I don't think you need a hard drive to access the BIOS setup of any machine. Are you sure you have the right key combination to access it?

Did you hit F1 when you see the Thinkpad logo to access the menu? If not, hold down F1 and see if it'll get you into the diagnostics.

You should be able to access the BIOS regardless if a HDD is installed by keeping F1 pressed on boot. I had the TP770Z myself back in the day. Do you get any post errors?

Hello thanks for the reponse

So yeah i do hit f1 but it get stuck on the boot up screen like this

Can the bios be corrupted on this model?

The keyboard works fine i had a few bios error because the battery was bad i changed it.

Cheers!

So you get a memory count, but then nothing? No beeps or error codes or anything? Is the speaker connected?
Can you try to take out some memory, or re-seat the memory?

Eon wrote on 2020-03-23, 13:19:

Hello thanks for the reponse […]
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Hello thanks for the reponse

So yeah i do hit f1 but it get stuck on the boot up screen like this

20200323_141516.jpg

Can the bios be corrupted on this model?

The keyboard works fine i had a few bios error because the battery was bad i changed it.

Cheers!

Not sure if yours is the same, but on my thinkpads, pressing F1 is not enough, I have to keep it pressed all the time until it enters the BIOS.

Hello again,

it was the ram i removed it and hit f1,

it works!
Thanks for the help

Now to find this:

The original Hard drive caddy or just the connector so i can make an adaptor

Anyways Cheers!

From what I remember the 770 series is the only one that used that type of caddy and luckily for me all my units came with one.

Unlike most Thinkpads the 770 comes with a special caddy box and a special cable inside the box that connects to the HD.

If I remember correctly it can boot from CD or DVD. Not sure if it could boot from USB, I don't think so.
Unfortunately it pre-dates integrated Ethernet, so no boot from LAN.

Hello again,

If you guys know someone that can sell me one, send them my way.
For now, i'm going to try to boot it up from cd to see if i can do it.

Thanks again, cheers!

Just get yourself a 32-bit Linux Live CD image. It should just work. I remember installing Linux on it back in the day and it worked. You might just have some problems with video as there is no modern kernel mode driver for the video chip, so you need to either use the old X11 driver (which some distros don't include any more), or fall back to VESA.

Hello,

in case of Thinkpads this site is supposed to have a lot of information
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:770Z
Germans can use that one:
https://thinkwiki.de/770Z
https://thinkpad-forum.de/content/

You can try -> https://www.impactcomputers.com/12j0426.html, but you'll need to make sure that the drive comes with the caddy, or else it's moot.

AFAIK the hardaware maintenance manual does not list a model # just for the caddy itself.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-24, 14:51:

You can try -> https://www.impactcomputers.com/12j0426.html, but you'll need to make sure that the drive comes with the caddy, or else it's moot.

AFAIK the hardaware maintenance manual does not list a model # just for the caddy itself.

Thanks for the site i think i found the adaptor

it's not cheap thou!

https://www.impactcomputers.com/11j8942.html

Eon wrote on 2020-03-24, 18:37:

Thanks for the site i think i found the adaptor […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-24, 14:51:

You can try -> https://www.impactcomputers.com/12j0426.html, but you'll need to make sure that the drive comes with the caddy, or else it's moot.

AFAIK the hardaware maintenance manual does not list a model # just for the caddy itself.

Thanks for the site i think i found the adaptor

it's not cheap thou!

https://www.impactcomputers.com/11j8942.html

That's not the primary HDD caddy - that's an adapter that allows you to put a second HDD in the removable ultrabay.

Take a look at https://cdn-yams.schibsted.com/api/v1/imagest … .jpg?rule=mview

AFAIK the primary HDD caddy is not sold by itself by IBM (or vendors) unless it's from a liquidator, the primary caddy is supplied with a drive.

You should be able to boot from the Ultrabay adapter. Boot options can be set in the BIOS. It connects as a master to the secondary IDE controller.

Hello again,

Thank you for all your help i found a caddy and an hhd that go with it.
Now i'm in driver nightmare, i installed win98.
Would love to find an iso or a real disc for a driver recovery.

Thanks again

Some recovery discs for TP 770 are available here https://archive.org/details/LegacyThinkPadRecovery
One of them was German AFAIR
There is also a guy on thinkpads forum that can help
https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=128170

Hello again,

I completely forgot to post. I found a fix for the recovery disc problem.
On this page https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=132294.
Oh and btw for anyone looking for recovery disk the guy from forum.thinkpads won't give you any if you are not an active user for some time already on the forum and have actives posts.

Thank you all for the help.