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IBM Thinkpad 240Z

post #1 of 6
11/24/04 at 9:30am
Thread Starter 
My son returned home on leave from the Air Force, His IBM Thinkpad 240A (2609-51U) lost it's operating system (Windows 98 I think) and we don not have the OS CD. I'm wondering how we might go about loading and if there is anywhere we can purchase/acquire an operating system compatible with this rather old Thinkpad? Any advice/information would be greatly appreciated. Thanx.
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post #2 of 6
11/29/04 at 11:02pm
well, I found this:

http://www.directdeals.com/item_OEM-WIN98.aspx

and this:

http://shopping.yahoo.com/search;_yl...indows+98&did=

hope it helps.
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post #3 of 6
11/30/04 at 12:03pm
Thread Starter 
Dear DDA:

Thanks for the helpful information. Another question comes to mind: The Thinkpad 240Z has an external 3 1/2 drive and an external Iomega CD drive. I'm wondering if the CD will be recognized as a bootable drive and if the Win 98 and/or Win 98 SE has the requisite drivers? If you could provide answers to these that would be much appreciated. Thanx again.
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post #4 of 6
12/17/04 at 12:49pm
Thread Starter 
Dear Forum Members:

I am trying to make some progress with my outdated IBM Thinkpad. The IBM Thinkpad has an external 3.5" drive and an Iomega external CDRW drive. The original OS has been totally destroyed and we don't have the original (or for that matter) any operating system. I have visited the site(s) recommeded to purchase a new version of Win98 but my question and concern is I have no way of knowing if the CDRW drive is being recogmized. Iomega says this CDRW doesn't support DOS so I'm not sure how, or if it is even possible to have the Thinkpad to bot to the CDRW. Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions will be most appreciated. I'm trying to get this Thinkpad is working order before my son ships out to Iraq.

Warmest regards and happy holidays.

sherlock2667

PS I can't remember if I elected email notifivcations, so on the outside chance that I didn't, would anyone responding please email me at bluemax_2667@msn.com. Thanx
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post #5 of 6
12/17/04 at 3:26pm

You might try this

If you cannot boot from a Win 98 CD you can try booting from DOS-Boot Diskettes.

First of all, usually the old Win98 came with 2 DOS Boot Disks for those people who cannot boot from their CD-Drive. Is your external CD-Drive Attached via PCMCIA, USB or some kind of extra connection?
With PCMCIA or an external IDE connection you might be able to boot. Best check your BIOS. Usually IBM Laptops you just need to press the F1 key at startup to enter bios and look at the startup options. See if you can find a startup or boot from CD option. If you don't have the Win98 CD, you might try with any other boot CD you have at home just to check.

As far as I know the 240Z is either a 500Mhz Celeron or 600Mhz P3, so you could run Windows 2000 as well.
Remember also when you install Win98 that you need drivers for many devices. I am sure IBM.COM still has all drivers for that machine.

Back to installing Win98:

First of all does your Win98 come with disquettes? If not I think there was a way to make those from the CD (Just browse around the CD and read the extra notes). If yes installation is simple. You boot from the disks (remember to have your CD drive connected), it loads a generic CD Driver and accesses your CD drive automatically to install from there.

If not there is another way. You need a DOS CD Driver for your external CD drive. You could make yourself some DOS bootdisks that load your CD driver and access the CD manually. To install just enter the WIN98 directory of the windows CD and enter "setup".

You could also insert the HD in a computer that can boot from CD. But instead of entering, you abort the installation process and end up in a DOS command prompt.

From the you can format the HD and copy the win98 files like this:
Format C: /S (assuming C is the drive of the IBM laptop)
md c:\win98
copy d:\win98 c:\win98 (assuming d is your CD drive)

Then you place the hard disk back into the IBM laptop, boot from the hd, enter the win98 folder (cd\win98) and by entering "setup" you start the installation.

I hope it was not too confusing. I am sending you this by email as well, so you can write me back anytime. If you have another laptop that can boot from CD, I would recommend swapping the hard disks and install the basic files on the other laptop, swap again and then install from the IBM machine (in case there is no way to work with boot disks).
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post #6 of 6
12/30/04 at 1:43pm
Thread Starter 
Dear Forum Members, especially DDDa & Igorrr:

Success at last. Although Iomega indicated their CD-RW's are not supported in a DOS environment, I guess I proved them wrong (never tell me something can't be done, lol). I was able to get my son's IBM Thinkpad 240X (I think I called it the 240Z in my previous posts) to recognize the Iomega CD-RW. Unfortunately, I did encounter a couple of additional problems that perhaps someone here can address:

1) After loading the requisite CD drivers, I attempted to load Win 98 SE from the CD drvie and was informed that I didn't have enough memory. The install process requires 442,368 K and I only had approximately 392K free (These are approximations only). So, I copied the necessary files to my hard drive, disabled the CD drivers and was able to install Win 98 SE without incident. My question here is: Are there any statements that I can include in either my autoexec.bat or config.sys that will free up memory and if so, what would the appropriate statements be?

2) The Thinkpad 240X has a built-in modem, but I can seem to find the appropriate driver set for it. It is in fact built-in and not an added piece of hardware, so I'm not sure exactly how to proceed. I am considering purchasing a PCI modem card, but I'm not sure how I will get it installed if the CD drive won't work when Windows is running. I may be able to create a diskette, but I'm looking on advice here.

3) I believe the 240X has only 64 MB of memory, but I can't for the life of me remember how to tell. Does the DOS "mem" command tell me? My son seems to think it had 128 MB, but not sure how to determine if this is true.

As my son is scheduled to leave here in 3 days and will be shipping out to Iraq shortly after that, I'm in somewhat of a time crunch, so an immediate response would be most appreciated.

Thanx again to all who have offered advice in the past.

sherlock2667
sherlock2667@yahoo.com
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