Didn't really need another laptop, but as I'm a big fan of IBM Thinkpads, I didn't want to pass this one up when it showed up locally for relatively cheap.
Thinkpad 760ED. Pentium 133, 32MB RAM, 1024x768 XGA TFT, 2.1 GB HDD, 6x CD-ROM, external floppy drive, and a battery that surprisingly still works. Appears to have been used by the science department for a local high school back from 1997 until 2008. Judging by some of the files that were left on it, by the end of it's time at that school it was being used solely to track inventory for one or more of the science labs at the school.
Unfortunately this is one of those Thinkpads with the dreaded MWave audio. Mostly doesn't sound too terrible. Though Doom E1M1 is noticeably bad in parts and as an added bonus causes the whole system to lock up (regardless of whether I'm booted into Windows or DOS). I've heard it might be possible to swap the sound card out for one of the ESS variants that appeared in certain other 760-models? Anyone here done this by chance?
The BIOS is several versions out of date from what I can see (Feb 1997). Additionally, a number of the drivers that are installed also look to be earlier versions so it's possible I can see some improvements by just doing a fresh install with all the latest driver/BIOS versions *fingers-crossed*.
Finally, I'll add that this has possibly the worst 640x480 / 640x400 screen scaling that I've seen. It's a 1024x768 native display and it looks like it's scaling up to 800x600 only, leaving some leftover black borders all around. Just terrible honestly, haha. Not sure if I will really use this long-term because of that alone. Which is a shame, as for a DOS machine I really like the little LCD display with battery status, etc. on it. Plus I much prefer the trackpoint and mouse buttons on this as compared to my Toshiba. And I generally prefer the keyboard layout on these Thinkpads, but that's not a big deal.
Doesn't look like it will de-throne my Toshiba 430CDT as my portable Win95/DOS machine unless some BIOS/driver updates drastically improve things. 😀