Would you be willing to tell more about the CF upgrade? I haven't been able to use an 8GB CF card in my 760XL. I think the problem may be the little adapter that connects the IDE to the system board. The one I've been working with is 82H5536, which is supposed to work with drives larger than 4GB. What puzzles me is that I have 10GB drive (with capacity reduced to 8GB by the Hitachi disk tool) working in a caddy with the 29H9422 adapter, which is supposed to have troubles with large drives. I don't want to take apart that caddy and drive, because it's my main system. (It's partitioned to multiboot DOS, Win95, Win98, NT4, and Win 2000.) I'm hoping to copy it all to a CF but haven't succeeded yet.

Again, any details of the adapter you're using would be welcome. Thanks!

Sure the CF to IDE adapter I'm using is
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y2N2SVD/

16GB CF card
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HM9849Z

I brought a used copy of OnTrack from ebay version 9.57

the IBM part number is EC D43122 61 v0 T

Using the Ontrack software was pretty straight forward. Was totally worth the $20 I paid for it just for the ability to boot from CDs.

I have several of the THinkpad hard drive cable but the D43122 is the only one that worked with any of my CF cards. I gave up on using the hard drive caddy. I have just the bare adapter plugged in

This is terrific help. Thank you. I found a listing of a cable with that part number at a supply store that claims to have it in stock, but at a fairly stiff price:

http://www.upgradexperts.net/d43122.html

Was that cable part of a drive/caddy assembly? It might be easier just to search for the drive...

And thanks again!

I'll also grab a copy of OnTrack. I've been using System Commander to multiboot in the system I've got now, and the Hitachi software to reduce the drive capacity to 8 GB, but OnTrack can do more, if I remember (plus, as you say, make it possible to boot from the CD).

The adapter came from a 2.1 GB hard drive + caddy IBM FRU 82H8489. Now I don't know if all 2.1gb drives have the same adapter installed though

I actually have an 82H8489 that I've been using for backups; but the adapter is has the same 82H5536 FRU number that doesn't work with my larger drives... As you say, probably different adapter on different units...

EDIT: There's a discussion of that adapter cable here:

https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/29789-Think … 755C-Festplatte

It seems that the person who had that cable found it in an HDD with the FRU 84G1210, which seems to be a 340MB drive for the 750/755 series. Who would have thought that that cable works with much larger drives when other 760-era cables don't?

Just another small update I now have NT4 booting from FAT32. It required a lot of hocus pocus with partition magic and ontrack and of read/write fat32 nt4 driver. I now have OSR2 MSDOS 7.1 along side nt4 on my single 16GB FAT32 partition. A stable windows environment, and pure DOS for games. Also it will make fixing NT when I break something slightly easier.

I don't remember how I did it, but my 8GB disk (which I hope to copy to a CF card) also has NT4, Win2K, plus Win311, Win95, Win98, and a batch of DOSes, all accessible via System Commander 7. It must have taken ages to set that up, but I managed it without OnTrack.

Still working on getting a CF card larger than 4GB to boot in the 760XL. So far I haven't been able to get a couple of 8GB cards to work, but I'm still waiting for OnTrack to arrive from eBay. I think I have the latest BIOS, dated December 9, 1999, and somehow or other I got 10GB Hitachi hard drive to work perfectly after reducing the capacity to 8GB with the Hitachi disk tool.

Oddly, I can't get a similar Hitachi disk (I think it's the same model) to boot after using the Hitachi tool to reduce the capacity to 8GB. So this is very puzzling.

With my 8GB CF cards, I can often boot from a floppy and run FDISK on the card to create a DOS partition of 512MB. But after formatting it with FDISK, the machine won't boot with the same card in it. Or, with a different adapter cable, it boots but says there's no fixed disk when I try to FORMAT C:/S. Again, it's a mystery.

If anyone has any insights (other than "Just stop trying to do this"), I'll be grateful.

jholt0147 wrote on 2021-01-28, 12:29:

Gameplay adapter

Do you have a part number for this? Where does it plug into?

bobconan wrote on 2024-11-18, 06:31:

Gameplay adapter

Do you have a part number for this? Where does it plug into?

Midi/Gameport adapter IBM 85G1896 85G1879 plug into Thinkpad proprietary port

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113262617593

MAZter wrote on 2024-11-18, 13:03:

Midi/Gameport adapter IBM 85G1896 85G1879 plug into Thinkpad proprietary port

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113262617593

I dont have a port that small on mine.

Read the service manuals and be careful taking apart the laptops. The plastic is old and brittle.
Those LCD displays have a ribbon that is coiled up and is EASY to ruin.

Get NEW batteries or learn to repair those old batteries.

Don’t store these old computers with the battles installed.

Store those old batteries is a metal box outside the house.
They leak and could start a fire if not stored correctly.