This makes me think though... It won't be long before people think of my "old" Dell XPS M1730 as a retro gaming laptop *shudder*

bjt wrote:

Hooked up the XR385, and sure enough the sound is completely broken in Heretic. Pretty cool having wavetable in this machine though, and other games seem to work OK. Might pick up a SCP-55 (PCMCIA Sound Canvas) too at some point. I think as a portable retro system with authentic hardware this is about as good as it gets 😎

What about getting a PCMCIA soundcard for soundeffects and use the CT1770 for MIDI in the games that are problematic?

SB emulation via PCMCIA sounds problematic at best... PCMCIA Sound Cards

The SCP-55 works 100% in DOS apparently.

A couple of final tweaks 😎

Things were getting a little toasty inside the case with the fan disabled, so I swapped it for a 12V fan downvolted to 7V, powered via the CD molex connector.

Replaced my duct tape with some better quality tape 😒

The amp inside the dock keeps cutting out, so I bypassed it by wiring the SB output from the diagnostic connector directly to the speakers & headphone socket. The SB amp is powerful enough for these little speakers anyway.

Everything back together, XR385 attached, speakers and CD input wired up

Rocking some old CD games 😎

Oh GOD, this is the MOST BEAUTIFUL laptop I've seen so far! I've been always in love with IBM Thinkpads, but unfortunately I've never owned one of them... this model with this great (in every sense) docking is one of my dreams: retro-action on the go (or almost on the go), and I find the internal ISA slot in the dock really nice and ahead of its time (never seen something like this)...

I'm going to buy this precise model and this precise docking altogether... I hope to return in this topic as happy TP owner 😉

Missed 🙁

But I've bought these ones, with some problems I hope to solve: http://www.ebay.it/itm/191687968419?_trksid=p … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Maybe the 370C is more easy to restore, for the other 386 laptop I must check...

EDIT: please can you tell me the precise name of this big docking?

Good find on the 370C. Hopefully it will work when you get a PSU.
486 Thinkpads with a decent TFT screen are not that easy to find, there are a lot of mono or DSTN models.
The docking station is the Dock 1 (3545). www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_Dock_I_(3545)

Nice work!
Got a 486 thinkpad myself but need to get around to finishing the project, might do something crazy like trying a 8GB msata ssd with an adapter 😎
If you ever run across the 32mb ram card or the even rarer 64mb card on the cheap do not pass it up! Upgraded mine to 40mb total for like $5 earlier this year.

Finally today, with some of my friends, I've managed to bring back to life this same model of ThinkPad, recently bought. This 370C was without PSU and 'to test'. The power supply connector is not round, but rather trapezoidal with 4 pins, more rare and expensive to find - we adapted a universal power connector, and the laptop finally started to boot - but after the post, it continued to ask for a password... After removing all the batteries, and putting back some flat cables that were disconnected from their right places inside the laptop, we noticed that by entering any character and pressing ENTER at the password screen, the ThinkPad progressed and finally loaded Windows 95 installed by the previous owner. Are you in possession of the correct drivers for Windows 95?

Nice work! The CMOS battery is located under a cover to the left of the removable floppy (not the blue standby battery pack). If you disconnect it that might clear the password. If you do find either the Dock 1 or 2 it has a built in PSU.

I've only been using this with DOS so I haven't got any Windows drivers. It had 3.11 on it when I got it, it is probably a bit slow for Win95 as there's no L2 cache.

Hello, I can say Windows 95 with 8mb RAM card goes pretty well 😀

But I'm unsure, I think I'll install FreeDOS (waiting to find original MS-DOS 6.22 floppies or writing these *.img images on some of them).

Yes, I've taken out that battery also, but that password screen keeps showing up.

You may be able to disable the password check using the PS2.EXE utility. This also allows you to set various other configuration options.

ftp://ftp.lanet.lv/pub/windows/lanet/thinpad/uttpg101.exe

Thanks! I'll surely try it 😉

Nice purchase! I'm a big fan of the old Thinkpads 😀

Depending on which password has been set, you might be able to get rid of it by putting a jumper on a connector on the system board, and booting the machine - refer to http://wiki.mbirth.de/know-how/hacking/bios-p … x755c755cs-9545

I've cleared a password on a 755 using this method. Seeing as you can bypass the password when you boot, it's probably a user password and not the administrator/system password, so this method may work. From my understanding a system password can only be cleared by sending the board back to IBM!

Also, you have probably already become acquainted with the Hardware Maintenance Manual Vol 2, but here's the link again - http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbb … iles/tpvol2.pdf - a great resource. In the same FTP directory as bjt linked to there are several setup disks for Windows 95 etc. http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/windows/lanet/thinpad/

Finally I've spotted another good old Dock I 3546 for the 370C, this time seller has accepted my offer! Can't wait for putting everything together... and following you by installing ISA genuine soundcard.

EDIT: it seems to be different from your model, this is the "II" model of the dock, mod. 3546 with 2 internal ISA and 1 internal IDE together with SCSI same ports of 3545 Dock mod. "I"... what a good finding this time.

Cool, that is a beast. It has a full-height 5.25 bay which will make it easier to install a CDROM. It took me a long time to find the strange 3/4 height CDROM for the Dock I... and I had to buy 3 to get 1 🤣

Will be interested to see if you mange to get the onboard SCSI in the Dock II working. I had no luck with the Dock I, so I installed a SB 16 SCSI.

Sure I'll let you know about my progress, let's see 😀

Dock II 3546 received today!!!

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Finally got hold of a SCP-55 for a halfway reasonable price!

After messing around with card services, it's working great in DOS. Default resources are IRQ 5/IO 330 which is fine, I have the SB16 at IRQ 7/IO 300.
By running a short cable around to the SB16 line-in I get digital sound and the Roland music through the built-in speakers.

The only downside as compared to a external module or daughterboard is that the IBM socket & card services take around 30K of conventional memory, and it also seems to require C800-CFFF to be vacant, so that's another 16K of upper memory gone. This machine also requires memory-hungry SCSI drivers for the CD, so I could see it being an issue for those few real-mode CD games with MIDI.

Overall though, it's really cool to see a legit Sound Canvas in this form factor. My CT1770 has the hanging note bug so an external module or DB wasn't an option. Might try CardSoft later to see if it supports the IBM and has lower memory usage.

Hi there! I got my hands on a Docking station like this and the speakers also do not work. Can you please give more details which connectors did you reseat? I reseated all of the connectors available from the bottom, but did no disassemble it more. And it did not help.
Thanks!