Time CD, it was the only computer we had that I could use to view the 'Enhanced' Quicktime content. I see one on an auction site, but I just don't have the space for it right now.

[@clabretro]

Very cool! I remember that Enhanced Content stuff, hilarious. We had an early Dell OptiPlex running Windows 95 for a long time, as I recall.

[@heatedpoolandbar]

This really is my favorite new youtube channel. My homelab consists of a stack of Lenovo 'Tiny' boxes. I did put some extra rubber feet on them for improved air flow.

[@clabretro]

thank you! they're really great machines, I've been thinking about picking up another.

[@purpaidh]

I have 4 of Lenovo's Thinkpads of various types and they are easily my favorite laptop. Lenovo's laptop keyboards are by far and away the best and they've never given me any issues at all. I use my two oldest ones as my "homelab" and the newest is my regular use laptop. It's amazing how they've managed to keep the quality so consistent for so long.

[@ryanw1906]

The keyboards are amazing, though the old 7 rows were better than the newer chicklet style that's used today. But as far as laptop keyboards go they're cream of the crop IMO.

[@lmanstl]

Depending on the SATADOM and the device, you will likely need a power cable for it. Some supermicro servers have special sata ports where you can use the dom without a power cable but most of the time you need a power cable for it.

[@MobCat_]

This. You need a power pig tale thing. Goes in the cream colored connector just above the flash chip. It looks like its only using 1 power rail though. So might get lucky and be able to bodge a usb cable or make a tiny molux plug adapter for it. Probs only needs 3.3 or 5v. and gonna be super lucky if it only needs 5v. Theres also a switch on top of it. Not sure if thats for switching "host bus power" and external or for something else like compatibly modes.

[@clabretro]

Ah yeah, I bet you're right.

[@seshpenguin]

I think what went wrong with the XP Integral setup was you're also supposed to boot from the USB for the second part of the install (at the GRUB interface there were options for first part and second part), since it still needs to load some extra drivers to handle the USB image.

[@clabretro]

I think you're right, I was thinking about that as I edited the video. I'm gonna give it another try to have it on another drive.

[@eucalyptux]

@@clabretro Also, i don't think that the extra drivers are inclued in that ISO from the start, you have a script in a folder to choose an bake-in your wanted drivers ;)

[@gtprojects9662]

oh the windows XP memories... I was almost shocked to find out a couple years ago when I needed a WinXP machine to run a car diagnostic reader and couldn't find my product key, that there is a wiki page with every version of WinXP product key that was ever available. Made loading things up a lot easier. Really love seeing all the old hardware 👍

[@clabretro]

ha, a _lot_ of software was written during XP's lifetime. thanks for watching!

[@theserialport]

Great video! I can't resist though: PLEEEASE #1, right-click the desktop bg -> Theme -> Windows Classic #2,. Start -> Control Panel -> Taskbar -> Start menu. Click the Start menu tab, select Classic Start menu, click Apply

[@clabretro]

Okay now I'm kicking myself. I do that in all my XP installs and totally forgot to show it in the video 😂. I used to take great pride in making XP look as close to Windows 98 as possible.

[@markpriceful]

haha WinXP with classic mode is Windows Nirvana! @@clabretro

[@br3nd4n]

Not 98, 2000! I used Windows 2K for many years past it's prime. It was an excellent OS, basically NT 5. @@clabretro

[@nushnume]

Those old IBM cases were so tough. My grandpa had one like it but his had a Pentium 3,that case felt so solid you could probably throw it from the first floor without it taking barely any damage :D i was a kid back then but i still remember that old IBM Desktar hard drive grinding noise and Windows 2000 sounds

[@clabretro]

Very tough! Really nice machines.

[@ejunkempire2459]

I just installed XP from a ram disk to NVME and part 1 was amazing to watch! I remember the slow boot and install from cd back in the day.

[@clabretro]

oh yeah it was amazing to watch it install from that USB

[@kajraske2002]

Absolutely peak computing. Love it.

[@clabretro]

Agreed 😎

[@SudosFTW]

The 845/855/865 boards (you have an 865) are notorious in IBM boxes for having extremely bad caps. I'm glad to see none of them have failed... yet. Get on that, it's not a matter of if, but when. The PSUs are just as guilty. The heatsink is pretty beefy for those, it's generally a nickel plated copper contact surface. They used a bit too much nickel however and it ends up hampering thermals a tad. I can recall my one boss taking the heatsink from one of these that we had a few of in service running a timeclock and taking every single heatsink and belt sanding it down to bare copper on the contact surface and then polishing it up, it really helped a good deal and I wasn't immediately sure it was going to given he did nothing but 400 grit. I had an 845 board model that I used as a "sleeper case" for a while but recently took all the parts out when I ran into issues. the GPU I shoved in didn't completely fit, and yeah. not happy.

[@clabretro]

I read about the capacitor issues on these boards. Mine seems fine for now but I'll be keeping an eye on it, and I'll end up recapping it regardless in the next couple years even if it doesn't have issues. I was thinking about finding another one of these for a sleeper haha.

[@Commodore477]

"Both discs at the same time" lol. so true though, the awe of it all back then

[@jesse21374]

The spare tool-less drive rail for mounting the DVD drive looks like it is still attached to the side of the drive cage at the very top. It's a very nice design that you can still use screws to mount a drive if you can't find the spare rail. But manufacturers usually make them a bright color like orange or lime green, or put their location on sticker so people can find them. That one was hidden by a ninja. I had a couple of Pentium II/III IBM Intellistation workstations years ago. They were built like tanks. Great video. Thanks.

[@clabretro]

Haha you're right! I just checked and pulled it out. The drive cage actually has two built-in slots to hold the unused drive rails!

[@IBM_Museum]

I call these systems "Tweeners" because they are still able to get online (Firefox 52.9 ESR) to the right places (the 'Ardent-Tool' website) to make diskette images for older systems - so an "in between". There are several IBM models in that same case, with some slight variations (like a tiny swing-out PSU that can sometimes be concerning) - and I have a few around here. Thanks for a great video!

[@clabretro]

Yeah! I agree, definitely an in-between type of system. It's been really fun to use. Thanks for watching!

[@txtncnomad6095]

If you're running XP, one of my preferred Web browsers is K-Meleon; the newer versions have current SSL code and can render sites that FF 52 cannot.

[@braytonak]

IBM definitely had a distinctive modern design. Techno-corporate-utilitarian-brutalist, perhaps? I’ve enjoyed your channel as I haven’t had experience with the level of enterprise gear you’re showing off. It’s interesting to see how different classes of hardware are constructed and the operating concepts. It adds perspective to the ‘lower’ forms of business and consumer goods. You sense of humor is fun. (And you’re very cute. Shh.)

[@user-wj9xq7ig2v]

Why do I want this old crap? It helps make my other old crap work! I'm totally with you.

[@clabretro]

Haha exactly!

[@smpstech]

I remember these machines were our projects for computer tech class in high school. They were donated by the pallet by a local pharmaceutical company. They would give them to you with no hard drive and our first project was installing a hard drive and then installing Windows XP. Then you got to take it home at the end of the year. I remember putting 2GB ram in mine and a 9600GT and playing UT2004 and Painkiller once I was done with my class work. Some of them had hyperthreading and some didn't, however it was just a setting in the bios.

[@julianj8609]

I love the look of those business machines, especially from that era. Great video!

[@clabretro]

Agreed! And thank you for watching!

[@therealrnice5533]

Helpful thing to know is Compact Flash cards are IDE native and work better on FAT32 not NTFS. Love the videos keep them coming :)

[@clabretro]

Yeah good call, I should've just started with the SATA SSD in the first place. I'll probably throw another in there if I ever need to dual boot.

[@speciosa146]

I had a lenovo thinkpad laptop from the mid to late 2000s and the bois looked exactly the same as your. I remember it had 8 boot drives available too. Way cool, i tried to squeeze every last bit of power out of it playing minecraft and terraria with my friends. What a trip, thanks man 👍

[@fokthewef]

I spent countless hours playing Tiberian Sun back in the day 😊

[@agfreelance]

Hell ya. Great content for Friday

[@TheMonDon1721]

great video as always

[@clabretro]

Thank you!

[@is0p0d]

"I might put both disks in at the same time... who knows..." hell yeah bro thats the kind of party im lookin for

[@ryanw1906]

I have to maintain a fleet of old P3's with ISA cards for work. This is right up my alley as far as old gear.

[@clabretro]

Wow, impressive. What are they running?

[@ryanw1906]

@@clabretro Most of them run NT4 workstation (one runs XP, and is an absolute dog). The ISA boards are for data acquisition for our Gas Chromatography hardware.

[@KretaBull]

Great 👍 IBM think centre used till 2011

[@markpriceful]

The ultimate Windows XP build?! The SATADOM probably needs power, but performance was terrible on the one I tried. SATA SSD is ideal.

[@clabretro]

The world's okayest build! Yeah that was some bad research on my part -- I'm going to grab the right power cables for it just to try it out though.

[@XDymeStarX]

I love how this guy picks up on all the stuff i messed around with 'back when' . These Thinkcentres and Netvistas were dead slow at the end of their lifetime on XP sp3. Larger sticks of DDR3 memory was expensive, and just like any other thing from IBM, they were very picky on what module you would throw at it. Thanks for the content !

[@txtncnomad6095]

I have several Intel 865 chipset Pentium 4 boards, but that ThinkCentre is definitely nicer. Thankfully, I'd built a few ISOs of Windows XP and 2003 server with driverpacks built in, so I don't have to deal with the hassle of SATA drivers; but for most cases, y'all should always check the BIOS settings to see if the SATA controller can be placed in an IDE or "compatibility" mode; most of the time, that'll be all you need to get smaller drives under 127 GB working. Also, you won't be giving up much performance; chipsets of this era were SATA 1 only, at 150MB/sec; parallel ATA/IDE maxed out at 133MB/sec.

[@clabretro]

Yeah definitely not losing much running IDE speed. Tried out Snappy Driver Installer Origin for the first time on this build, worked really well, though my XP ISO had a good starting point of drivers already.

[@igeekone]

IBM just hit it out of the planet with their design language. This is truly timeless design.

[@Rangerman9404]

I actually use a Gateway 2000 Pentium 4 with Windows XP as a retro gamer. I have some Hasbro Interactive classic arcade games that don't work on modern hardware, but on a bog stock Gateway like that, with its built in graphics, they run perfectly. I had the original software that came with it, so I wiped the hard drive, did a clean install of XP and soon there after had to replace the PSU. The machine was so bogged down with malware from the internet that it took all night for my drive erase program to thoroughly wipe the hard drive, but it was worth it, the PC is as fast as it was when it was brand new.

[@aliabdallah102]

Yeah I once had a 9800 Nvidia card, that was the basis for my second system, my first was a P4 w 1GB of RAM and a WHOPPING 20 GB IDE HDD.... in 2013, I was broker than a joker.

[@Hopgop1]

Aside from the IBM branding and it actually having a floppy drive installed and not a blanking plate, you could've told me that case was 10 years newer and I'd have believed you. Used to deal with a fair bit of Lenovo thinkstation stuff through work and you can tell the design language hasn't changed much, but it never felt old either.

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Previously I remembered in my part time IT job. Few years back, I had to clear out some Lenovo C2D ThinkCentres, running Windows XP ironically, even though there was a Windows Vista sticker in front lol. Great video haha.

[@clabretro]

Haha I believe it. Wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of these still out there in service. As always thanks for watching!

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

​@@clabretrohaha! I tinkered with some System X series servers. My previous company had M4 and M5 as production servers. And everything in those has an FRU number too. Even to Lenovo in the server department. FRU never dies hahahaha.

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Also the cooling solution. Really like a server. Fans vertically mounted and all.

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Also for WinXP. I think Rufus can make an installer USB as well.

[@clabretro]

@LeeZhiWei8219 oh yeah the FRUs are alive and well!

[@Alamir9116]

I have IBM Thinkcentre A51, I bought it to play some old games from early 2000s

[@Rangerman9404]

Where I work, we use a lot of those Lenovo M900 units, especially on our portable workstations which are powered by an inverter that uses 2 batteries that we swap out and charge when the get low. Between that and the modern LCD monitors, the power consumption is quite low, so the batteries can last an entire 8 hour work shift and then some.

[@mitko_dsv1999]

I have a similar style case. It originally came with a Pentium 4 as well, but I have the case only. In it I've put a HP motherboard with i5 2320, 4GB DDR3 RAM, FSP 250W PSU, SATA DVD drive, WD Blue 250GB HDD and it's running Windows 7. Really like this case, even though it doesn't have the greatest airflow.

[@clabretro]

Nice. Yeah it runs pretty hot especially with the P4 still in there.

[@alexdhall]

27:13: CnC Renagade and RA2 have similar style installers as well! Ah PC gaming in the late 90s to the early 2000s was a good time. Battlefield 1942 (and the ex packs) was another great game from the era.

[@clabretro]

Oh yeah I used to play all of those. RA2 is arguably the best one in the CnC series in my opinion, but I have a soft spot for Tiberian Sun.

[@H3adcrash]

Oh very neat! I had a 51p built up for the very same purposes, haha! It's basically the bigger BTX formfactor brother of yours. IBM being IBM, they put a Nidec 92mm server grade fan in the front for CPU cooling. I replaced that with a much quieter one, and had zero thermal issues, lol.

[@clabretro]

Ah, awesome!

[@lpseem3770]

This will be helpful for sure. New Java could usually be forced to accept old TLS and poor cipher suites. The only think I can not do is managing tagged vlan on my switch. It uses Java ui (and only for that) with a weird array concept. I remember running and old version of Safari browser under Wine on modern Linux and it almost worked, but I could not save changes.

[@ogbean86]

You had me at Tiberian Sun.. lmao

[@purplepioneer5644]

Tiberian Sun, hell yeah. There are fan made patches that let you run it on Windows 10 (I still play it myself) but I definitely appreciate wanting the original experience.

[@clabretro]

Oh sweet, I'll have to try that out.

[@paytonbostwick2899]

i used to work for lenovo a few months ago and its amazing how much hasnt changed in the engineering. Of course a lot has changed, and I usually worked on thinkpads, but the FRUs seem to have been adopted by lenovo as well. a lot of the odd design language has made it over, unfortunately the nice metal cases have not. just be glad this is an older one, newer ones can cause you hell with the motherboard branding. unless you are an authorized lenovo technician you cannot write the serial tag to the board, and a board will angrily beep at you until you do it. (at least on business machines). EDIT - nevermind, guess the bios stuff didnt change. Have fun with that board.

[@EastAngliaUK]

oh good for sata as never saw any cables

[@dylang3998]

They went full dark side with the styling, knowing full well they're the evil empire 😈😈

[@robd1365]

I miss the XP days of computing, it felt like windows was yours and it was user friendly, it’s not just nostalgia talking. I set up my old 775 pentium 4 system and ran XP Pro, did it automatically just like I last installed it yesterday. It just works and nicely, installed max Payne and MOHAA and had some real nostalgia. I threw in a 3ghz core2 duo which the board runs at slower bus speed, still runs flawlessly.

[@clabretro]

Agreed!

[@mowtow90]

Yep we still use those FRU (field replaceable unit) and CRU (Client replaceable unit). Even Lenovo kept the system and are using it They also copied the color scheme for parts but nowadays its just for enterprise stuff.

[@maniatore2006]

Thank you for that Video. I believe that stand Lenovo somewhere in the Bios :D I have found an IBM Netvista PC on the Street "Left for dead" The Power Supply was not working, I replaces it, and now it works again. The Original IBM Bios was from 2000 and it was not capable to run Windows XP Natively. After i installed an Newer Bios from 2005 Windows XP runns well. but now i have also the LINOVO brand in the Bios. I installed Windows XP from the Original CD. And even i Activate it on the HDD was Ubuntu Linux Installed. The Specs. Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB RAM, 40GB HDD, Elsa Gloria DCC with 64MB. i have the same CPU Tag on my CPU, and i leave it there :D

[@clabretro]

I always liked the look of the NetVistas too. Nice job saving it!

[@francistheodorecatte]

a good tool you should look into adding to your arsenal is a pair of ductwork pliers

[@clabretro]

those would've made quick work of this - the vice grips didn't have enough surface area to move enough of the metal in one go. i'll add those to the tool collection next time I have to do something like this

[@stephendouglas684]

Got a similar, i guess later model with lenovo and ibm branding. I think pentium d. I love it for many DOS games Got it for 25 cents at a flea market all bad drives with dirt daubers. Cleaned up nice.

[@clabretro]

Nice! I like that price haha.

[@donoteatmikezila]

I've encountered those sata DOMs at my work for a while. In most cases they have a power cable that connects to molex or floppy power. Some industrial motherboards have special DOM ports where external power isn't required. If your DOM doesn't have a power plug on it (hard to tell from the angles we see it from in the video) it's likely that it has to be used in a special DOM port.

[@clabretro]

I bet you're right!

[@ryaxnb2]

I have two windows 98/me pentium 4 machines so I get the p4 vibes heavily, both are machines designed for windows xp

[@CronoOfMana]

O this take me back to my MCSE day building my own XP Pro Iso and Server it was really cool we can build/deploy with an 1 turn key setup just pop in the CD and go the one trick i did was use sys deploy and prep using PXE Boot to pull down form the "Mother" server all of the files and it be up in about an hour or less same with server boxes i think i have my old scrips some where thanks for brining back all of the old good memories o and i send TS Son over the network as an prep install so i can play it after the system was up one of my fellow tech did EVE Online fun times.

[@clabretro]

nice! yeah I've been thinking about setting up a more robust PXE boot setup

[@-x21-]

This looks a lot like my older IBM NetVista. Although I think the floppy drive was smoother looking.

[@amp888]

I don't know if you figured out the issue with the SATA DOM, but I suspect it's just not being powered. All I could see from the label is that it's a KingSpec module, and I've never used those. For Supermicro/InnoDisk DOMs, either they get power from the SATA port itself, or you can supply power with a cable (the off-white connector at the top left of the module at 16:23 might be for power on your particular device). Note that for DOMs which run off the SATA port's power, they usually only work with specific SATA ports which have an additional pin in the port (sometimes called "SATA pin 8" or "8 pin power"). Typically these specific ports are highlighted in some way; Supermicro use orange "SuperDOM" SATA ports (if you look at the board layout for the X11SSW-F it has two orange SuperDOM SATA ports and four normal white ones). I'd try checking the website/manual for your KingSpec SATA DOM to see if it mentions power anywhere.

[@clabretro]

I think you're completely correct, that was some bad research on my part (I assumed they could just always get power from the SATA port). In hindsight I'm happy with the SATA SSD setup, but I'm going to get the right power cables just to try it out the SATA DOM anyway though!

[@fokthewef]

I have the Lenono Thinkcentre tiny in the office, half the size of the 2015 model you have. How tech shrinks with time. You would think after IBM sold its desktop business to Lenovo that quality would have taken a hit. This little thing i have has been running for 3 years, 24/7.

[@CounterStriker013009]

Turn IBM ThinkCentre as your personal FreeNAS :) , or retro old school game with GOG

[@waize]

it came with the exhaust fan in the back as standard.

[@clabretro]

That's what I was guessing, someone must've taken it once upon a time.

[@MacLimitRange]

Fun fact, Lenovo still use the same aesthetic for the power button on most machines.

[@user-cr4sc1ht9t]

IIRC, 8GB or less cards were recommended for HDD replacements as a proxy indication of a non-cached SLC based card. Write caches in CF cards tended to soft-lock PCs for seconds, and that was motivation to avoid buffered MLC/TLC/QLC cards. Today, most cards would be buffered MLC configuration and so that recommendation won't apply anymore. Also 100x and 133x is just saying it's ATA100 or 133. I don't exactly understand why the cards would lock up the entire PC, but I suspect it would have been due to having only one NAND bank and transferring cache from SLC buffer to MLC, or something along that.

[@AmstradExin]

I've rebuilt a Sony Vaio PC. It originally had a 2.53Ghz P4, I added a 3.06Ghz....the only supported one with Hyperthreading. 2GB RAM And a GT 6800.

[@clabretro]

Nice!

[@markosejic7383]

i have one Thinkcenter a 55 saved it from the dumpster and using lubuntu on it core 2 duo 1.8 3 gb of ddr2

[@osrr6422]

I have NEVER had luck with installing XP from USB. And a lot of trouble with SATA drivers for some reason. I broke down and get an OEM SP3 disk w/key off ebay, you can still activate it over the phone surprisingly.

[@clabretro]

yeah I just gave up and went with the disc

[@user-nm2uy7ec2i]

im from the philippines sir thankyou for this nice clip coz this is the first time i saw a ibm motherboard! 😄😄😄

[@Aruneh]

Aaah, the Pentium 4 Prescott. Or Preshott. I still have my old 3.2GHz. Rarely use it because slow and hot. :)

[@dmitrychernivetsky5876]

It doesnt go back to early days of computing. Field replaceable unit goes all the way back to the WW1, where they first attempted to standardize equipment. FRU means that it can be replaced in the harsh war conditions. No 20/30 level techs are required.

[@DerekPeldo]

Great video! What was your name in counter strike? Also, what is your capture setup?

[@clabretro]

thanks! ah back then it was probably just "clab" or something. it's just a vga to hdmi adapter and an hdmi to USB capture card, both just cheap ones on Amazon. the first bit of video with lower quality was an even crappier vga adapter. I run it all through OBS.

[@cleverlyblonde]

Rufus is also a good alternative to WinSetupFromUSB

[@yorkan213swd6]

Like you speak now of IBM 😊

[@talos86]

If i remember correctly i didnt had any problem installing XP SP2 from Sata1 CD drive(Sony) to Sata1 HDD(Samsung).

[@br3nd4n]

I have an early Lenovo waiting for a retro-restauration. I have an odd question, of course I notice the details. Where do you get your t-shirts? I love the style.

[@clabretro]

Haha thank you! Well... that first blue shirt, I think it was some sort of monthly thing where they'd send you a shirt every month that went out of business during covid. "bombfell" or something like that? and the green one (not that you could tell) was from Angry James brewing up in the mountains of Colorado... also highly recommended lol.

[@Redd00]

I love IBM machines they work so well!

[@Space_Reptile]

for my windows 98 and XP needs i have 2 thinkpads running, a T60 for XP and a T42 for 98 (it could even run warp, has official support for it)

[@clabretro]

nice! I had a G40 for awhile as an XP machine, need to hunt down a ThinkPad again someday.

[@Space_Reptile]

@@clabretro i can reccomend something like a T60 or a T400, both are fairly inexpensive (dont pay collectors prices, they are old core 2 duo laptops) if you want something older stay away from the T20 and T30 series as they have a critical flaw that will lead to the death of every one of those mashines w/ time if you dont mind something modern, a T440 or T480 can be cheap too

[@PatientXero607]

FRU was used by most System Integrators. Dell and HP were synonymous with the terminology as well. I'm not a fan of the Integral build of XP as the creator baked too many drivers into the install. This has caused havoc with a few of my XP era systems. I just stick to a VLK ISO and manually update to SP4.

[@clabretro]

it definitely had a lot of stuff on it, I'll try that other ISO sometime

[@mlmmt]

Meanwhile I have a much newer ThinkStation operating as a NAS/unRaid server. It has much of the same design, including internally being tool-less (I love the tool-less drive trays).

[@clabretro]

they're great machines!

[@old_liquid]

Every customized ISO like XP integral have a tag that points that can or cannot this ISO be installed from USB or from third party installers like WinNTsetup or from inside already installed OS. As a rule these isos only designed to run from CDs or CD emulators. Cuz it should have USB boot drivers which XP does not contain by default, and these WinSetupUSB programs interfere with component paths whose was set in scripts by XP mod authors. FYI there are ready-to-deploy original Windows XP by Microsoft that can boot from USB and you can choose components to install. Its called WIndows XP Embedded POSready 2009. It is dont need activation just a CD key (and they exist in the wild). You can write it to usb flash and add supplemenal components straight from modern OS via installer that on DVD with that Windows.

[@clabretro]

oh cool I'll check out that other one from Microsoft!

[@Genio_soy]

i jost got 2 very similar IBM's like 2 days ago

[@Genio_soy]

*just

[@Hadisabetghadam]

You Can Put Sata Driver On Your windows xp Iso By nlite

[@sparkleglitch13]

I love your videos, but the stretched/distorted screen aspect ratios bugs the heck out of me haha is there a way to capture them in 4:3?

[@clabretro]

oh I know, it's the crappy converter. I'll be figuring out better setups going forward

[@DarraghRogan]

Great stuff! Just to check, with 4gb of RAM, wasn't there something about needing to use Win XP 64 bit to access? Also, I'd be super wary of using an ISO from the net on home LAN...

[@clabretro]

You're 100% right, 32bit only recognizes up to 3GB. I forgot to call that out in the video (in fact I had totally forgotten about that when I put all four sticks in ha). Yeah these ISOs can be sketchy... I always start out without network. The one I ultimately used I've ran for a few years elsewhere so I trust it now.

[@kuronekogaming8378]

We use a new Lenovo Server and the Support told us, we really need to buy their SSDs and can recon them by looking for a FRU Number. Drives without a FRU Number don't work...

[@clabretro]

Ha that's interesting.

[@agrecascinogameplaym]

hey did u make sure to get the 5v cable into the sata dom also just nlite with uniata should work for sata support

[@clabretro]

I think you're right, good call!

[@sbrazenor2]

I have those exact two computers; the Thinkcentre P4 tower and the thin client. The configuration of the thin client that I have is pretty weak though. It's running Ubuntu currently (and chugging a bit as a result), so I'll likely load something lighter on it shortly.

[@clabretro]

I'm running Ubuntu and win10 on that tiny one, I've been happy with it but to be honest I don't push it very hard. I usually use it for the serial port haha.

[@sbrazenor2]

@@clabretro They made a bunch of different configurations. The one I have has a pretty low-spec AMD chipset. It was before they got into the Ryzen series and started making better processors. I think there are also Intel i-Series units of the same form factor. Mostly the GPU is where it falls on its face. I considered a lighter desktop environment, like XFCE or something. It does alright for media playback, it's just a little laggy in the UI. (I've put a decent SSD into it, so it's not likely storage.)

[@clabretro]

Oh very good point, yeah there are tons of different configs. And I definitely haven't put mine through any GPU pressure!@@sbrazenor2

[@cleverlyblonde]

Have you looked at setting up the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and WDS on a Windows server (can be virtual) with a set of OS configs ready? Then you can PXE boot any PC and install XP, Vista, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 easily :)

[@clabretro]

I haven't looked into the Windows side yet, but this experience made me think about getting a more robust net booting setup going (for Linux too). I use a JumpStart server for Solaris installs all the time, I'm going to get a more generic setup going to easily net boot Linux ISOs and all the various Windows versions.

[@vincentbeaulieu1]

The additionnal toolless tab for the 5" 1/4 bay is still hanging up there on the side! I always missed it, it's so hidden

[@clabretro]

yeah I found that later! haha

[@TheAdham302]

My campus still usung this pc and windows xp

[@clabretro]

Ha, amazing!

[@maxcurrent485]

I had one of those IBMs and it would just suddenly lose power, sometimes come on and sometimes not respond to the power button, etc. I assumed it was that infamous "capacitor plague" because the board was basically toast and would not power on eventually, with no other indication of what exactly was wrong. Power supply etc. all were fine and scavenged for use in other hardware. That singular experience is why I would not touch one of those IBM machines regardless of what processor or OS I wanted to run. Thinkpads however, are generally great enterprise class products. I tend to think IBM probably would not have had to sell Thinkpad to Lenovo if these towers weren't defective junk that made people switch to other products.

[@clabretro]

I haven't had flakiness with this machine yet, but it's kind of weird. It definitely has some sort of "smarts" around the power switch -- if you force power it off (aka pull the plug) you have wait a few seconds before the power switch will respond to turning it back on.

[@MrShawn305]

*places thermal paste* ahhh yes, "bigga da gob, betta da job" philosphy

[@clabretro]

the only way

[@waldfruchttee]

i have a dell server with a pentium 4(dell poweredge 750)

[@caspersmith7112]

satadom requires a power soure if you didnt know.. usually usused in rack mount servers Little Tiny Plug

[@clabretro]

Yeah oversight on my part. Going to hunt down a power cable just to try it for fun.

[@DarkT3ch]

If you don't mind me asking, which track from Karl are you using when you're doing work on stuff (like when you're fixing the IBM here)? I went digging earlier and I couldn't find it, granted of the 40 or so videos I poured through, there were some couple-hour long videos that I didn't pour through

[@clabretro]

I think it's the third song here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rmaocqR4fZZ0fNksi=416fApihr0E1vstI&t=475

[@DarkT3ch]

@@clabretro you're a legend! Thanks!

[@DanielTheRat]

The installion to the sata hhd didint work because if i remembrr correctly winXp supported only 128 or 256Gb drives not 1024gb/terabyte sized hhds/ssds

[@clabretro]

I think I also need a power cable for that SATA DOM.

[@chopinwong01]

Lenovo still have FRUs and onsite services for some product.

[@clabretro]

I've heard that!

[@user-cf7to8zv3x]

hi i have a thinkcenter a50 any idea how to arrage to inside a drive cage metal how do i get out it? this innhibits to perfect fit in my voodoo 5 6000 vga :P i want build a perfect retro gamer pc with my thincenter a50 and voodoo 5 6000 combo but i don,t want a new bigest pc house my thincenter a50 to put in every in to fit my voodoo 5 6000 :P

[@leo_craft1]

25:20 cf cards cannot read and write at the same time, so i guess it is the problem

[@EastAngliaUK]

nice I don't think xp use 4gb ram but will do 2gb unless 64 bits

[@clabretro]

totally correct, it recognizes 3gb. I had forgotten about that until after the video.

[@damirkvajo]

I thought 32bit Win XP would recognize up to 3GB of RAM. Did you check system properties if it really sees all 4?

[@clabretro]

Yeah I should've showed that in the video, I actually forgot about the 3GB limitation until I put all four sticks in haha.