Thinkpad Quandries

[kaharthemad]

Not sure of any tech people here that do any work with ancient stuff but I got a minor customer problem that has got me stumped.

Old boy is using a 600x Thinkpad from IBM. Seems the Floppy Drive works fine in dos mode but as soon as you go into windows (clean install) the damn thing pukes. It will not format any media nor will it read any. I did google it to see i any one had this problem I found a multitude of people but no answers.

Anyone have a idea?

[10sun]

Update the drivers? I have no clue.

[Tossica]

What Windows did you put on there?

[Martrae]

98se

[kaharthemad]

yah 98se. seems the old fucker that owns it still uses dos apps that are not compatible with XP's command mode

[Tossica]

Is it one of those "drive bay" style drives that shares a slot with a DVD/CD drive?

[Tossica]

An external USB floppy is going to fix up the problem for the least amount of money.

http://www.newegg.com/app/SearchProduct ... =Go&DEPA=0

[kaharthemad]

yeah that was a option. I was curious to see if anyone else had it.

[Harrison]

Does the ancient fucker still have a usb port that works?

[kaharthemad]

yeah it does. Looks like i am going this route. reason why this has been a pain is because I have gotten about 6 of these in in the last year all with this very same problem. I know there is a magic fix for it just not sure where to look.

When I boot from a diskette the damn thing works fine. just does not like windows. the most I ghave gleemed is that this was fixed only when installing from the original CD image given by Itty Bitty Machine Corporation.

[Tossica]

I think it's something to do with ACPI. Maybe try to disable ACPI and see what happens.

[Ogru]

Do a virus scan. There are some viruses out there that load into the MBR and will keep windows from seeing external devices, CD-Rom drives and such.

NYB as an example