Questions on booting from PCMCIA and thinkpad 600 hardware configuration.

[thinkpadcollection]

Have yet to research more on booting from pcmcia storage adapters on some thinkpad models: 600, T23 and R40.
Would be nice to see this just boot right from pcmcia storage first not having to boot from floppy or anything else?

Second question:
I have found one thinkpad 600 I am interested in but could not find anything on CPU processor on thinkpad 600, model type: 2645-A1U? I would love to know if that is a pentium MMX, thanks.

Cheers, Thinkpadcollection

[rkawakami]

Second question, first: From the tabook of the day, a 2645-A1U has a Pentium II 266Mhz with MMX support. The other processor available in the 600 was a Pentium MMX (233Mhz). Both do contain the MMX instruction set so I'm not sure if this answers your question. System originally was supplied without any disk so you probably don't have any COA attached. Not that it matters too much as Windows 95 was supplied with similar systems released around that time back then.

As far as booting from the PCMCIA slot, there was an external CDROM drive that attached via a PCMCIA adapter card. I believe that was the extent of getting the system to boot from that slot. From memory, CF or SD adapters cannot.

ref: http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/twbook.pdf (Withdrawn ThinkPad systems 1992-2001)

[thinkpadcollection]

Thank you for replying,

I mean OS boot on their own using PCMCIA storage card for example using SD or CF PCMCIA adapters.

Thank you for the thinkpad 600 cpu type, I can now know what is needed to obtain pentium MMX module and swap them out.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection.

[Norway Pad]

FWIW, I installed an OS on a Compact Flash card in a PCMCIA->CF adapter, and tried to have the 560Z boot from it, but it didn't work. The same card did however work when I put it in an IDE->CF adapter in the hard drive bay, and I have run that ever since instead of a HDD. I never tried the PCMCIA setup in the 600, but I believe these two models are so similar age and technology-wise that they would work the same.

As soon as you boot, though, a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter is seen as a regular storage device. Note that I use Linux on these old units, not sure what support older Windows versions have for all this.