Is it worth bringing my T43p back to life?

I started to play with my bookend (T43)for two years. The 40gb drive died, at least I thought. I have a USB adapter for PATA 2.5/3.5 device. I fired up the USB adapter to see if the 40GB Toshiba had a pulse, it did and I was able to reformat it.

Problem #2, not all the keys on my keyboard work. I need a new keyboard for my T43, cost $30-$50.

The backup of my drive 9 CD's crashes or won't work. I'm not sure if it's my keyboard or the disks or a combination of the two. Thus my IBM rescue and recovery discs are useless right now.

Upside, I have an 80gb Seagate (ST980825A) 7200RPM drive and an .iso disk that will update the firmware for my model to work on the T43. I also have a full retail copy of XP pro that can be installed in lieu of the recovery discs if they do not work. On the Lenovo site, they have what looks like all the Thinkpad software that I can install app by app, if I need to.

My Thinkpad has 1.5gb of ram a 1.7ghz Penitum M processor and integrated graphics with a 14.1" screen. I already have two dual core laptops but I still love my Thinkpad much like Mac cult members love their Macs. I love the thinkpad for its durability, even though I broke my keyboard when I was mad. I was unintentional but some keys do not work.

Are there enough positives to try and bring this old friend back to life?

 

well, why do you hesitate? install the new bios and the hard disk and install xp from the retail cd. i'd install from the retail cd anyways, because you'll get a clean system and recent thinkpad drivers.

i think it's the keyboard is unlikely to be the fault why your receovery fails. you can also install an external usb keyboard, and detach the notebook keyboard completely (done in a minute, just a few screws and one cable). if the recovery still fails, my first guess would be a hdd failure.

 

Would make a great media centre/file server if anything. Google tells me it's Radeon X300 can do 1400x1050 resolution. A T4x ultrabay SATA caddy available for < $23US delivered could add a 500GB 2.5" SATA HDD, a cost-effective and more future proof storage expansion that also allows the optical drive to be hotswapped back in as shown here. This post showing the unit is capable of UDMA5/ATA100 speeds, which in real life are ~87MB/s. Much faster than USB's ~30Mb.

 

Great suggestions guys. I know the keyboard isn't causing the recovery failure. However, when the "Acess IBM" doesn't work and the up down arrow keys don't work, it makes it difficult to install. I do in fact have a full IBM desktop keyboard with an Acess IBM key and everything else, Should I connect that keyboard via USB or PC serial port? It comes standard as USB but I have a serial keyboard converter.

I also have a floppy disk drive for the bios update.

Will the IBM keyboard work vis USB on boot without installing drivers?

 

As long as you have USB Legacy support turned on in the BIOS, it should.

Since you already have the spare HDD, I'd say go for it. A Pentium-M 1.7 isn't bad, and it's relatively cheap to get even a 2.0 upgrade if you wanted to. If you have discrete graphics, I'd definitely say it's worth a try prior to replacing the keyboard. You can easily find a keyboard for $25-30 on Ebay.

Example

 

I have taken major action on my T43. I ordered a brand new genuine Thinkpad keyboard $35 (small bidding war) with shipping. I then spent $50 on an external Samsung CD/DVD-RW USB 2.0 drive. I then took Nando4's advice and bought a 2nd ultrabay caddy. Instead of getting the SATA I went with the PATA. I have a 80GB Seagate drive 7200RPM drive that I want to make use of. Eventually I will upgrade to an SATA 2nd HDD caddy when SATA drives drop a bit more in price.

I'm saving some $65 bucks by staying with the 80GB PATA for now. I hope everything works out.

 

Should do, the PATA caddy just rewires from the optical bay connector to IDE and provides a chassis to house the 2.5" drive. The SATA 2nd HDD caddy uses a sata-to-pata bridge adding an extra 1W power consumption overhead as shown here, so the PATA one is better for battery life.

I am curious to see how it all goes, so please do post with the results of your upgrades. May help others bring older systems back to service, saving themselves system changeover costs.

 

Will the PATA drive bay work around the firmware problem the thinkpad has with various ATA-6 drives? Will I run into the same problem I had trying to install the Seagate 80GB 7200RPM (ST980825A)drive in the traditional hard drive bay?

Here is a link to the Lenovo .iso patch for firmware upgrades for hard drives. From what I understand, the T43 has internal SATA connections reformatted for ATA-6 drives.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62282

 

Problem with non-Thinkpad hard disks issue tells us:

The error is displayed when the system drive is not one of the few approved disks listed inside the BIOS, and may indicate a real problem. These systems have a SATA disk controller, and employ a SATA-to-PATA bridge in order to use PATA (IDE) drives. It is rumored that this bridge requires changes in the drive firmware, and the BIOS checks for this adapted firmware.

Recent BIOSs provide the option to disable the need to press Esc after the message (for ThinkPad T43 models 26xx, BIOS version 1.24 or higher).

There are no such issues for disks used in the UltraBay Slim 2nd Hard Drive Adapter.
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We can deduce from this that the primary bay uses some sata-to-pata bridge requiring PATA drives with special firmware. The optical drive interface uses a native PATA connector, so you won't have any issues with your PATA drive in there. And no, according to this you cannot get bypass the sata-to-pata bridge to be able to attach a SATA primary drive.