19 Jul
2012
19 Jul
'12
9:53 a.m.
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Benjamin Huntsman wrote:
Hi there!
I know it's not as interesting as non-Intel-based stuff, but I just
picked up an ex-NASA ThinkPad 760XD and thought I'd poke at it a while
given it's connection to the Shuttle Program.
Does anyone know anything about these older IBM ThinkPads? This one
came to me missing it's battery and hard drive/caddy assembly. The
battery's not so big a deal, but finding the right hard drive and caddy
has been pain. I'm a big fan of "stock", so I did some research and
looks like the "high-end" drive for this thing back in the day was the
3.0GB IBM DLGA-23080. I'd also picked up an after-market drive caddy,
but as it turns out the DLGA-23080 is too tall for the caddy... Anyone
know if the DLGA-23080 had a special caddy, and where I might find the
right one that's genuine IBM? Or, am I completely mistaken and the
"stock" 3.0GB drive for the ThinkPad 760XD is a different model? I
can't find a good FRU list anywhere...
It could be IBM made several models of 3GB Travelstar drives, but I'm not
that familiar with the 3GB size drives. The 3GB drives were an
intermediate consumer-size drive (meaning they didn't use the full
capacity of the platters) and we skipped over them when going from 1-2GB
to 4GB. I do have a now non-functional 3GB engineering sample/prototype
3GB drive laying around that I can measure if that would be helpful.
Was the machine just limited to 9.5mm high drives instead of 12.5mm? 9.5mm
are pretty easy to find on the second hand market, and if you want to stay
semi-original, a 4GB Travelstar (IBM/Hitachi) was certainly available in a
9.5mm height. Going for maximum capacity, two platter 160GB and 320GB
drives were available in 2.5" parallel ATA, but stocks are now beginning
to run low and they are currently somewhat expensive when compared with
larger SATA drives. Due to BIOS limitations, large drives also wouldn't
work well with older operating systems without using Diskmanager or some
other sort of DDO (dynamic drive overlay).