I didn't realized how dramatic the energy density improvements in lithium batteries has improved. A modern battery with that capacity would be well under half the size of this one.

funny, @4:50 what seems to be the wifi card with the blue sticker says ministry of traffic and watermanagement. it is an old laptop of the dutch government, that is why it was probably erased badly, as is custom to completely destroy the device. and it would explain the black felt marker on the chassis

That MIDI file was great. I worked at small town radio station in the mid to late 90's and toward the end of my career there, they invested in a PC for the production studio which did basic audio tracking. We had a library of MIDI music files to use as background for commercials, bumps, etc. I can definitely imagine some commercial for a local dentist office being read with that music in the background.

the sound chip in that thing is actually really nice! way better than other business laptops from that era that you've shown on your channel

I bought an almost perfect ibm 240 for 15$, one of the best purchases in my life. Too bad even HOMM 3 does not run smooth enough for me.

I really like these old/retro laptop videos, even the other ones are really high quality! you deserve a lot more attention!

Interesting note: This Laptop was actually used by the Dutch Government. At 4:47 you can see the sticker that indicates that it was from the "Ministerie van van Verkeer en Waterstaat", so basically it served at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.

Very cool laptop. Congratulations on fixing the USB port! While lenovo has done a great job of continuing the Thinkpad line, i think the IBM branded ones look and feel more durable.

i love the percussion on that midi chip. that slap bass is something else entirely, though, lol.

This form factor needs to come back now that we have the hardware to enable it to overcome the shortcomings of these old ones. I just bought the upcoming 10" GPD Win Max 2 with an AMD 6800U, 16GB DDR5 6400, and 1TB NVMe. Closest thing to a true successor to these old netbooks that finally delivers on their promise.

Your USB port repair reminds me of a MBA trackpad repair I did last year. I had one part with shattered glass and another with a bad PCB. So I transplanted the glass. There was a grounding strap which I accidentally tore, but it was easy enough to replace from the donor.

Ultimately, the problem with those PCMCIA-based CD ROM drives is that they require the proper driver to be initialised before they’ll work. I have one of these 240s and also have had the same problem. The original restore floppy works with the drive though. Installing Windows on there can be a royal pain in the backside.

I like all of your videos but really love the ones with ThinkPads. I have been a long-time TP owner and user. In fact, I would like to see if you can get your hands on the first ThinkPads, which were Microchannel bus architecture. The 700 (black and white), the 700C, then 720C. Great little systems and of course the Microchannel modularity was great! Keep up the great work!

Came for the repair, stayed for the Passport!

This channel always impresses when it comes to video quality, those 4K macro shots ❤️

I still have two 240Xs from the time we configured up PLCs on site back in the day. One suffered a fall from the top of a ladder which broke a hinge and smashed the casing, so with the help of eBay I rebuilt it; this video brought back fond memories of that time although I do recall having the official IBM 240X service manual to aid the disassembly. Great video, keep them coming!

That battery is 1/5 of the capacity of the battery in my 13" MacBook Pro. What a nugget!

Love your videos Colin! Please come to Australia in the near future!

Hi Colin. I have mine 240x with a bulky battery. it makes laptop to sit on an angle which makes typing more comfortable. And it works! Overall it is a beautiful piece of engineering! Just forgot to say I love your channel!

On that first machine, they were just running DOS 7.0. It shows the Windows loading screen even if you never had Windows. Also there are USB mass storage drivers for DOS in case you ever find yourself in this situation again 👍

You have the magic touch, I have never had any luck removing the screen bezels without cracking them, amazing work!

Did you check the power socket on the dead board? The most common fault is that connector getting damaged or the soldering falling.

Funny how you mentioned installing Windows from the hard drive as a trick as I always used to do this. Copy it on, install and leave the setup files there for being able to add and remove features without the CD. These are nice little Laptops. The older Thinkpads just have some sort of aesthetic appeal to them.

I recall reading about the Toshiba Libreto 120S in 1996 and how amazing it was for it’s time.

15:50 ohh my, i havent heard this sound since 2004 I guess, I had windows95 and lot of childhood memories are opened in my mind now, thank you!

Alright Colin. We need to talk about your gorgeous focus pulls. Because 10/10.

I scored a 240 off eBay in early 2000s for $150-ish, which despite its poor battery served well as a basic portable Linux machine (with PCMCIA Wifi card), and as a handy serial terminal for configuring switches, PBXes, etc. I used a silent CF card w/adapter in lieu of a hard drive. Eventually its LCD went bad, probably the flex cable, so I removed that, and the 240 then had a 3rd, sedentary life as my home router, automation controller, weather station, Asterisk phone system, solar power logger & mini-server. It happily ran for years from ~12-14V DC solar-bank power straight into its battery terminals, pulling only 7W. I swapped the internal modem mini-PCI with a 10/100 Ethernet card as second NIC (NIC1 being Cardbus), but had to solder a Cat5 cable directly to the card's transformer due to lack of a pass-through port, passing this out through the Kensington lock port. Had to do some BIOS hack also for those to coexist, but can't remember details. The VGA output was split 3 ways (R, G, B each going to a different small mono CRT, with sync's paralleled), and under Linux the PS/2 port could accept two separate keyboards, one into the 5th & 6th DIN pins normally meant for a mouse. When those 100Mb NICs became a limitation, this was replaced with an ARM-based SBC, but then put in another 2 or 3 years at a friend's place in a simliar utility role before finally being retired. Nice little machine!

I bought my ibm 240x while on holiday for less than £10 as spares and repairs. I repaired it and I still have it. I took the modem out and fitted a WiFi card and shoe horned a pair of WiFi antennas into the lcd display. It works really well.

Awesome episode - the 240x has always been special to me. Years ago I had set one up for my sister who was traveling across the country and wanted something she could journal with and dial up to check email. Have been looking for one to add to my collection for quite some time now. Thanks again!

Nicely done as usual, Colin. Don't feel bad about breaking the pins! We all make mistakes in big repair projects and the important thing is you managed to get it working.

I had to replace the main fan on a larger model ThinkPad. It made this unholy grinding sound when it kicked on. Just that single component was a massive pain in the butt. Took like 2 hours to do. I can't even imagine the pain of replacing as many components as you did and on tinier models. You did a great job of it.

I went through a very similar process recently with two mid-2102 MacBook Pro 13s. I bought the two off ebay "As is parts only" and was able to swap parts like the logic board (and others) to create a functional computer. I enjoyed the process, one reason I like watching your videos.

I got a Thinkpad subnote in 1995. I had picked it out myself (from a magazine ad) for school, thinking the size would be perfect. I remember it was like an inch thick. It had the external drives, but it used some type of proprietary or uncommon connector. It was a nice product, well built, but the system ended up being more difficult to use than I expected. And within two years developed a red vertical line on the screen. I want to say it was the 500 series.

The old IBM Thinkpads were really good, I used them back in college! Too bad IBM sold their PC line to Lenovo, hate that company!

Nicely done Colin! That's some delicate repair work there

watched this video using my x220, glad to see the 240 still has some life left in it ^^

Stop, you’re making me miss my X40

I love your vintage ThinkPad videos!

I use to own a nice tough 1994/1995 thinkpad … I miss those days 🥲🥹‼️

I'm surprised none of ThinkPads you've came across had the BIOS password lock in place. It's kinda fun shorting pins at the right time to clear the password.

I was born in 94 so I don't remember much other than the Iconic N64 days, it sounds similar to Oingo Boingo's, home again, just synthesized, it feels like 90s hold music which doesn't sound too bad, I wouldn't mind hearing now on hold actually but we got stuck with Cisco's Default music instead still in 2022 none the less , props to cisco for the icon but the tone of that it makes being on hold feel dragged out longer than it needs to be. With this I be can reminded of similar catchy snes music at least, like Paperboy 2

Peak laptop design.

Jumped when I saw the Xyratex sticker on the hard drive. I worked there from the end of the time when it was an IBM Hard Drive fab plant and transitioned into Xyratex in the mid late '90s. Management buyout, we went from making Hard drives to reworking them. There is a good chance I was there at the same time as this drive. Heck I might have even handled it! The plant was huge, clean rooms with hundreds of people working in the on any given shift. Thousands working there in its heyday as an IBM facility. Havant Hampshire, near Portsmouth on the south coast of England.

I really like that music on the ThinkPad.

Wild video! Really enjoyed this- I had a TP240 back in the early 2000s as my secondary machine. My main was a TP600- so the 240 felt SO portable! Not great performance- but it’s a shame TP keyboards aren’t as good now as they were then!

Quality video as always, Sir!

Was given a 240X by my brother in law when I got into uni. That machine got me through University and the first year and half of work after uni. P3 500E, 128MB, 12GB HDD. Ran win2k and later xp. Loved this thing to bits. Speedy enough for 2K and earlier versions of XP. It only died when the battery expanded in storage and cracked the body. 😞

My first "own" laptop was a Compaq Presario 1270, with a K6-2 350 MHz and 128Mb of RAM which I updated to 192, and then updated to XP, using PCMCIA cards between a USB 2.0 (the 1.0 onboard USB was broken exactly at the same spot) and a WiFi b/g or a 10/100 Ethernet. Managed to get me to my first years of university and made my first steps programming on that. Now, my current work has a old school Thinkpad which I intend to appropriate the next day they clean inventory

Absolutely loved this episode!

Dont forget the 570 ... sure it was THE ultrabook by this year. Impresive.

I think the neatest thing about ThinkPads is that at a glance, a Thinkpad from 1998 wouldn't look that much out of place next to modern Lenovo ThinkPads, aside from the ports and overall thickness. Talk about a design that just works! The only giveaway is the quality and aspect ratio of the display

I’m a simple man. I see a ThinkPad, I click Like! 👍🏻

That Inudstry Canada sticker you see a few times in the teardown is indicative that at some point, this device was owned and provisioned to end users by the Government of Canada. Today, simmilar stickers would say "Shared Services Canada"

youre cadence and and annunciations reminds me a lot of Patrick Bateman especially when he's taking you through his morning routine. odd comparison i know but its also rather comforting sounding

Putting baking soda in superglue instantly cures it, not really good for breaks like that. BUT it's very good for adding reinforcement around a break like that. Put superglue on there and dust baking soda over it, let it sit for a couple seconds and then clear out the excess. Becomes basically like an instant "plastic" weld.

The midi sound is actually pretty good.

Interesting subject. ThinkPad 240's and it's newer iterations were nice. In the late 1990's into early 2000's I worked at Ogilvy & Mather who were at the time Ad Agency for IBM. I worked for a consultant firm at O&M handling their Laptop Support. The 240's and 240X's were used limited to a few higher executives. They were issued with a different IBM Floppy Drive than the example you have. Also the External Bays that housed the CD-ROM drive and flopper drive you have likely were issued when the ThinkPad 600 Series debuted. Or circa ThinkPad 570 Series. The IBM CD-Rom drives sometimes needed driver installed for them to work. I have a funny story about two TP 240's. Both were run over by vehicles. 1) a O&M executive was in Paris and it was run over maybe by a taxi. 2) the other the executive leaving home in advertently left the laptop bag a the rear of their vehicle loading up to leave for work and drove over it. This 240 was delivered to me with it's screen in the shape of a rainbow. I was able to cobble together these two 240's to work and access their data from the two hard drives. I actually have a photo of the second executive holding the laptop before I picked it up to attempt getting access (or worse case scenario sending it out for) data recovery. You video brings back good memories of my time as IT Support.

Ooooooooo yes, anything ThinkPad related is gonna get a watch from me

Pretty cool IBM. I've been working with a IBM PC 300GL. Motherboard woes. Thanks for the cool video.

Audio quality with its song sounds exactly like a 1990s television show outro.

IBM's little notebooks are great machines. My first laptop was a new X20 with Windows 2000 on it. I got it brand new at an IBM employee sale for $200. That was over 20 years ago and last I tried it thing thing still worked (I need to pull it out again). That was replaced by an X60. You CAN but more than the listed maximum amount of RAM in those things, but it's not a good idea as while they will report the RAM accurately they actually run more slowly.

When your hard drive sounds like LEGO bricks, you're in trouble.

Watching this video on my X230 T. Love ThinkPads!

I recognize that screen at 0:52. The previous owner must have been a fan of Phil's Computer Lab.

I was given this laptop back in 2006 when I was an I.t apprentice, used to take out the hard drive out to reinstall the os had windows 2000 running on mine. Good old days little money though, was a good little laptop in its time.

I remember about ten years ago mini netbook laptops were the rage. They were everywhere.

I like how mid sounds. Clear and kinda "metallic"

Ah, the dead thinkpad has a sticker of a Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and water management, I think that's the reason they used a marker to hide something.

The activity led lights remeber me of my first computer

I liked the sound chip!

My cat's ears went back when the high notes started in Passport, so I guess we don't like it in this house. Excellent repair though, and I'd love to see a video on the CD-ROM repair.

A lot of bumps on the road, the life of a retro repairman😉

In case you don't know this trick, for a system that won't boot, a simple test is to remove the onboard battery as well as the external one. Then plug in A/C power. System is designed to boot at that point, even though date, time, etc. will not be correct. This is not just for Thinkpads, but for many, if not all laptops.

I just kept looking at that battery, definitely would have changed it as it was in pieces already.

Love videos like this! Thank you

The holy grail of the 240 line is the ThinkPad i1124 - it has a silvery-gray finish and very similar to the standard black 240Z models, which are almost as rare. It was Japanese-specific though, unlike the other 240s.

AWESOME WORK! Thank you! 💪

I ended using a 32GB MSATA SSD with a 2.5 inch PATA to MSATA adapter when restoring the X32 last time. So much faster and most importantly, reliable for daily use.

If you are doing this with many machines of this vintage you may find a floppy with PC DOS and USB support and/or a PCMCIA to CF card adapter quite useful.

I've restored a bunch of 240s. I love the 240s, although some of the plastic can feel a bit light and brittle. The portable drive bay only works on very specific thinkpads. I think maybe the 755 or maybe 560 series. I have a couple of new ones and used them in specific circumstances, but generally they're not compatible with most thinkpads. The portable drive bay 2000 was much more compatible. The reason the Win98 splash screen shows up briefly is because someone has reformatted the hard drive using a Win98 SE boot disk. This is a useful disk to partition and format for FAT32 and get a basic bootable system on a hard drive but it does somehow copy over the Win98 splash screen which always shows briefly on a machine that's been reformatted using this disk. Finally, in my experience the weak part of the 240s was the LCD screen. I think only SVGA and all the ones I've seen are aging badly and going a bit dim in places - the CCFL tubes must be wearing out. Great video!

I absolutely adore Brickpads of all vintages, the oldest and first one I had was a Z60m Brickpad and the newest one is a Thinpad E560. None of them were gaming or production laptops but I'm surprised that the 560 is able to support some light gaming of Fallout 4 and New Vegas considering it's running on an i5 and Intel's 520 graphics. It also was the first used Thinkpad that had both a working battery and CD drive, it was like winning $3 from the lottery.

I had one of those. Wanted a Vaio 505 series. But spotted the 240 as a good deal. Bought mine brand new when released, and I used it until I sold it in 2004. Great Japanese design.

Those Travelstar drives barely survived 2-3 years back in the days, I had to swap mine twice.

This is a good video Collin nice work 👍 This type of computer should come back in a limited release availability as a commemorative anniversary product… I’d like to see a 10, 11 or 12” type of Thinkpad from Lenovo w modern ports and serviceability

I like these little IBM machines very much. (I have to look, where I put my X20, that I saved from being thrown away, a few years ago...)

And now I want to buy some more retro ThinkPads! It'd be great to get 98SE on one of these.

i love thinkpads, my first notebook was an ibm thinkpad 600e

I don’t even bother with mechanical drives on my builds anymore. M.SATA In an IDE enclosure is my go to for something like this.

I hate to disassemble and re-assemble these old ibm and lenovo laptops, because each screw is different

Nice machine, I actually have a version of that Toshiba Libertto but with awider screen running win 98 SE, Still works with 2 PCMCIA card slots and has a Unique Docking port to the rear, though I have nothing to Dock to it sadly. And keyb too small for any real work though usable for the odd document to put together on a train to work if that is your thing. The Thinkpad has a near real size keyb and bigger screen so much more usable. Great to see old hardware minded and kept working. Win 98 will still run Office 97 which is not that much changed for basic work from office 21. Some will totally disagree.. but a Word doc, Normal Excel sheet of general Powerpoint Presentation can a least be started and winished later on your main PC if need to.

I like it and hate it at the same time for the MIDI

I miss the old IBM ThinkPad I had back in the late 90s early 2000s. It originally had windows 98, and I eventually upgraded to xp.

Sweet my youngest daughter’s first computer

I was vibin to passport lol

That is a lot of work and time to save one laptop from the recycling center. But I'm not into restoring old machines just to restore them, they have to be currently useful or off to the recycling center they go.

That’s a Phils Computer Lab boot config. The drive was probably formatted with a Windows 98 boot disk.

good video, thank you

I truly wish that my soldering skills were as intricate as Collins. I just make a mess with the solder when trying to cap and uncap and other small jobs on boards. I'm fine with wiring but I wish I can learn how to get better at smaller stuff like Collin is.

If you have a junkyard near you, Chrysler infotainment systems from 2008 all the way to 2012 or so with the touchscreen and buttons on either side of the screen use a bog standard 30GB IDE laptop drive. I got one myself and while the OS is custom, you can reformat the drive as a totally normal IDE drive and it will work in older laptops, like the Latitude S500GT I still need to get a replacement keyboard for sadly.

Nice repair work! Don't forget that NT didn't support USB until Windows 2000, so your newly-fixed USB port is useless in NT4. 😀