ThinkPad T30: Solid Retro Laptop With an Unfortunate Flaw

[@theshadowman1398]

A socketed CPU in a laptop. I want those times back

[@T3hderk87]

I know!! I remember I had an old MSI laptop, and I discovered I could upgrade the cpu in it, so much fun.... I believe it was a socket 939 board, and parts were cheap on Newegg back in the day.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

They still exist, but mainly in business and enterprise grade laptops and mobile workstations.

[@mccobsta]

They've been on the up in more high end laptops except apple as they solder straight to the mother board

[@lbsiuk]

@@mccobsta nope. Last laptop socket I know of was socket G3. That was for Haswell, 2013/14.

[@ligametis]

@@lbsiuk there are socketed new laptops but they are performance ones for professional work or gaming. You just put desktop cpu in them.

[@John-jc3ty]

and after all those upgrades, right to the shelf

[@dustinschings7042]

this hits hard lol. I have so many upgraded old systems, just in storage waiting to be used..

[@ligametis]

@@dustinschings7042 there aren't really many uses for them when a cheap new computer can do as much as 10s of those old ones.

[@ligametis]

@@LoganT547 I don't deny that you can use them, and they are fast enough for some things, but why should you? If you can tinker and restore such old tech you most likely have a newer, faster and better computer that can do all the things old one does and more. You can manage some things, write a word document, monitor with an old laptop, but everything is so much more enjoyable with new one due to speed and better display. It is mostly a hobby and then you leave it on a shelf till some other problem arises, capacitor dies or battery expands.

[@ligametis]

@@LoganT547 pentium 4 won't even be as fast as intel atom :)

[@ligametis]

@@LoganT547 yeah it is shit, but still faster than these ancient devices with pentium 4 or older.

[@digital4282]

Impressive fix on the RAM! I am glad you went the distance to fix it, a lot of other youtubers would have just left the slot messed up and moved on with the video.

[@jackkraken3888]

Right? that was great idea.

[@GeorgeVCohea-dw7ou]

It's kind of interesting, I never viewed Colin as a "KZbinr" in the common accepted sense. His style comes across as a regular guy and dedicated hobbyist, who wants to document and show off his passion and collection for everyone to learn from and perhaps, do it too. It most definitely sets him apart from others attempting to use KZbin as a get rich quick scheme, not that there is anything wrong with that. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKepi2d5Z9ihb5Y

[@proCaylak]

that way of reflowing solder was nothing short of excellent. it satisfied me the most. I went like Pops from regular show, saying "jolly good show" non-stop.

[@purplegill10]

That was my favorite part of the video. I beyond love repairing stuff like this.

[@Fred_Raimer]

You are rapidly becoming my favorite "hands on" KZbinr, Colin! Research, history, common sense, skill, and most of all, courage to take chances. Excellent production values and very entertaining as well. Thank you for your efforts!!!!

[@SixSilverStones]

Same here

[@henkholdingastate]

Why do modern laptop keyboards feel like you're pressing a sponge...... worthless compared to the old laptops

[@dogeymon83]

I always love your true personality coming through in your shouts of joy over something working....in contrast with your professional narrator voice. Lol!

[@dreammfyre]

I will never get rid of my T43. Feels like it could survive a nuclear fallout.

[@captainretro373]

And I’ll never get rid of my T26 cuz it just blows people away

[@firstname1lastname127]

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T16 back home, they're not much bigger than 2 meters.

[@applepoop10]

Still can’t compete against the Panasonic Toughbook laptop.

[@justagamer182]

My dad has a old dell inspiron 1501 running windows xp and it still works (he used it for djing at small parties believe it or not) still got it and still works fine

[@Jayce762]

@Google user so can the T51B

[@rynomuncher]

I loved how the screen bezels were so much thinner in that era compared to 2010ish era laptops. We've only just recently got back to such thin bezels!

[@EVRLYNMedia]

for real, i upgraded from a thick boi dell from 2016 to a 16 inch laptop and its actually smaller than that 15 incher while having a bigger screen lol

[@RowanBird779]

I've never used the webcam on my laptop

[@wjadams2]

Love the T series. Still one of the best laptop keyboards to this day. I was an IBM/ Lenovo certified tech around the T40 days and they were built so well. I still have a T420 that is such an excellent machine.

[@r4microds]

Still got my T40 alive and well. Needs a cmos battery change which I've neglected for far too long. Unsure if it's possible it may leak so perhaps now is a better time than any. Have it configured with the single core 1.5GHz celeron, 768mb ram, and a 32mb radeon 7500. Still rocks Flight Simulator 9 flawlessly. ;)

[@AliceC993]

I used an X20 for a few years as a child. Lovely, lovely machine.

[@jackkraken3888]

I was just helping a friend with a T450s, it was pretty neat but sadly the ease of access of the parts seems to have gone, you have to remove the entire bottom part to reach the hard drive, RAM etc... Still a very solid build. Although strangely missing HDMI.

[@BilisNegra]

@@jackkraken3888 No HDMI means DP instead, I guess?

[@jackkraken3888]

@@BilisNegra Yes it actually had a VGA and mini DP port.

[@didoriginal]

I have two of those - one with a 2.0 GHz processor and one with a 2.2 GHz. I pretty much went through the same process with both of them - no 1802 error, reflowing the RAM slots and SSD upgrades. However, keep in mind that the resoldering job that you did on yours won’t last. I initially did the same, but it took a month or so for the joints to go bad. It seems that the solder itself is not the best quality which would explain why it failed in the first place. What I did as a permanent fix was to use a lot of flux and replace the solder with a leaded one. Just make a big blob on your soldering iron and go over all pins. Don’t worry about the bridging - I managed to bridge several of the pins, but you can always go back to them with a clean tip and fix them. This permanently fixed my two T30, they are absolutely gorgeous machines. Cheers!

[@WubwubDJ]

Man that "no way" was so awesome. I love tech moments like this

[@adiposerex5150]

I had been a speed typist and really appreciated IBM’s full TP keyboard.

[@OneEightZero180]

"...swapping its drive for something a little more solid..." Pun? Denied! :D

[@pqrstzxerty1296]

and XP will kill the SSD mega quickly, as XP loves to Scandisk /q upon boot. scandisk quickcheck

[@im_tem]

@@pqrstzxerty1296 isnt it possible to disable the check?

[@MF175mp]

@@pqrstzxerty1296 have you had an ssd fail? They should be pretty good by now?

[@fuelhemi426]

Recently bought a T43, is a beautiful piece of engineering. Maybe I’ll do the SATA mod and install a SSD

[@wasjosh]

t42 is one of my favorites. I've only upgraded systems as needed back in the day. Love videos like this that spark new life into such devices.

[@fuelhemi426]

@@wasjosh Me too! I own and use an X60s/X61s Frankenpad, X220, T43 and a XPSM1530, still use some of them daily.

[@lionheart0750]

i use a x230t as a daily but have a R51 and a x60t ... love my thinkpads...will never buy anything else

[@TheTamaranch]

Had one of these when I was a kid, picked it up at a rummage sale for $5. Used to watch dvds on it. Got to a point where the battery wouldn't even hold a charge but for 7mins. Still my favorite thinkpad to this day.

[@alerey4363]

I have a Lenovo U310 from 2013 and the blacklist bios is still present; when I installed MacOS I tried to put an iMac wifi card to no avail because of that bios lock; then I found some guy had made a replacement bios without the blacklist, flashed the Lenovo with the hacked bios and voila, it takes ANY wifi card, as it should be; thumbs up

[@IvanPauletti]

Maannn, it's realy weird to watch a Colin video went well. Good job!

[@klwthe3rd]

Of all the series that is done on this channel, the retro Thinkpads are my favorite. They bring back so many memories of a time when laptops were mostly for business men and women, with their built quality top notch. I love the T30, T41, T42 & T43. Those were the days!

[@klwthe3rd]

@@johanferozco Sorry If I missed that one. 😅

[@ДенисПлахотя-о2ч]

All 17 minutes are very interesting to watch and listen through, thank you

[@JDCarnin]

I've got a R500 two years ago, upgraded it to its absolute Max. It features a C2D T9900, 8Gb RAM, a SSD (120Gb (I'm more a cloud guy, so it's plenty for me)) the better Display, a Webcam, and the Fingerprint reader. Drivers are available from Win 2000 up to Win 10. It's actually my daily driver and at the moment my only PC. Got it in Dual Boot with Windows 10 and XP. In Windows 10 it's not much slower than the Laptop from my little Sister (it's a cheap one for around 300 Bucks but mine was significantly cheaper) and in Windows XP it's blazingly fast. I'm from Germany, used Thinkpads tend to be a bit more expensive here. I paid 83 Bucks for the Machine itself, 40 Bucks for the CPU, 10 for the RAM and the rest was already built in or already in my drawer. Got it with a activated Copy of Win 10 Pro on it, I was very glad about this, so I could disable the annoying lock screen in the group policy's. I also paid tribute to it's roots and got the XP Standard Background (in German "Grüne Idylle" ) and I made a modified Welcome Screen from XP so that it says Windows 10 instead. For it's age of now 12 years it's in flawless condition and was extremely clean inside, as if it was never used. Later I found out the Macine was from the Technical University of Braunschweig and was used in the Clean Room, so that explained the extreme cleanliness of it...

[@rapideye85]

C2Ds are still excellent today

[@dustinsmous5413]

I have a T30 that I bought slightly used in 2004 that I still love! I bought it with tons of accessories including 2 full docking stations, as I worked in IT... It's over 20 years old now, an after more than a few replacement batteries, it's still going strong!

[@ProtoMario]

I recently got one of these with Windows 10, it's fantastic paid 100 bucks.

[@benkeysor7576]

Windows XP was an extremely good OS and I used it for a very long time even after it was no longer supported because I refused to use Vista. I'm currently using a 10 machine and I'd much rather have XP or 7 instead because they were much more user friendly. Plus I don't see anything wrong with using XP online as long as you are just doing the basics and have a good Antivirus program installed.

[@Fuzy2K]

But don't you know that if you connect Windows XP to the internet, you'll immediately get every virus and malware known to humanity *and* your house will flood?!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

There's nothing wrong with connecting an unsupported operating system as old as XP to the internet. Just use common sense and don't do online banking on it or have any critical or sensitive files stored on the computer.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@basedSkeleton I didn't see it as a joke and I know there's a lot of people out there who interpret information differently to others. A lot of people are literally scared of going online on anything other than, say Windows 10. I was just trying to put the more vulnerable people's minds at rest.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@basedSkeleton Uh, what?

[@anthonynorton666]

Thank you. The memory slot repair was something I've never seen done, and you make it look like a no brainer.

[@SkellaBella1396]

Idk if it was this exact model, but my first laptop was a refurbished Thinkpad from my uncle’s work. that thing got me started with digital art back in the day! So nostalgic.

[@RustyX2010]

It’s so weird that the prices for this laptop all of a sudden skyrocketed from $50 to upwards of $300 on eBay after videos like this!

[@linkinworm1]

Not sure what ThinkPad my friend had but it sure was a cool laptop in the 90s. Used to go every weekend and end up downloading 1000s of random songs to take home on my creative MP3 player

[@simplybloxxed]

I’ve always found thinkpads to be the coolest boring computers ever. So many of them are just so interesting.

[@typicalpctech6674]

I had a laptop that had a 2.6Ghz Pentium 4. I opened it up to change the thermal paste, and it was a desktop CPU. I put in a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 Extreme edition in it. Much later in time, so the CPU was reasonably priced. Surprisingly, it booted right up and ran at 3.2Ghz. I still have that Laptop floating around here somewhere. I forget what brand it is, but it had a nice big 16" screen, and the screen shell is Blue. Very good video, well made, and nice touches on how to get around all the problems you found and ran into!

[@rnicoles9355]

Why are these people disliking his videos. His videos are the best, i don't understand why do you need to dislike

[@longcat266]

I have a ThinkPad G40 and it's great. I love it as it allows me to bring desktop pentium 4 power with me in a neat package with a desktop sized screen and desktop-like I/O. When I'm at home, it takes up so little desk space and requires much less wires compared to an equivalent desktop and so makes for a clean setup. The lack of a powerful graphics chip isn't the greatest but I can't fault it, it never needed a Dgpu for what it was meant to do. Overall a great desktop replacement laptop.

[@wrxrob]

I deployed hundreds of these to users when they were new. To this day, I think it's still one of the most solidly built laptops I've ever encountered.

[@eccod]

5:30 this same exact thing happened to my Dell E6320. After upgrading my RAM, I was getting horrible graphical corruption on the screen. I noticed that it went away if I flexed the bottom half of the machine just right, or pushed on the memory socket. I affixed a small piece of a foam anti-slip furniture pad to the inside of the bottom bezel to put pressure on the module a few months ago, and it’s been going strong ever since. Fingers crossed! With more RAM and a SSD upgrade, it runs Windows 10 just fine even for an old machine.

[@elevate32767]

Nice work reflowing the RAM slots!

[@wombat1238marsupial]

great video, I have a collection of X-series Thinkpads X30's, 40's & 60's and they are fantastic machines for retro usage as well as modern day usage in the shape of the X60/61. All have the upgrades such as ssd, ram and wifi cards. That 1802 bios hack is a lifesaver on the few occasions I have used it.

[@Queso305]

T42 is the highest compatible spec thinkpad for win98. This video has motivated me to get mine working!

[@Siobhanatron]

I've just spent about 4 hours trying to connect my T30 to the internet, but I found this video and decided to call it a night, lol. So far the best I've done is connect it to my modern laptop with wireless internet connection via Ethernet cable, and get the thinkpad to the point of "connected" but still only showing "cannot connect to server/webpage unavailable" in various browsers. This was a nice video to watch and learn some things! I got it at a Habitat for maybe $5 last year and didn't know much about it.

[@istevaras]

I have been servicing IBM ThinkPads for a living back in the day. Loved the ruggedness, the keyboard, the track-point, the anti-glare lcd, the fru, the cru, the color, the feel... Never shifted away from buying anything else than a ThinkPad, for myself since then!

[@floydiandroid]

Man, my college gave these and the t40 series out to students for years. Absolute tanks for the most part.

[@Choralone422]

I was a service manager of an independent laptop repair depo back in the 2000's and I remember seeing a lot of T30's come in with the front RAM slot failing. We knew re-flowing the solder would fix most of those boards but since we were performing warranty work for IBM we just changed out the whole board. I was always surprised that IBM didn't offer any sort of fix like a shim for those machines. Most of the ThinkPads we saw in for repair were corporate leased machines so we couldn't do any of our own in-house fixes like you did without potentially having our customer incur the wrath of the leasing company since they wanted the machines to be as OEM spec as possible when the lease was up. Also the Wi-Fi card issue you ran into also happened on a number of business class HP laptops in the XP days. Models such as the NC2400, NC6000, NC8000 would complain at POST and usually hang if you had a non-HP part numbered mini-PCI WI-FI card installed.

[@amandawashington4239]

Hey Colin, it's Michelle. It's going good!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Nobody asked, but OK.

[@PaulFisher]

@@FlyboyHelosim it’s literally the first second of the video!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@PaulFisher It's a rhetorical question used as a greeting. Nobody actually cares and it's not an open invitation for individuals to actually respond. 🙄

[@Tudorgeable]

@@FlyboyHelosim flyby joke over your head.

[@sniperspotter4629]

@@FlyboyHelosim On behalf of all Homo Sapiens, we don't claim you.

[@wartax5]

The T30 was a great machine, pardon the cracked RAM solder joints. IBM used to repair it at no charge for many years after but not everyone can do the job. As such now, if you have the memory issue it might be more worthwhile to go to the T4X series for overall better reliability long term. Good job on the RAM slot fix though, hopefully that will help it last longer as otherwise I've never heard of anyone ever permanently fixing the issue. I also personally preferred going to the T43 but if that memory issue wasn't in place I would never have gotten rid of my T30. I also swapped at the time when I sold my T30 for an R51. Truth be told the R51 is less desirable in a bunch of different areas (lid clasps, LCD quality, ThinkLight, form factor) but it is newer and more capable and as such it was an easy decision to migrate over to that as my main XP ThinkPad machine.

[@marshall3412]

Im like 3 years late to this video, but since im lazy and want to keep most of my old laptops and devices stock, i just bought a wifi extender and turned security off on that and connected to it. works great!

[@yoshiguy35]

When he said Among, that really proved that I've lost my mind.

[@djdjukic]

What a relief, I thought I was the only one whose grip on reality had been shaken in that moment

[@doctahjonez]

Amogus

[@mikselarchive]

@@basedSkeleton A m o g u s

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

Yeah, HP also with the TC1100. Had a rigged wireless card it could only be replaced with a hp genuine part. Honestly if you need a great cheap retro tablet i recommend the hptc1100 and get a peta to m2 adapter solid retro xp machine

[@jafizzle95]

The bezels on that laptop are astonishingly thin for it's time. Windows XP looks quite striking on it.

[@kaitlyn__L]

In many ways, bezels got larger again into the mid-00s, as people started looking more at stats like contrast ratio, and scrutinising how even the backlight is applied. You can get much thinner bezels for free if you’re happy to have more uneven backlight diffusion, for example. Larger bezels would easily hide the extra bright bloom at the bottom of the screen.

[@WooferCooker]

Bezels also got bigger as laptops began with budget lines

[@yanks1fan09]

This was my laptop back in the early 2000's when I worked as an auditor. Great laptop.

[@ghostmouthzach56]

Colin, another excellent video as always. So satisfying to see an old laptop brought back to life and given another chance to shine!

[@matiasgl]

I love T and X series. I have a T30 as well and when you showed the issues encountered I was like "yeap, been there". I am not too skilled with soldering, so I just added some rubber on the RAM stick to have them "properly" adjusted. Great video!

[@dave4shmups]

Great video as always! That external 3.5 inch floppy drive reminds me of the ones that were made for iMacs in the late 1990s.

[@miscellus_com]

I managed to save a T30 from the e-waste pile. I have also been very pleased with its abilities as a retro machine. I have Windows 98SE on it which was officially supported by IBM. Great video as always, Colin. (^:

[@M0rn1n6St4r]

I bought my ThinkPad T30 (P4-M 2.2 GHz), in 2003. Later that year, or in 2004, IBM notified me about a defect in the RAM-gates on the T30. If I recall correctly, the standard warranty had expired. Despite the expired warranty, IBM offered to repair the defect at _no cost to me._ But, the offer was only available for 45 days. I accepted the offer. I checked my system info's RAM and, sure enough, only 512 MB (of 1024 MB) was reported. IBM overnighted a box to me, to ship my T30 to them. It included instructions; to remove components (any PCMCIA cards, battery pack, HDD, RAM modules, and UltraDrive units) before packing the T30 in the box. The box included an overnight shipping label. In less than 1 week from accepting the offer, I had my T30 back. Eventually, I replaced the two 512 MB RAM modules with two 1 GB RAM modules. When I gave away my T30, in 2014, it was still reporting 2048 MB of RAM. Compare that to _Apple:_ *1. My 2008 Mac mini ($600 base-model): power button fails 355 days after first use (10 days from expiration of warranty).* They tried to blame the failure on _cigarette smoke._ "User-inflicted damage" is _not covered_ by their 1-year warranty. I made a scene in the Apple Store. The "Genius" agreed to accept it "conditionally" under warranty (i.e. if they can't explain the issue any other way, they will not cover it). A wire from the power button to the power supply input had come loose. When I was told that, I replied, _"Cigarette smoke can unscrew a wire???"_ smh *2. My 2015 MacBook Air ($1,700 Core i7; 8 GB RAM; plus accessories): display fails 364 days after first use (1 day from expiration of warranty).* I got the "vertical-lines" issue that occurs on _many models of MacBooks._ This time, they tried to blame the failure on _shock damage._ "You must have dropped it. Or banged it while you were transporting it from place to place. This only happens when there's _physical damage."_ Once again... Apple jumps straight to the _user-inflicted damage_ warranty escape-clause? smh I told the "Genius" the following: *"Here's the problem with that. I bought this MacBook Air to take on a 1-month trip to Paris. By the time I was ready to go, the November terror attacks happened. So, I never went. And this is not my primary computer. I only use it on weeknights and on weekends. It has _no cosmetic damage._ It looks _brand new_ because I have only used it for 500 hours... of the 8,748 hours I've had it. Until today, _it has never left my house._ I rarely remove it from my bedroom. I live alone. And _I never dropped it._ Thank you. This is the 2nd time Apple has tried to deny warranty service. Fool me twice, shame on me."* And I walked out of the Apple Store. btw- The problem could be corrected (temporarily) by resetting the NVRAM. The NVRAM only contains a _data page_ for settings like _backlight-level._ How does a _data reset_ do anything to fix _physical damage?_ After 4 months, however, resetting the NVRAM no longer remedied the issue. Eventually, the 20% of screen-width that was "vertical-lines" became 100%. Then horizontal-lines were added to that. It still works with an external display. *WacBook Ail. Light. Paperweight. Wac. It just breaks. CrApple. Stink different.*

[@pixelpoppyproductions]

I still use my T30 as a workhorse for running older software (that is required for some older hardware that doesn't work on new machines). I have been working on upgrades and maintenance - it's a 64gb CF, but while it detects it just fine, it won't boot from it for some reason. It will boot off the USB port, but that is way too slow to work. I was willing to risk the potential damage of the CF drive, since I cloned my original 60gb drive, but it's frustrating that it won't boot. Since CF is basically an IDE drive, it can potentially perform better than a modern SATA drive, because you don't need the SATA/IDE bridge. What I didn't know was that you could put 2gb of ram in it. that would be great, the 256mb is barely adequate. I will say I have another one, which was the top model, with the bigger screen and the 2.4ghz CPU. But the CPU got so hot, it just throttled anyway, so there wasn't much performance benefit. The higher resolution doesn't work that great with the 14.1" screen either, everything is just too small to be useful. Now that I think of it, the 2.4ghz one died a while back - but I still have it for parts. I am pretty sure after watching this video that it just needs a repaired RAM slot! I'm going to have to dig it out and get it working again :) edit: oh, it gets better! I found my older T30 (the top end model with the high res screen and 2.4g CPU) - I already pillaged that one for parts to use in my current one, but I kept whatever was left. Well, I gutted it at some point, and the CPU was missing - next to it was a IBM laptop bag I forgot about. Inside? A bag full of good parts (including the 2.4g CPU) and ANOTHER T30 - this one actually in good shape, complete, and it already has 1gb of ram and everything else (including a new battery!). I'm 99% sure both of them have the RAM slot failure, so if I can fix that I'll have 2 pretty nice T30s to play with. Thanks again!

[@xPLAYnOfficial]

I did an SSD mod to my XP IDE laptop, and I also have to agree that it is blazing fast. Great video as always!

[@munnsie100]

I own a T43, it was given to me by a family friend about 6 years ago. It feels like a tank, if only ThinkPads of today felt nearly as solidly constructed. From memory, the T43 was the last IBM branded ThinkPad. Super meta that you can upgrade the upgrade... I wish serviceability existed in the same way on today's models.

[@gregorycosta1043]

Unfortunately, the GPU on the T4x series was notorious for bad soldering. I loved the build of that model, but mine, too, suffered the GPU issue. It's repairable, but not something I wanted to get into.

[@T1nue]

Thanks for the video! Just a week ago I picked up a shipment of 16 old Thinkpads, and one of them was a T30 in mint condition. The harddisk even contained the recovery partition, so that I could factory-install the machine. I do like the machine, and still like the T42 a bit more (that's what most of the 15 other old ones were).

[@knightslayer2877]

dude this was my first laptop . God this brings back so many ggod memories ( i was 7 when i got it )

[@shenanigan87]

Thanks so much for making this! I'm a HUGE fan of the T30 and have four in my collection, still hoping to build he most perfect one from the lot. x) I didn't realize it was (theoretically) this easy to repair the dreaded RAM slot issue, definitely going to give that one a try! From a first impression, I would have assumed that yours was opened up at one point, at least judging by the missing screw covers on the rear side. From a collector's point of view, those things are usually damaged or have become unstuck in some way, not to mention being impossible to find... Whenever I come across a unit that has them intact, I usually try to get hold of it, in the hope that it hasn't been tampered with! The same goes for that tiny black plastic heat shield that usually sits above the graphics chip, which is often not reinstated after people lift the keyboard. Just these little, perhaps meaningless things that one learns when working on these machines. :) To me, the most annoying thing I found out over time is that (at least the German) keyboard came in two different varieties, with one of them having a much cheaper/rattly typing feel. I was very glad when I finally obtained a unit that had a "good" keyboard that wasn't overly worn!

[@RacerX-]

What a great video, thanks. You helped me solve 2 mysteries I had with the T30. 1. What that little pocket was on the bottom and 2. why one of my RAM sockets didn't work. Now that I know I hope I can do the same and return it to functioning. Thanks!

[@TitanSix]

Absolutely adore your retro laptop videos. It’s a hobby that I wish I had more time and space for.

[@senkak3370]

This video was made with love, god i really miss those machines.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

When computers were still fun.

[@franknedobity2757]

I literally just acquired a T30 from my works stockpile of old laptops. Great condition and the quality is great. I literally use it for what you said, basic games from the time. I was in high school when XP came out and had a lot of experience with it. Great video. We have a similar taste in computers/electronics. The Sony CD/MP3 disk man you repaired was the same one I had when it first came out. Also I had no idea that was a “airbag” to help protect the hard drive.

[@durulvarol]

I have no idea why but his video hit the spot. It was a really satisfying and entertaining video.

[@grumpyoldwizard]

That keyboard layout is pretty cool. I like it.

[@otacon4065]

Really enjoyed this and your mindset/drive/talking. Nice and chilled vibe.

[@videocruncher]

I own an IBM R51 laptop from that era and I never cease to be surprised how good the LCD in these laptops is compared to most later ones.

[@Bushidounohana]

Thank you for the trip down memory lane! I dusted off (literally) my Gateway m500s the other day and was greeted by the old Windows XP boot chime. The old timer machine is still all stock and boots happily-it turns just shy of 20 years old this spring. While the keyboard is amongst its weakest points-mushy and unsatisfying key travel-it’s one of the early entries on the PC side of the equation that featured a widescreen, a built-in sub woofer, and fairly decent speakers for the time. I used the machine for school (went off to grad school with me along with my preferred notebook of the time-my iBook G4 which is a little newer though still happily boots to this day as well), with the device being primarily a portable movie player and emulation machine.

[@stvpls]

why not using them online? try mypal up to date and lightweight browser for xp

[@gregorycosta1043]

Future models (2003 onward) could detect when the laptop was accelerating due to the active protection system and would park the hard disk. That little feature you demonstrated was thus obsolete.

[@globalcitizen8321]

I have an IBM T30 from 2003. It is still working, upgraded to 2GB RAM. Timeless machine, top quality materials.

[@bankruptsee]

I used one of these to tune my Hondas back in the day. Loved every bit of it.

[@JoeCensored]

Haha I used this exact model for work for a decade. People in IT would tell me they thought they got rid of the last of them years before when I needed a new battery. Thing ran great, when it was getting old I just switched to Ubuntu.

[@kevinlee7263]

Thanks, a lot of useful info here. I just bought one at Goodwill for $10! It definitely needs a CMOS battery, and the main battery is gone too. Unfortunately those are hard to find at a reasonable price. It came with one 1GB RAM module, so if I can get the other bugs worked out I might try bumping it up to 2GB. It also had a 30GB HDD with XP installed, I was thinking of running Linux but I might play around with XP for awhile for old time's sake. And while it seemed to be working OK yesterday, when I booted it up today the touch pad wasn't responding. One more thing to futz with.

[@JK-gm6kk]

I worked on a ton of Lenovo T420,30,40 and 50 for a large fleet of office personnel for a few years. Pretty solid machines. Was one of the reasons I recently bough a Lenovo Legion 5 for myself. Edit:never even bothered to wonder if IDE solid state drives existed, so I learned something today.

[@davearmstrong4095]

This is the video that finally made me look up what "capped on" tape was. Oh what a fool I am.... Anyway, Kapton tape seems cool

[@JazzDogTraveler]

I was senior I.T. tech at a company. We had about 25 of the X30 version of that laptop, which was smaller, thinner, lighter and slightly more underpowered and under-featured. Otherwise, they were identical to the T30. The X30 didn't suffer the RAM socket problem of its big brother, but the combo PS/2 port made hooking up a plain old PS/2 mouse a $50 upgrade because we had to purchase special PS/2 Y pigtails to split the combo PS/2 signal off for a mouse and an external keyboard. The single USB port was okay for either a mouse or keyboard, but one either had a PS/2 y adapter or a USB 1.0 splitter. Regardless, these little laptops were awesome. I used one and never used the touch pad, I preferred the patented "cat tongue" IBM trackpoint.

[@travishein]

oh, i really hate that parts whitelisting bios things! I was really excited you were able to work around it. the reflow ram sockets was amazing too. and then the ssd!

[@macsenplays]

I grew up building and maintaining IBM PCs. My dad work in USPS ETU. I built my first computer at age 14 in 1994, and the first PC I built entirely with my own money was in 2000 with a Pentium III Coppermine 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. And Quake III Arena is really the only FPS I ever caught on with. I loved playing with the online play on that.

[@DasLawrence]

i own a T42 which is one of the last IBM Thinkpad laptops that had drivers for Windows 98 SE (excluding the T43 which had unofficial ones). attatched to a desktop setup with Olivetti 14" CRT monitor, a solid buckling springs IBM Model M and an old Horizontal IBM 300GL Desktop case to add the vintage look of a desktop machine it works wonders!

[@rastas_4221]

Can't believe you succeeded on reflowing the joints. Very impressive. Louis Rossmann would be screaming at the sight.

[@scenque]

I owned a Thinkpad from this era for about three weeks. I spent a summer as an intern at IBM and purchased it through their employee purchase program, but I didn't receive it until I was back at school. When the Thinkpad arrived, the LCD panel had a couple bright spot defects that were plainly visible right out of the box. I went through an annoying service process where the machine went back and forth between me and an IBM service center multiple times, but IBM claimed that their technicians could not see the defect and refused to replace the laptop or the display panel, so eventually I just returned it for a refund. I remember that Wi-Fi was very new at the time, so having network access anywhere I went on campus for the few weeks that I had the laptop was very cool/novel.

[@iangreenhalgh9280]

I had a T30, used the hell out of it for years and never had a single problem with it, ran XP then Linux. Has to be one of the best laptops ever sold.

[@dilshanjayasuriya6864]

Awesome video Colin keep up the awesome work 👏

[@jimmea6317]

It seems so weird how fifteen years ago laptops had dozens of i/o ports

[@kaitlyn__L]

Man, Netburst ran so hot! It was in the only computer I ever used which was able to turn off the thermostat in the room, making the rest of the house go cold. Even pretty beefy modern multicore systems with similar TDP numbers don’t do it so bad (presumably due to dynamic downclocking and spreading the heat out over many more cores). I guess the Pentium 4s just ran near-maximum much more of the time, thereby more consistently getting close to the TDP rating? With Ryzen, I have to run distributed computing or compilers for hours before it starts impacting the thermostat like my Pentium 4 did, merely by using MSN and playing Rise of Nations.

[@Martin_from_SC]

I had a T21. loved it, upgraded it to 1ghz P3 and 512mb ram. Used it for many, many years.

[@9.peanut]

This was our laptop du jour in 2003-2005. We had several of the RAM slot failures in the field, unfortunately. We also experienced several LCD failures as well. When these went EOL and came back to the shop, I was able to take a few home and distribute to family. Said family rode these with 1GB RAM and 100GB 5400RPM PATA drives up until the end of XP support!

[@corsa701]

Those old Thinkpads... i just love them. They where the first ones unfortunate enough to be scrapped by me as a IT- Trainee. Some of them i saves from Scrapping an my first one was the T 42. The T61 was the Laptop which i used the longest time period.

[@luckyluke1076]

Such a good and quality content in this video, I’m amazed.

[@ofnotandi]

This one was our favourites back in the day. X40 was a mixed bag while this one was pretty well flawless.

[@BilisNegra]

Wow, did not expect the reflow to just... work right on!

[@emmanne08]

Kudos to your enthusiasm on this project!

[@alonzolopez9649]

I have a T60 and it’s still a legend, it survived a house fire and smells like it, I could run almost any OS on it even windows 10 thanks to the dual core and WiFi.

[@magoid]

There is something oddly satisfying, about watching a video of a old Thinkpad in one of its descendants.

[@lbsiuk]

14:18 that doesn't appear to be an actual SSD. It looks more like eMMC or UFS. Your read/write speeds are pretty typical for those.

[@nitrax8629]

Great video, own an top of the line widescreen T60p running Windows XP on its stock 100GB 7200RPM drive, still pretty fast. If I need to go online with it I use an ultrabay adapter with an SSD containing Linux Mint I can put in place of the DVD drive. Works great for games too!

[@SuperNova0079]

I got a T42 IBM Thinkpadrecently I fully restored the clock battery and replaced the charger and battery pack with new ones. It came with Windows Vista. I love it despite its age and it still works well.

[@cyberp0et]

My Dell Inspiron 3000 series 2in1 took a hit (fell from about 2 meters height). Surprisingly, the hard drive took that shock very well and it still works flawlessly. No scratche,/dents , nothing broken. The only thing that was affected was one hinge, that won't close down completely any more.

[@DragonsIayer182]

This was my first thinkpad, I got it when I was like 7 in 2005 and this thing outlasted 2 other IBM desktops. It was specced like this one, except it's only got 512mb of ram atm. I was stuck with it until late 2013, though, and I was doing everything in my power just to keep it usable in that day because I couldn't afford a modern computer yet. I got a Dock II for it and an Nvidia GT 520 for it's PCI slot, and this card is essentially the last PCI video card ever made (Besides the GT 610, which is identical spec-wise save for a slighter newer revision of OpenGL 4). I've been using this as a retro XP laptop lately, and this video is making me consider fixing a few issues on mine and upgrading some stuff. Namely, a ssd, new cpu, wifi, and maybe fixing those ram slot pins so I can get the full 1gb in there, though I'm not confident in myself and I don't want to risk bridging pins. I've already put in a modern track-nub thing and use a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS in the pcmcia slot with it for games, which is really nice.

[@gabster85]

Dude, your videos are always stellar. Keep at it.

[@gooni]

XP is still my favorite OS of all time. I miss it so much.

[@jozsiolah1435]

A trick for older laptops, that works: youtube higher res video, that’s not supported, 720p watching for 10 minutes. That enhances the performance. Then back to 480p, still not supported, for another 10 minutes. After that, you fixed your wifi card to support faster download and streaming. Now, the supported 320p watching works, and the video, audio is perfect. I used win7, and Chrome to do this fix, and the full screen videos are clear, no delay.

[@SilverSpoon_]

retrieved and upgraded a R50e from a Celeron to a P4, filled it with a 128 gig SSD, 2 gigs of DDR, and really it's a comfy machine to write, not be distracted by anything els. Playing retro games or tuning to some station. I never thought I could even use it, but hey that's the challenge. Yes they made solid machines.