Ahhhh thank you!!! I love the interaction :) Hearing everyone's nostalgic memories and experiences really brings me back. I also love learning from everyone on the Channel if there is something to figure out. Thanks for a being a part of TheRetroRecall!
One issue with cloning something as old as an XP HDD to SSD is that you won't have optimal alignment. I don't remember the command but there was a way to do a NTFS format on XP with proper alignment. If I remember the issue correctly, the wrong alignment causes certain reads and writes to hit 2 cells when 1 cell would have held all the data with correctly alignment.
Yes. I checked and it's not 4K aligned (however not far off). That said, it's an easy repair with a utility even with the OS on the drive. Even rebuilding it wouldn't be much of a chore. My biggest challenge was cloning the HDD and it not booting at all. It was only when I made it a raw drive again and installed from scratch it worked properly.
If cloned with a software that is aware of SSDs (like Acronis' bootable CD ISO image which is public on their servers (obviously can't put a link here), alignment won't be an issue as it takes care of it while copying it over
I've never had too much luck cloning anything with these nifty smart tools. I'll go to dd or ddrescue on linux (Ubuntu in my case) and probably save time in the end. While the dd bit-by-bit copy takes some time I won't have to try this and that and the third thing experimenting what aligns and finalizes and what not to the end result after a fast smart copy. This approach of course requires a computer with linux booting capability and the necessary connections for the job. Even cloning over USB can be a bit dodgy no matter what the tools!
Fun story, had that exact issue with the hard drive replacement, happened with a Z60M and Z60T that i got, drove me crazy, and ended up with me completely cleaning the system and installing all the original software, was a nightmare at the time, glad that i did it for my Tipads!
Awesome! I've never had that happen before using Macrum. It would just normally work in the next system. All is well that ends well - installation from scratch and it worked.
I actually have a few old computers, all I got for free from my school. A Compaq Armada E500 running Windows 98SE, a Dell Latitude D630 running Windows XP Home SP3 and a HP Compaq dc5800 SFF desktop PC running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP2.
A few years ago I did the IDE-mSATA 128GB upgrade on my Amiga 1200. That amount of storage lets me put the entire game library on there and the full public domain library and still have 30-50GB free heh!
also i have a minty leather ibm laptop bag that has the old ibm like on your computer. it has the over strap the zippers have the red ball on them.......i was pretty happy with finding it.
I love old ThinkPads! The oldest one in my collection is a 380XD from the late 90s. Still works perfectly, and the battery still holds a charge for about an hour. I actually just ordered a T21, I'm excited to get it and throw Windows 98 onto it,
I do not have any particular memories about the specific device, but it is just the right amount of bulk that is totally acceptable in my eyes. This machine would serve someone even to today, like that aunt who only goes on Pinterest and checks Facebook marketplace. heh
I have a spinning rust bias for retro and I get a little sad when I see more & more go straight for the flash-based storage. At the same time I understand people's desire to eke out a bit more performance from their machines.
Yea the SSD makes a huge difference the main thing is the random file access. Windows is made from thousands of small files so it loads extremely fast when access times are in nano seconds.
Having done an HDD to SSD copy many times. The biggest issue is in the "page file" portion of the HDD. SSD's don't use it, to prevent premature NAND failure.
Watching this is cool, but also made me sad. I had one of these machines back in 2005 as a "test" laptop from my employer and they basically gave it to me when they upgraded to newer T series around 2007. I had it sitting down in the basement until around 2018 when I e-wasted it along with 3 other old Desktop PC's, all of which I now wish I had kept. :( I even had the massive docking station for it!
No way!!! That's unfortunate, however you're not alone in that act. Many people have sent along their 'what am I going to do with this' systems to ewaste only to regret it later. I was one of those people before starting up the channel.
A fine upgrade!👍👍 Cleaning that ram., stick with IPA., may make it work and 2 gig., of ram., is the maximum which that computer can handle. Perhaps you could make a cover for the ram.. I have one laptop which has an IDE., interface, a Dell Inspiron 9300 and I have considered obtaining one of those adaptors and drives, but I have a few working IDE., HD., so they will do for now. I did have Sparky Linux LXQT installed on the 9300, but it's now has LMDE6 installed and so far it's handling basic tasks well, YT videos can only be played at the lowest settings though, but the computer is over 18 years old.
The only thing I found to be consistent with copying old drives over to new ones is using dd in linux. Havent had any issues since. I've been through at least 30+ drives at this point with no errors. Maybe check that out :) Love the g series thinkpad!
what i would do on the ssd closure since you maybe not have the drive caddy is to use tape and make a little "notch" so you with ease can get the ssd out again.
Another great video. I think it's a partition aligment and/or boot code problem that prevented the SSD from booting. I would probably load the XP CD and go to Recovery (R key) and go to the command prompt. There are two commands: fixmbr and fixboot. There is also chkdsk C: /p. I usually use Norton Ghost 12.x. It does a pretty job. According with interwebs, that laptop seems to bave Intel 852GME as chipset which supports upto 2GB DDR-333. It may like 2x 1GB DDR-400 memory modules as long as the SPD has support for DDR-333 (faster memory has support for slower speeds for compatibility reasons), it will just run at slower speed. But, yes, some machines are picky.
You should do a video about protoweb it is a thing that restores the old web from the 90s to the early 2000s you should try it, i would love to see a video on it.
I have used other utilities by Acronis, so that doesn't surprise me. I am going to reattempt it with other software / other settings to see if it was a 'ME' problem :)
@@TheRetroRecall Given its age, and well cpu, maybe Antix. I know Antix has a good wide range for support, or Elive. Something really performance free.
Some notebooks and pc are quite nitpicky about certain sticks of ram maybe try it on another pc. Also try passing a white eraser rubber on the tracks of the memory stick.
I like retaining Windows licenses as well. In fact, as much as possible, I like to keep the originally installed OS intact, along with the software, especially if it was paid software, but delete personal files.
Here's a tip that will save you a lot of grief on upgrading some Dell laptops to a digital drive (Like a D820 for example) if it doesn't see the drive. Add a thin cardboard shim to adjust the drive height and try it again. I've run into this several times and for some reason it works. I found this solution online after hours of frustration the first time.
Just picked one up at a thrift store bag and all for 10 bucks. The HD was crap so installed a M Key to IDE card, 2 gigs ram, had Ubuntu locked out and XP, but even though XP would load it would crash when reading the drive. Got Raspi Debian installed but no mouse pointer. Am at it doing OpenSuse will see how that goes.
@@TheRetroRecall Tried Ubuntu it failed, would not accept the SSD formatting. Tried Peppermint would not install bootloader. Tried OpenSuse, seems to have installed, but would not load. Puppy did not like. AntiX installed just fine. A potato comes back. I have an IDE adapter, may try to get the old drive cleaned up. Have 5 IDE 2.5 inchers but they are all too thick. But have an OS running with AntiX and KDE Plasma.
@@TheRetroRecall No Distro liked it except.....AntiX. Success. I have CD's with old Distro's I burned back in the 90's, they all work. I have 4+ 2.5 IDE HD's but they were all too thick. So went with the M key SSD Adapter. So the Potato is up and running with AntiX, it likes the new SSD it is okay with the 2GB of ram even the alternate keys will shut off, they would not even with BIOS settings in a Peppermint install. Was surprised, as it had Ubuntu/XP dual install but Ubuntu would not install to the SSD.
I worked at IBM NL when these came out. For the day they were absolutely amazing. It was the time when desktop replacement was a thing, people wanted to swap the chunk of crt and the hum of the 486 hanging in a sidecar under their desk gone. It's been a couple of days since, if I recall correctly 3Gb of DDR333 was the maximum, if you could get a 2Gb stick. They were prohibitively expensive, I've seen a couple of those made by Wang. You could put a 2GB and a 1GB in G41 in only one combination to make it work. It made little sense to do so at the time, hardly any software could use that vast amount of RAM. I think Lotus Notes 5, Lotus e-Suite (a very nice, Java based Office package that went nowhere), some Oracle clients, Maemo and Yellow Dog could. I thought 120GB was the largest possible drive size for the G41, is that 128GB mSATA one of those 119Gib drives? I still have my T43p and R52 with a 15" UXGA (1600x1200) display from back in the day. Amazing build quality, compared to modern laptops. The screen of the R52 developed a red hue recently, either the screen or the ATI card may be about to expire. Just picked up a nice T60 with a bit more muscle to replace the R52, another great retro gaming machine.
That's awesome, and yes I believe it is registering at 128gb, but reading at 119gb. I will be on the hunt for more memory, however I think the max was 2gb for this machine based on others experiences. Either way, anything is worth a try!
@@TheRetroRecall You may be right, regarding RAM. It's a while back, perhaps the 2GB DDR333 sticks went into something else. I'd be surprised if you found one, they were partner off spec development parts that were tested in 'typical use cases'. After testing they sometimes got lost in parts drawers. Or they ended up in Frankensystems that happen when you have time, a screwdriver and about 2500 meters of warehouse shelving. The 'destroy samples' message sometimes got lost, for engineers it's hard to cut a bleeding edge part in two. Some of these parts end up in the wild like that. These memory modules didn't make it, DDR2 passed them by. You can play Civilization 2 and Simcity 2000 on OS2/WARP! on that G41. That is almost unique retro gaming, I don't think that video has ever been made.
waw i did the same thing to a pars laptop the other day! it had 2 ddr266 256mb sticks and i put 2 1gb ddr400 sticks and you are right its like night and day
Excellent work, I was looking for a video on exactly this subject. I own an IBM T40 running xp sp3 and wondering if these exact parts would work in my machine, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Its ether that or perhaps picking up a caddy for the expansion bay and plugging the ssd via that method, there by holding on to the hdd for data storage purposes only. I use the T40 extensively along side a pen tablet in my teaching practice to access text books, documents etc... and receive other materials and communications via email from students, freeing me up from continually having to switch screens on my pen tablet, improving work flow. The 4:3 display is also a game changer for ease of reading. I will also be making use of the card bus slot in the near future by picking up a PCMCIA card for ~ $10 to expand the number of usb ports on the machine. I love the versatility and the modifiability of these early t-pads ...still very capable as dedicated machines in this day and age. I just love them, there's a certain mystique about these vintage Thinkpads, just something about them...crazy good stuff!...thanks for the video.
You are welcome! I love Thinkpads as you can see in my many thinkpad videos so far lol. I agree, they are built like tanks and with proper updates can be used today. The HDD area is always a challenge especially if parts are missing, etc. If you have the right caddy for the existing ide / sata HDD - you can easily get the MSATA adapters or SSD drives for these (from Amazon) I also posted the links for what I had used. Look through the comments as there is a lot of great discussion around this. Thanks for watching!
with hearing the whole thing on why you dont do ssds made me think the experience would be nice... issue is those older laptop drives arent the most reliable and i like reliable media to be in my stuff
I love the experience and for what I do, platter drives are fine as I have images of everything I work on. But yes I get the reliability aspect for sure.
Regarding SSDs in retro PCs, there are couple of things that needs to be adressed. First - partition alignment. It is good idea to partition a drive using livecd linux and ensure it is aligned to 1MB. Second - that ide44 to m.2 adapter. Most of those utilizes poor controllers that are only capable of ATA33 speed and that is obviously your case. Is is much faster though because SSD is vastly superior in terms of access time. Regarding RAM, sometimes one module won't work in slot 0, but works fine in slot 1, try swapping them around in all possible configurations.
This. Need to make sure the adapter has a Jm20330 controller or better... They top out at around 78MB/s, but that's plenty fast enough for a P4. The bigger issue is, those dogfish SSDs have no DRAM cache. better off getting a Samsung pm851 mSATA SSD used off eBay for cheap instead just to have cache onboard, especially since a lot of stuff one might do on XP has the problem of moving around a bunch of smaller files, which that SSD will effectively choke on.
It was not, I just confirmed this as well. Never thought about it to be honest. It would be interesting to see if I would notice a performance boost above what I already have - due to the limitations of the IDE bus. It's night and day already and boots almost immediately.
Yeah, a lot of this older hardware will have some random quirks that make them stop working. That said, the retro community is doing a great job of restoring them :)
Just Use Windows Vista or Windows 7, becuz Windwos XP doesnt have any optimization with SSD and in disk defragmentation, the Win xp do a disk defragmentation method which is for harddisks. If do for ssd, SSD becomes lower life with read write cycles. In Windows vista or 7 have better support for SSD and have the new defragmentation method with TRIM method feature
Thanks - I've heard about this, however from what I understand is if you run a utility it can correct this. That said, putting. A later version of Windows or Linux on this system in the future may be a fun option.
When you use Macrium reflect to copy a system disk it pretty much never work to use the Intelligent copy method, it fails to copy over MBR records and stuff when you use this method. to get the best result that works pretty much every time is to go to settings and use the sector by sector copy method and make sure to orient the partitions Exactly the same way as on the source drive. you can increase the partition size and it will work too but they must be put the same order on the drive. I have a whole computer dedicated for hard drives that have recovery software, test software and cloning all together. I can install two drives and make a direct copy to a new drive without making any images. quick and easy
I'll check that out and attempt it again. It's funny as I've used the default settings for countless other clones and no issues. It must have been something a little different with his config that causing it. Thanks for the help!
@@TheRetroRecall I had a few successful attempts using that method too but it been from an equal sized drive to another. I think some sectors that have with the boot sectors and such don’t have any specific data about them in the MBR and Macrium just sees them as waste data skipping it. I always use the slower sector by sector to always get every piece of the old drive transferred but it may fail too if you shuffle the partitions around.
@@TheRetroRecall I actually always do it with Macrium. But I use a bit older version that does not require any logins and crap. It even works as a portable version. I can just copy the whole folder to a different computer and open it directly. It does not work with the newer versions sadly enough
The problem you had with the copy of the whole disk through Macrium has and still is haunting me too. The very same problem I have on an Acer Extensa 5220 upgraded to the max. Its OS, a Win 7 32bit, is non-copyable no matter what I do. Change the USB/SATA interface? Done. Use another copy software? Done. Change SSD? Done Results? Must I really tell? Go and make a new install of Win 7 32 bit and it works fine, try and copy the old 80Gb SATA drive on a SSD and it freezes during boot-up with error messages. Always. Never could understand why, since it seems everyone else I could ask and their cousin has always managed a perfect copy of their disks. Regretfully I bid you welcome in this little, unlucky club.
Haha, I loved reading this. To be honest, I have no idea what the issue is buy I am determined to find out. There have been a lot of great suggestions in the comments, so in my spare time (haha!) I am going to take a look and try. If I EVER get it going, you know I will post an update ;) Thanks for watching!!
Hello i was wondering if you would be able to put a download of the drivers that this computer uses (thinkpad g41) as i had to re install windows xp and i cant find drivers for sound graphics or ethernet.
I rec'd your email, found the drivers and was going to upload them for you to archive.org. Unfortunately they are down at the moment. I also replied to your email :). As soon as they are back up I will upload an ISO.
wowza, what a beefy laptop.... Sadly my oldest system currently is a Dell Precision T3500 with a quad-core Xeon and 24GB of RAM... I tried to install XP x64 edition, but but it failed so it's running Vista :) I'm currently looking to get a system that can run Win 95/98/2K/XP natively for gaming, ultimately like a 1ghz P3 system with 256-512MB Ram that I can get a good GPU in and setup like multiple drives or CF card to IDE adapter, and just have each OS on a different card and a second drive with all my software and games on....
That's awesome! Don't give up on looking. That's how I started getting back into it. I sourced parts one by one and got exactly what I wanted. Before you knew it I had a system and well ... here I am! :)
Old Sys/Net Admin here.... 2 suggestions. (1) Label that SSD conversion case with the model and size of the SSD. (2) You might want to check if XP knows how to do SSD Trim??? I don't think it does.
@@TheRetroRecall Thanks for the video. I really enjoy keeping systems running for as long as possible. And... Upgrading with new tech if it's feasible.
Another solution for storage ive seen for machines like this is a IDE to compact flash card reader. Its not the best solutiond but it saves you the time if justifying putting a Sata ssd in a machine this old. 😂
CF and SD card to IDE adapters are dumb. Neither of them are designed for the use case as a system drive with a crapton of random writing and will wear out/fail quickly. Ask me how I know 😒... To add insult to injury, some of the SD card adapters cause filesystem corruption right out of the box due to buggy firmware. I'll take mSATA to IDE (or the modern equivalent M.2 SATA to IDE if you need a bit more capacity for cheap) any day over CF or SD
I've used the compact flash to IDE a few times and have not experienced an issue, however when I tell you a few times... It's exactly that. It seems you have way more experience based on use. They are much easier to swap out when using the system for OS testing, but again - that's just a use case :).
@@TheRetroRecall I've used CF cards as OS drives in old laptops (think 486 to Pentium II era) before, mainly because they were (at the time, some 15y ago) the only financially viable option for solid state storage and only required a passive/mechanical adapter. Most of those died within 6 months of use, even the "premium" MLC cards from Kingston, Sandisk and the like. Some suddenly got incredibly slow (double digit KB/s), others just dropped dead mid-use and were never detected again. For applications where there aren't a lot of writes, like a bootable CF with DOS on it for firmware/BIOS flashing, or as something like a dedicated memtest86 boot CF, they can last virtually forever, but throw something like Win9x at it with tons of tiny files and lots of constant writing as the OS isn't aware of flash-based storage and it'll write itself to death. The fact that the controllers in those cards are pretty simple/dumb and hardly do any wear levelling like a real SSD would doesn't help either
Haha. I think if you set the 4k alignment up correctly and adjust the TRIM then it should work fine. I did NOT do that in this case but I will be going back to do so soon :). To be honest, I just love the spinning rust - unfortunately these IDE drives are getting hard to find.
I love that you reply on everybodies, thoughts and comments! you’re a superstar!
Ahhhh thank you!!! I love the interaction :) Hearing everyone's nostalgic memories and experiences really brings me back. I also love learning from everyone on the Channel if there is something to figure out. Thanks for a being a part of TheRetroRecall!
I love that era of Thinkpad. IBM built those things like tanks.
Also, Good choice on the drive, I've had good luck with Dogfish for cheap SSDs.
Very cheap from Amazon, and happy so far!
Funny you say that, as the G40 and G41 were built by Acer for IBM 🤣
Really? I had no idea. I knew some of their desktop line was, however I thought all of their thinkpad line was strictly IBM.
One issue with cloning something as old as an XP HDD to SSD is that you won't have optimal alignment. I don't remember the command but there was a way to do a NTFS format on XP with proper alignment. If I remember the issue correctly, the wrong alignment causes certain reads and writes to hit 2 cells when 1 cell would have held all the data with correctly alignment.
Yes. I checked and it's not 4K aligned (however not far off). That said, it's an easy repair with a utility even with the OS on the drive. Even rebuilding it wouldn't be much of a chore. My biggest challenge was cloning the HDD and it not booting at all. It was only when I made it a raw drive again and installed from scratch it worked properly.
If cloned with a software that is aware of SSDs (like Acronis' bootable CD ISO image which is public on their servers (obviously can't put a link here), alignment won't be an issue as it takes care of it while copying it over
Thanks for this!
I've never had too much luck cloning anything with these nifty smart tools. I'll go to dd or ddrescue on linux (Ubuntu in my case) and probably save time in the end. While the dd bit-by-bit copy takes some time I won't have to try this and that and the third thing experimenting what aligns and finalizes and what not to the end result after a fast smart copy. This approach of course requires a computer with linux booting capability and the necessary connections for the job. Even cloning over USB can be a bit dodgy no matter what the tools!
Ah fair point re:USB. I never thought about that being a factor, but can be a very real one.
Fun story, had that exact issue with the hard drive replacement, happened with a Z60M and Z60T that i got, drove me crazy, and ended up with me completely cleaning the system and installing all the original software, was a nightmare at the time, glad that i did it for my Tipads!
Awesome! I've never had that happen before using Macrum. It would just normally work in the next system. All is well that ends well - installation from scratch and it worked.
I never knew there was a G-series ThinkPad.
I knew about the A, T, R, Z, W, and X series previously.
Wonderful video, by the way!
Thank you and yes, quite a nice line of machines - desktop replacements :)
I actually have a few old computers, all I got for free from my school. A Compaq Armada E500 running Windows 98SE, a Dell Latitude D630 running Windows XP Home SP3 and a HP Compaq dc5800 SFF desktop PC running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP2.
That's awesome!!! I'm happy you are maintaining them. You can do a lot with that range of hardware :)
I remember going through a ton of pain cloning a drive for my T41. I don’t remember what I did with Ghost but I didn’t use all of the default options.
Yeah a spent a few hours and stopped as I wanted to get this out. That said, I do plan on doing some tests as I have the image.
A few years ago I did the IDE-mSATA 128GB upgrade on my Amiga 1200. That amount of storage lets me put the entire game library on there and the full public domain library and still have 30-50GB free heh!
Hahaha awesome!!!
also i have a minty leather ibm laptop bag that has the old ibm like on your computer. it has the over strap the zippers have the red ball on them.......i was pretty happy with finding it.
That's awesome! Hopefully you have an IBM to put in it :)
I love old ThinkPads! The oldest one in my collection is a 380XD from the late 90s. Still works perfectly, and the battery still holds a charge for about an hour. I actually just ordered a T21, I'm excited to get it and throw Windows 98 onto it,
That's awesome! One of my earlier videos is on the 380xd, go check it out. It should be in my Thinkpads playlist.
i used to use this laptop to Lan Red Alert 2 and Generals Zero Hour with a friend.
Haha nice!! It's a great (although heavy) machine!
I do not have any particular memories about the specific device, but it is just the right amount of bulk that is totally acceptable in my eyes. This machine would serve someone even to today, like that aunt who only goes on Pinterest and checks Facebook marketplace. heh
Haha so true!! I love the bulk, and the odd shape - it gives it so much character :). And besides, it's a Thinkpad!!
Wow. A ThiccPad! I always wanted it but ended up getting the W701 instead.
Hahah indeed!! Love their stuff.
If i can find the files i will 3D Print the covers for you.
That would be AMAZING!!
Best wishes for 2024. Thankx for sharing with us. Nice ThinkPad too. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
You're welcome, best wishes to you as well!!! Thanks for watching!
I like it when you upgrade to laptop or computer to max
Thanks! I will be getting that secondary memory replaced as well so it will have even more memory.
6:46 i use the same ide adapter in my thinkpads with 32gb msata ssds, works like a treat
Nice!
I have a spinning rust bias for retro and I get a little sad when I see more & more go straight for the flash-based storage. At the same time I understand people's desire to eke out a bit more performance from their machines.
For sure, and you know how much I love the original platter drives. I'll keep the IDE drive around for a rainy day :)
Yea the SSD makes a huge difference the main thing is the random file access. Windows is made from thousands of small files so it loads extremely fast when access times are in nano seconds.
100%. It's night and day!
Oh man the G41. BEAUTIFUL.
Agreed!! Such a cool system.
Having done an HDD to SSD copy many times. The biggest issue is in the "page file" portion of the HDD.
SSD's don't use it, to prevent premature NAND failure.
I'll look into this, thanks for the info!
Watching this is cool, but also made me sad. I had one of these machines back in 2005 as a "test" laptop from my employer and they basically gave it to me when they upgraded to newer T series around 2007. I had it sitting down in the basement until around 2018 when I e-wasted it along with 3 other old Desktop PC's, all of which I now wish I had kept. :( I even had the massive docking station for it!
No way!!! That's unfortunate, however you're not alone in that act. Many people have sent along their 'what am I going to do with this' systems to ewaste only to regret it later. I was one of those people before starting up the channel.
A fine upgrade!👍👍 Cleaning that ram., stick with IPA., may make it work and 2 gig., of ram., is the maximum which that computer can handle.
Perhaps you could make a cover for the ram.. I have one laptop which has an IDE., interface, a Dell Inspiron 9300 and I have considered obtaining one of those adaptors and drives, but I have a few working IDE., HD., so they will do for now.
I did have Sparky Linux LXQT installed on the 9300, but it's now has LMDE6 installed and so far it's handling basic tasks well, YT videos can only be played at the lowest settings though, but the computer is over 18 years old.
That's awesome, and I will try that cleaning of the ram and report back!
this thing should meet up with my Alienware D900T its an absolute Beast
For sure!! I just looked at the specs. Interesting enough they both came out around the same time!
Das habe ich bei dem uralten Toshibalaptop meiner Frau gemacht, als die IDE kaputt ging.
Mit der kleinen SSD rennt das Ding wie eine Rakete.
It's amazing how much of a difference SSD makes in a system. I do love the old drives though - mostly in desktop systems :)
The only thing I found to be consistent with copying old drives over to new ones is using dd in linux. Havent had any issues since. I've been through at least 30+ drives at this point with no errors. Maybe check that out :)
Love the g series thinkpad!
I just read from another comment they recommended DD in Linux as well. I'm definitely going to check that out, thank you! And yes - G!
what i would do on the ssd closure since you maybe not have the drive caddy is to use tape and make a little "notch" so you with ease can get the ssd out again.
Smart!! I do plan on getting the caddy, bezel here soon. I'm on the hunt!
Another great video.
I think it's a partition aligment and/or boot code problem that prevented the SSD from booting. I would probably load the XP CD and go to Recovery (R key) and go to the command prompt. There are two commands: fixmbr and fixboot. There is also chkdsk C: /p.
I usually use Norton Ghost 12.x. It does a pretty job.
According with interwebs, that laptop seems to bave Intel 852GME as chipset which supports upto 2GB DDR-333. It may like 2x 1GB DDR-400 memory modules as long as the SPD has support for DDR-333 (faster memory has support for slower speeds for compatibility reasons), it will just run at slower speed. But, yes, some machines are picky.
Thanks for this info!
A ssd makes many things better!
Keep up the good work!
Thank you and yes!!
You should do a video about protoweb it is a thing that restores the old web from the 90s to the early 2000s you should try it, i would love to see a video on it.
Added to the list!
Everything was great but then it went from great to AWESOME when I saw Doom 3 on the desktop... 💯🍻
Hahahha yes!! You saw they eh!? :)
@@TheRetroRecall Great game... That was indeed a great addition for XP setup back in the days... Cheers!
Nothing beats Acronis for cloning. All others are hit or miss.
I have used other utilities by Acronis, so that doesn't surprise me. I am going to reattempt it with other software / other settings to see if it was a 'ME' problem :)
this thing would be neat on a very light weight linux system.
That would be neat to see, maybe a future vid! What distro are you thinking?
@@TheRetroRecall Given its age, and well cpu, maybe Antix. I know Antix has a good wide range for support, or Elive. Something really performance free.
32-bit editions of Windows XP are limited to a total of 4 gigabytes of memory.
I think this system is limited to 2gb hardware wise.
Some notebooks and pc are quite nitpicky about certain sticks of ram maybe try it on another pc.
Also try passing a white eraser rubber on the tracks of the memory stick.
Will do. I do think it's the stick, but I will definitely try and provide and update. Thank you!
I like retaining Windows licenses as well. In fact, as much as possible, I like to keep the originally installed OS intact, along with the software, especially if it was paid software, but delete personal files.
100% Especially if you can still activate the License :)
Here's a tip that will save you a lot of grief on upgrading some Dell laptops to a digital drive (Like a D820 for example) if it doesn't see the drive. Add a thin cardboard shim to adjust the drive height and try it again. I've run into this several times and for some reason it works. I found this solution online after hours of frustration the first time.
I have never heard of this, it seems kind of crazy that that would be a thing. I'll keep it in mind!! Thanks!
Links to adapters etc., would have been nice. Several items I have tried from Amazon lately haven't worked.
Links have been updated in the description.
@@TheRetroRecall Thank You!!
Just picked one up at a thrift store bag and all for 10 bucks. The HD was crap so installed a M Key to IDE card, 2 gigs ram, had Ubuntu locked out and XP, but even though XP would load it would crash when reading the drive. Got Raspi Debian installed but no mouse pointer. Am at it doing OpenSuse will see how that goes.
Ok, that's cool! I love when people find these systems and restore them. Saves history and its a lot of fun as well! Good luck!
@@TheRetroRecall Tried Ubuntu it failed, would not accept the SSD formatting. Tried Peppermint would not install bootloader. Tried OpenSuse, seems to have installed, but would not load. Puppy did not like. AntiX installed just fine. A potato comes back. I have an IDE adapter, may try to get the old drive cleaned up. Have 5 IDE 2.5 inchers but they are all too thick. But have an OS running with AntiX and KDE Plasma.
What about a version of Linux Mint?
@@TheRetroRecall No Distro liked it except.....AntiX. Success. I have CD's with old Distro's I burned back in the 90's, they all work. I have 4+ 2.5 IDE HD's but they were all too thick. So went with the M key SSD Adapter. So the Potato is up and running with AntiX, it likes the new SSD it is okay with the 2GB of ram even the alternate keys will shut off, they would not even with BIOS settings in a Peppermint install. Was surprised, as it had Ubuntu/XP dual install but Ubuntu would not install to the SSD.
Thanks for the update, cool you got it working (the potato 😂)
I worked at IBM NL when these came out. For the day they were absolutely amazing. It was the time when desktop replacement was a thing, people wanted to swap the chunk of crt and the hum of the 486 hanging in a sidecar under their desk gone. It's been a couple of days since, if I recall correctly 3Gb of DDR333 was the maximum, if you could get a 2Gb stick. They were prohibitively expensive, I've seen a couple of those made by Wang. You could put a 2GB and a 1GB in G41 in only one combination to make it work. It made little sense to do so at the time, hardly any software could use that vast amount of RAM. I think Lotus Notes 5, Lotus e-Suite (a very nice, Java based Office package that went nowhere), some Oracle clients, Maemo and Yellow Dog could.
I thought 120GB was the largest possible drive size for the G41, is that 128GB mSATA one of those 119Gib drives?
I still have my T43p and R52 with a 15" UXGA (1600x1200) display from back in the day. Amazing build quality, compared to modern laptops. The screen of the R52 developed a red hue recently, either the screen or the ATI card may be about to expire. Just picked up a nice T60 with a bit more muscle to replace the R52, another great retro gaming machine.
That's awesome, and yes I believe it is registering at 128gb, but reading at 119gb. I will be on the hunt for more memory, however I think the max was 2gb for this machine based on others experiences. Either way, anything is worth a try!
@@TheRetroRecall You may be right, regarding RAM. It's a while back, perhaps the 2GB DDR333 sticks went into something else. I'd be surprised if you found one, they were partner off spec development parts that were tested in 'typical use cases'.
After testing they sometimes got lost in parts drawers. Or they ended up in Frankensystems that happen when you have time, a screwdriver and about 2500 meters of warehouse shelving. The 'destroy samples' message sometimes got lost, for engineers it's hard to cut a bleeding edge part in two. Some of these parts end up in the wild like that. These memory modules didn't make it, DDR2 passed them by.
You can play Civilization 2 and Simcity 2000 on OS2/WARP! on that G41. That is almost unique retro gaming, I don't think that video has ever been made.
Hahahahah os/2 is a painful OS!!! I did a video on that and wanted to cry trying to get it to work lol.
waw i did the same thing to a pars laptop the other day! it had 2 ddr266 256mb sticks and i put 2 1gb ddr400 sticks and you are right its like night and day
That's awesome!!!
Excellent work, I was looking for a video on exactly this subject. I own an IBM T40 running xp sp3 and wondering if these exact parts would work in my machine, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Its ether that or perhaps picking up a caddy for the expansion bay and plugging the ssd via that method, there by holding on to the hdd for data storage purposes only. I use the T40 extensively along side a pen tablet in my teaching practice to access text books, documents etc... and receive other materials and communications via email from students, freeing me up from continually having to switch screens on my pen tablet, improving work flow. The 4:3 display is also a game changer for ease of reading. I will also be making use of the card bus slot in the near future by picking up a PCMCIA card for ~ $10 to expand the number of usb ports on the machine. I love the versatility and the modifiability of these early t-pads ...still very capable as dedicated machines in this day and age. I just love them, there's a certain mystique about these vintage Thinkpads, just something about them...crazy good stuff!...thanks for the video.
You are welcome! I love Thinkpads as you can see in my many thinkpad videos so far lol. I agree, they are built like tanks and with proper updates can be used today. The HDD area is always a challenge especially if parts are missing, etc. If you have the right caddy for the existing ide / sata HDD - you can easily get the MSATA adapters or SSD drives for these (from Amazon) I also posted the links for what I had used. Look through the comments as there is a lot of great discussion around this. Thanks for watching!
with hearing the whole thing on why you dont do ssds made me think the experience would be nice... issue is those older laptop drives arent the most reliable and i like reliable media to be in my stuff
I love the experience and for what I do, platter drives are fine as I have images of everything I work on. But yes I get the reliability aspect for sure.
saludos de Perú, tengo una de estas es una maravilla me gustaria actualizarla como tu lo hiciste, es una maquina de muy buena calidad.
Agreed! I love all things ThinkPad so it's easy to love :)
Regarding SSDs in retro PCs, there are couple of things that needs to be adressed.
First - partition alignment. It is good idea to partition a drive using livecd linux and ensure it is aligned to 1MB.
Second - that ide44 to m.2 adapter. Most of those utilizes poor controllers that are only capable of ATA33 speed and that is obviously your case. Is is much faster though because SSD is vastly superior in terms of access time. Regarding RAM, sometimes one module won't work in slot 0, but works fine in slot 1, try swapping them around in all possible configurations.
Thanks for the tips!!
This. Need to make sure the adapter has a Jm20330 controller or better... They top out at around 78MB/s, but that's plenty fast enough for a P4. The bigger issue is, those dogfish SSDs have no DRAM cache. better off getting a Samsung pm851 mSATA SSD used off eBay for cheap instead just to have cache onboard, especially since a lot of stuff one might do on XP has the problem of moving around a bunch of smaller files, which that SSD will effectively choke on.
Good to know, fortunately it's a minimal use machine, but this is great info for other systems that will tend to be utilized more often.
Was the ssd aligned to 4k?
It was not, I just confirmed this as well. Never thought about it to be honest. It would be interesting to see if I would notice a performance boost above what I already have - due to the limitations of the IDE bus. It's night and day already and boots almost immediately.
i had t40 it stoped working few years ago
Yeah, a lot of this older hardware will have some random quirks that make them stop working. That said, the retro community is doing a great job of restoring them :)
the only downside to the ide to sata is you are limited to the speed of ide.....it's better for heat purposes, but otherwise not much different.
True, however I did get an extra 7 MB/s (28%) improvement in performance which was noticeable.
@@TheRetroRecallaccess times are where the real improvement is.
Definitely.
The Macrium reflect software, doesn’t always clone drives worth of shit, this is why I usually just stick to CloneZilla
Never heard of it, I'll check it out thanks!
What else that could be a problem is the ibm mite not hande the 2GB of memory
Definitely. I think though based on other users experiences, it will do the 2gb. I have another stick of memory on the way and will report back.
Just Use Windows Vista or Windows 7, becuz Windwos XP doesnt have any optimization with SSD and in disk defragmentation, the Win xp do a disk defragmentation method which is for harddisks. If do for ssd, SSD becomes lower life with read write cycles. In Windows vista or 7 have better support for SSD and have the new defragmentation method with TRIM method feature
Thanks - I've heard about this, however from what I understand is if you run a utility it can correct this. That said, putting. A later version of Windows or Linux on this system in the future may be a fun option.
When you use Macrium reflect to copy a system disk it pretty much never work to use the Intelligent copy method, it fails to copy over MBR records and stuff when you use this method. to get the best result that works pretty much every time is to go to settings and use the sector by sector copy method and make sure to orient the partitions Exactly the same way as on the source drive. you can increase the partition size and it will work too but they must be put the same order on the drive. I have a whole computer dedicated for hard drives that have recovery software, test software and cloning all together. I can install two drives and make a direct copy to a new drive without making any images. quick and easy
I'll check that out and attempt it again. It's funny as I've used the default settings for countless other clones and no issues. It must have been something a little different with his config that causing it. Thanks for the help!
@@TheRetroRecall I had a few successful attempts using that method too but it been from an equal sized drive to another.
I think some sectors that have with the boot sectors and such don’t have any specific data about them in the MBR and Macrium just sees them as waste data skipping it.
I always use the slower sector by sector to always get every piece of the old drive transferred but it may fail too if you shuffle the partitions around.
Someone also just recommended DD in Linux and has had a lot of success. I may check that out as well.
@@TheRetroRecall I actually always do it with Macrium. But I use a bit older version that does not require any logins and crap. It even works as a portable version. I can just copy the whole folder to a different computer and open it directly. It does not work with the newer versions sadly enough
The problem you had with the copy of the whole disk through Macrium has and still is haunting me too. The very same problem I have on an Acer Extensa 5220 upgraded to the max. Its OS, a Win 7 32bit, is non-copyable no matter what I do.
Change the USB/SATA interface? Done. Use another copy software? Done. Change SSD? Done
Results? Must I really tell?
Go and make a new install of Win 7 32 bit and it works fine, try and copy the old 80Gb SATA drive on a SSD and it freezes during boot-up with error messages. Always.
Never could understand why, since it seems everyone else I could ask and their cousin has always managed a perfect copy of their disks.
Regretfully I bid you welcome in this little, unlucky club.
Haha, I loved reading this. To be honest, I have no idea what the issue is buy I am determined to find out. There have been a lot of great suggestions in the comments, so in my spare time (haha!) I am going to take a look and try. If I EVER get it going, you know I will post an update ;) Thanks for watching!!
Hello i was wondering if you would be able to put a download of the drivers that this computer uses (thinkpad g41) as i had to re install windows xp and i cant find drivers for sound graphics or ethernet.
I rec'd your email, found the drivers and was going to upload them for you to archive.org. Unfortunately they are down at the moment. I also replied to your email :). As soon as they are back up I will upload an ISO.
@@TheRetroRecall ok thanks very much
No problem at all!! Happy to help :)
@@TheRetroRecall hello sorry to bother but It seems the internet archive is up and running now
@joshuat502 no bother - I will get that uploaded sometime tomorrow. I've been quite busy so apologies on the delay.
wowza, what a beefy laptop.... Sadly my oldest system currently is a Dell Precision T3500 with a quad-core Xeon and 24GB of RAM... I tried to install XP x64 edition, but but it failed so it's running Vista :) I'm currently looking to get a system that can run Win 95/98/2K/XP natively for gaming, ultimately like a 1ghz P3 system with 256-512MB Ram that I can get a good GPU in and setup like multiple drives or CF card to IDE adapter, and just have each OS on a different card and a second drive with all my software and games on....
That's awesome! Don't give up on looking. That's how I started getting back into it. I sourced parts one by one and got exactly what I wanted. Before you knew it I had a system and well ... here I am! :)
@@TheRetroRecallyeah I'm unlikely to need to start making videos about it though :)
Haha true
i did that on my 2011 MacBook pro added ssd it boots faster
It's awesome how much of a difference it makes!
Try upgrading to Windows 10
Im going to get the ram sorted first, then I will definitely give it a try!
Old Sys/Net Admin here.... 2 suggestions. (1) Label that SSD conversion case with the model and size of the SSD. (2) You might want to check if XP knows how to do SSD Trim??? I don't think it does.
I will check it out!
@@TheRetroRecall Thanks for the video. I really enjoy keeping systems running for as long as possible. And... Upgrading with new tech if it's feasible.
For sure. I mean I do what I can to keep them out of landfills / recycling centers. There's also the fun part of sharing these with everyone :)
Another solution for storage ive seen for machines like this is a IDE to compact flash card reader. Its not the best solutiond but it saves you the time if justifying putting a Sata ssd in a machine this old. 😂
Haha! Yes, I have a couple of those for a few project desktops. Much easier to swap around :)
CF and SD card to IDE adapters are dumb. Neither of them are designed for the use case as a system drive with a crapton of random writing and will wear out/fail quickly. Ask me how I know 😒... To add insult to injury, some of the SD card adapters cause filesystem corruption right out of the box due to buggy firmware. I'll take mSATA to IDE (or the modern equivalent M.2 SATA to IDE if you need a bit more capacity for cheap) any day over CF or SD
I've used the compact flash to IDE a few times and have not experienced an issue, however when I tell you a few times... It's exactly that. It seems you have way more experience based on use. They are much easier to swap out when using the system for OS testing, but again - that's just a use case :).
@@TheRetroRecall I've used CF cards as OS drives in old laptops (think 486 to Pentium II era) before, mainly because they were (at the time, some 15y ago) the only financially viable option for solid state storage and only required a passive/mechanical adapter. Most of those died within 6 months of use, even the "premium" MLC cards from Kingston, Sandisk and the like. Some suddenly got incredibly slow (double digit KB/s), others just dropped dead mid-use and were never detected again. For applications where there aren't a lot of writes, like a bootable CF with DOS on it for firmware/BIOS flashing, or as something like a dedicated memtest86 boot CF, they can last virtually forever, but throw something like Win9x at it with tons of tiny files and lots of constant writing as the OS isn't aware of flash-based storage and it'll write itself to death. The fact that the controllers in those cards are pretty simple/dumb and hardly do any wear levelling like a real SSD would doesn't help either
@@Knaeckebrotsaege system on modules are 100% industrial compact flash cards. 👍
Pentium Floor ☠
Lol, now now, there is nothing wrong with the Pentium 4 😂
I was told old machines can kill a SSD faster. Wouldn't be an issue if SSD's didn't have read write limit suck @$$ drives.
Haha. I think if you set the 4k alignment up correctly and adjust the TRIM then it should work fine. I did NOT do that in this case but I will be going back to do so soon :). To be honest, I just love the spinning rust - unfortunately these IDE drives are getting hard to find.
I'm going to upgrade my fujitsu pc with 10 gb ide to 120 gb sata ssd
I noticed quite the improvement... But I will say, it was erie looking at this old system and not hearing the clicks of the hard drive!!
@@TheRetroRecall my fans are louder than the hard disk
Haha I imagine! I know on this machine they definitely are as it is a P4!
@@TheRetroRecall Intel Room Heater :)
Haha, I was cold, why do you think I did this video 😂
i do know windows xp will read 3gb of ram if you have 4gb ram in the system.
I'm not sure if this system will support that or not. I'd be happy with 2gb in this system for sure.
Yep, 3.33GB to be precise :)
@@TheRetroRecall 2GB is the max supported capacity
Ok great to know!
@@TheRetroRecall built in graphic card is going to take some of the ram