Thinkpad Z61t and Thinkpad X60 tablet - two oldies, which are still interesting in year 2020

 Hello,
sometime ago I bought two Thinkpads, which are quite rare in Germany. Technically seen, their are real dinusauriers, but for me they represent a kind of "technical" art. I'm quite impressed, how IBM-engineers created their products. I speak about Thinkpad Z61t and X60 Tablet (X60t). Here are some photos of them.

(1) Thinkpad Z61t

(2) Thinkpad X60t

Drop me a message if you know those devices.
 

Thinkpad / Frankenpad R61i: review and imperessions

After everal months of use I have to admit, that I'm really impressed by the performance gain I could achieve. My new laptop is fast, I can run (at least) 2 virtual machines at the same time (Windows 7 and XUbuntu), and UXGA display is large enough to show all news on one screen. :-)

Ports: after BIOS update I can use all "standard" ports, like USB, ExpressCard and PCMCIA. I did not test FireWire and S-Video, because I have neither devices nor need.

I'm quite satisfied with my job, and I plan to kepp this self-made Thinkpad for another couple of years. If something goes wrong, I have already a backup solution - Fujitsu-Siemens E8410. I bought him occasionaly for 12€ and I like him. It has all features I need.

IBM Port Replicator II: a kind of review

Hello everyone,

recently I purchased - rather occasional, this story comes bit later - Port Replicator II by IBM (modell 74P6733) for my laptop T43p. While waiting for the device to arrive, I searched Google for the reviews and opinions - but found nearly nothing. This surprised me a bit, and I decided to
feel the gap and post a kind of review for the device. I don't want to be extremely precise and objective, I just tell you how it looks and feels like.

You may find the photos of the device (sorry for the quality, was made by the cell phone) in my album "My desktop / T43p & Co." on my Picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/andrey.grigorev

How it looks like...
So, as you may see, the Port Replicator II (74P6733) is quite small, black (what else should one expect from IBM???) and light. It's smaller than the laptop itself, so it's completely hidden when laptop is on the replicator.

All ports are on the back side, on the top of replicator there are 2 buttons - power on/off and undock/eject laptop.

The replicator raises laptop a bit (approx. 2 cm). It will make the typing more comfortable, if you use the internal keyboard of the laptop.

How it feels like...
Earlier, when I had to take my laptop away from the desk, I had to disconnect all the cables (and when I returned back, I had to plug them back). It was boring. Really. Network cable, boxes, eventually keyboard, power cable, external drive... All that stuff I had to pull out and then plug in again. Now, with the replicator, I have to press one button to release the laptop from all cables. And - what is more important - I need only one movement to attach all of them back. (Even PS/2 ports are recognized and "hot-plugged" - yesterday I tried it.)

As you may see on the photo, the replicator is equipped with the following ports: PS/2 (mouse + keyboard), COM, LPT, VGA, DVI, RJ11 (modem), RJ45 (Ethernet), USB 2.0 and port for the floppy drive (proprietary interface of IBM). Siince I have no external monitor, I could not test the VGA- and/or DVI-ports. But the rest just work - under both Windows and Linux.

Exotic ports - like Firewire - are not available, but - to be honest - when have you used any Firewire device for the last time?

Some people said, 1 USB 2.0 port was not enough. Actually, together with laptop you have 3 of them. Isn't it enough? Besides I have a USB 1.1 hub with 2 ports (in the form of PCMCIA card).
So, in total I have 5 ports - and I'm quite satisfied with it.

Conclusion
With this port replicator, you get a set of standard ports, which allow you to convert your laptop into desktop machine. If you are not satisfied with 3 USB 2.0 ports, you should think about
purchasing the Mini-Dock II (model 2878) - it has 4 ports.

The price you pay for it is a room on you desk. Port replicator occupies certain room.

So, that's all. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them - I will try to answer.

Debian on T43p: Show Must Go On... (From Etch to Lenny)

Hi@all,

last week I had nothing to do on Tuesday evening, so I decided to update my installation of Debian Linux from etch (Stable) to Lenny (Testing). Actually, I wanted to do it for quite long time: I knew that Lenny would bring a lot of new functions and improvements, so I did not think too long and replaced - quite bravely - the word "stable" with "testing". And here comes my story... :-)))

1. Updating kernel and GNOME (Wave 1).
My first step was to update kernel and GNOME. The update itself ran properly, but I made a mistake when selecting the kernel - I choose *-486 instead of *-686. As a result, I got only 885 MB of RAM (instead of 2 GB). I fixed it on the next day, what I describe later.

The installation/update of GNOME was easy and smooth. At the end I got the newest version of GNOME - with better appearance, better Bluetooth support, better applications. Simply better GNOME. :-)

2. Updating the rest (Wave 2)
When my kernel and GNOME were updated, I decided to update the rest. I simply went to Synaptic and selected "Mark all updates". In this way I got all the latest packages belonging to Lenny.

Having all updates installed, I checked most important functions (like WLAN, sleep mode, Bluetooth connection to the mouse) and went to bed.

3. Fighting with issues (Wave 3)
On the next day I decided to change my kernel. So, I selected the right *-686 version of the kernel and tried to install it. No way! I got an error message in Synaptic and new kernel was not installed. Better to say, it was physically installed, but no link was written into GRUB menu file. After searching for a long time I found out, that my Grub (as a software) become bug 501306 (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=501306) and must be fixed. I corrected my device.map file by adding the following line there:

(hd0) /dev/sda

That fixed all issues with the installation of the new kernel and deinstallation of the old one.

In order to install the proprietary driver for the ATI card used in my laptop, I followed the instructions found on this page (http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation_Guide). They are newer, then those I published last year for Etch.

In order to resolve the issue with cpufreq - it could not find the "ondemand" governor while booting - I installed "cpufrequtils" package.

4. Conclusion and feedback
In general I'm more than satisfied with both update (how it ran and worked) and with new version of Debian. The small issues (with GRUB and cpufreq) can be resolved rather quick and painless.

The only warning I want to give you is the download time. Synaptic needs something around 1.2 GB to download for all updates. Even with DSL (I have 16 Mbit/sec) it takes some time. Don't start such an update like "I do it while preparing for the bed"-action. It will take some your time and attention.

I hope, this short post is useful for others. As usually, any feedback is welcome.

Cheers,
Andrey