Restoring IBM Thinkpad A31

From MuHack
Revision as of 08:45, 13 June 2025 by Ceres-c (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Project: Restoring IBM Thinkpad A31
T31 booting.PNG
Status Active
Participants Dr-marco, Ceres-c
Last Update 2025-06-13

Restoring an old IBM Thinkpad A31, AKA the THICKpad.

Recently bought AC power supply and a broken Thinkpad A31 for new LCD

The motherboard seems is working with no big issues but the display needs needed some spare parts. Now it boots into the bios, we have to upgrade the hardware with an IDE SSD and some extra RAM (a whopping 2Gb total)

TODOs

  • Install OS

Issues

The original LCD display had a red tint, which hints at a defective lamp, and the backlight went dark shortly after powerup. On the other A31 we purchased, the backlight was not working at all, which hints at a defective inverter. Using the LCT from the new machine and the inverter from the original one, we now have a working screen.

Hardware Spec

The bATtlEsTatIOn has 512Mb of PC2700 RAM, which we want to upgrade, and we scavenged a 140 Gb hard disk from some other laptop, but that will also be upgraded to a IDE SSD.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.muhack.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Restoring_IBM_Thinkpad_A31&oldid=546"