Here is a picture of the screen deterioration I mentioned in my post:
(eBay seller's picture, not mine—I haven't received the laptop yet)

68krazy wrote:

I've been wanting to get a 90s ThinkPad ever since LGR made a video about the 380XD, and last week I found a 380ED on eBay that seemed reasonably priced.

that would be in the 'hey, found this old thing in the attic, you want it for free'-$20 bracket

68krazy wrote:

2. Replacement battery
I would love to be able to use this as an actual laptop that doesn't need to be plugged into the wall to run.

are you sure? 2 hour standard battery time when new

68krazy wrote:

I found a few forum posts about the 380 series suggesting that the TFT panel can still be ordered new from China. Does this sound plausible to you guys?

no, unless someone makes an adapter for modern panel

68krazy wrote:

4. ThinkPad fanbois

yes

68krazy wrote:

I can see the appeal

durability, but they arent good for retro gaming due to weird graphic chips. neomagic/trident/savage, IBM wasnt exactly "sending their best". Imo T4x was the first solid hardware (Pentium M/Radeon) series in my opinion.
Great for collecting, using not so much, and that comes from a guy with a stack of vintage Thinkpads.

x230 on the other hand, still daily one, another sits under TV as a player, two more x220 motherboards converted to home servers.

These come with 3gb hard-drives so make sure you partition accordingly.
Use a Win95 boot disk with large disk support.

Yes, replace the coin battery.

48mb of ram support max.

Works good with DOS, Win3x, WInNT3.51 and WIn95.

You can still find good refurbished or new hard-drives,CDROMs and TFT display replacements on eBay.

Drivers
https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad-Driver … t/ddfm/380.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/

68krazy wrote:

3. Replacement LCD panel & disassembly guidance
The laptop's TFT panel seems to be deteriorating in the top right corner. I'm not sure what the deterioration is called or what the cause is, but I've seen it in other eBay listings for other 90s laptops, so I think it's age-related. I found a few forum posts about the 380 series suggesting that the TFT panel can still be ordered new from China. Does this sound plausible to you guys? Does anyone know if I can get part numbers without having to take the machine apart so I can start looking at availability and prices? And, once I receive the laptop, does anyone know where or if I can find some good disassembly instructions?

I had a similar issue whilst getting a replacement LCD panel for my 760ED.

This was a replacement bought off eBay. The seller sent me another one (luckily they had another one onhand) and it still had some deterioration, but it was significantly less visible so I just decided I would be able to live with it.

Never heard about new LCD replacements for 20+ year old laptops being available. That would be cool if true.

As far as disassembly and part numbers go ... consult the Hardware Maintenance Manual. Note the manual for the 380ED includes information about a bunch of other similiar-ish laptops from the same time period (the list of models is at the bottom of the first page). There are part numbers for basically everything in that manual, but do be careful that you are looking at the part numbers for the right model laptop! I hate the fact that IBM lumped all these together in the same manual ...