Nice video, love these Thinkpads! I have a few information, which may be useful. This laptop have 3 battery inside; the normal leaky main battery, a rechargeable 'standby' battery and the cmos lithium battery. The green circular one is the standby one, not the cmos. And the laptop will try to charge it, so if the new one is a non rechargeable lithium one, then a charge blocking diode is recommended. (But this battery is an optional one, the laptop works without it. The purpose is to provide main battery swap ability in suspended mode without completely shutting down the machine.) There is a very high chance, that the error codes (memory,datetime,config) caused by the flat real cmos battery. Yes, this laptop can glitch out and even freeze, plus reporting memory error without good cmos battery. The cmos battery is located and soldered(!) in the very bottom of the mainboard, to replace it the laptop need to be fully disassembled. And in the end, all 3 battery prone to leak in the Butterfly which makes the preservation of these machines very hard.
Even newer machines lock up the BIOS because of the CMOS battery, I've had happen recently on a newer ThinkPad R30. On mine, one of the solder joints of the battery socket was loose and it caused the machine to freeze in the BIOS and in Windows.
Hi, nice video. Your machine is fixable. There is a soldered coin cell for RTC/CMOS at the backside of the mainboard, you have to totally dissasemble the whole machine to reach that. An empty one is always causing this hanging and freezing issues and reporting the 201 memory error. Just solder a new 3 volt cell in and your Butterfly will magically come back to life. I am a Thinkpad collector and i have repaired a few 701CS in the past. The battery you replaced is the standby battery (to keep memory content to change battery packs in standby) and must be a rechargable one, you should not pop in a non-rechargable cell. You can also just leave this one out, it's not needed for proper function.
First time I've heard that battery fluids can make plastic britte, but it actually lines up with what I saw on a Toshiba Satellite 105CS from my Uncle. It had cracks all over it and at the parts near the its batteries (3 of them Ni-Cd, Ni-Mh, Li-Ion) that had all leaked and destroyed anything metal and the whole pcb. Upon touching the plastics they cracked and crumbled even more and I just had to get rid of it. Only thing left with me is its laptop bag that I was able to clean up but don't have any use for at the moment. Oh and among the batteries the ones that blew aup and leaved the most were made by Varta.
My uncle had one of these back in '94-'95. I thought that keyboard was the coolest thing! I have no idea what he did with it though. And it was hardly his first IBM. He worked for IBM from the 1960s-2000s, so he's used pretty much everything from System/360s to original IBM PCs to recent ThinkPads.
Great video-as always-about a laptop that I was mesmerized with when I first heard about it: I thought this was the coolest thing in tech when PC Magazine first previewed the 701c and it's TrackWrite keyboard back in '95. Even though this particular unit still had issues, I'm sure at least it was interesting to see in person. The only thing I remember from that particular time period that I thought was as neat as the TrackWrite keyboard was the Thinkpad 755C(?) where you could remove the back of the screen and use it with an overhead projector!
I stumbled across one in 1998. It was just an impulse buy. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about it at the time, except how cool it was. It was actually quite nice.
Ah the 701c! When I worked at Xerox back in ~2003 I found a dozen or so of these in storage that had been there since 1994 or so. No idea if any worked and sadly I wasn't allowed to take any and they were transferred to a recycling facility :(
@@kaitlyn__L indeed but this was early 2000s and enterprises were very difficult about giving away old hardware for liability reasons back then even when the hardware was essentially worse less. It’s better today but still not as good as it could be.
@@satysin630 I used to work in a recycling facility and got my hands on one there - brought it back home and it seems to be in working order. However this was last year (and in Finland), so not the same computers, lol ;) I was damn lucky, I had talked so much about my retro computing hobby and mentioned that specific model, and somebody noticed it before it got thrown away (we were fixing old PC's for resale, but more like 5 years old PC's than over 20 years old - normally that would have just ended up processed as materials, but my co-workers knew of my interest, so this one got saved). The battery had already been removed and it had a broken HDD, and I have not yet managed to replace the tiny HDD, but I have planned to. I want to install the original OS on it, but not DOS+Win3.1 or whatever M$ option they had, but OS/2 - which was the other OS choice for the system back in the day, and way cooler ;) But working there I too sometimes had to butt my head against the brick wall of bureaucracy - some newer, but still too old for regular resale, machines I had interest towards had to have their HDD's completely wiped (by multiple overwrites) and if they didn't have the setup to wipe some more arcane system than usual - I saw some quite non-standard HDD's in some of those systems. And you couldn't have them unless it was without the HDD (which in often cases would result in a system I couldn't likely ever find a replacement HDD for) or you could get them wiped. Yet I could have gotten them to work, I boot tested them and they would have worked - and the guys knew I had no interest whatsoever what might have been on the HDD's before. I guess with the 701c they just thought it was so old that I could have it anyway - I know they didn't test it before. It's better today but still not as good as it could be, for sure. But I also feel like a damn lucky bastard =)
I got my hands on a few things from my father's work. I was able to get two computer cases (one I ended up giving away, but I still have the other one,) and a wireless display device. It worked, but I never figure out how to get it to work on Linux, so I have it put up, and I haven't messed with it since.
I got to see one once in person many years ago. A friend who I used to play LAN games with was a key IT support person at his work and brought one with him one day to show off. We all thought the butterfly keyboard was cute, but that's all I remember. Even back then, it was obviously a short-term solution because larger screens were already dropping in price.
11:35 "The 75 MHz (DX4) was barely faster than the 50 MHz (DX2)". This was a common problem. I "upgraded" my system from a DX2/66 (overclocked to 80MHz) to a DX4/100 and noticed that my computer was also running around the same speed. The problem was that a DX2 ran at twice the front side bus speed, and the DX4 ran at 3 times the front bus speed. So if you had a DX4/100, your system ran at 33 MHz vs. a DX2/80 with a system bus at 40 MHz. A lot of people weren't happy with that.
The small battery you replaced under the square cover is NOT the CMOS battery, it's a standby/sleep battery! The CMOS battery is soldered to the underside near the ram slot, you have to remove the boards to get to it.
This profile needs to come back with 2 x the battery capacity, the butterfly keyboard, and six usb ports in the same footprint. It really is a missed opportunity. (edit double average battery capacity of contemporary laptops)
You only think you want one. Retrocomputing just isn't much fun with laptops. The thing most people do with retro-computers is play retro-computer games and these laptops are absolutely unsuitable for gaming. They are slow, non-standard and the LCD screens are primitive and look absolutely awful in anything but its native resolution. You can get around this by hooking it up to a CRT, but then it's not a laptop anymore.
@@tarstarkusz I beg to differ, I've got my hands on an 1997 Dell Inspiron M200ST and managed to get it working with a clean install of win 98, and enjoy some good retro gaming with it
@@tarstarkusz On the other hand, you don't have to deal with yellowed, brittle beige plastics, the power supplies are external (so they can be easily replaced), they're much easier to store away, you don't necessarily need a keyboard and mouse, and they don't look weird with a modern LCD monitor attached, unliked retro desktops designed for a huge CRT.
@@kirishima638 The laptops get just as brittle and most discolor as well. Plastic is plastic and there is a lot more plastic with a laptop. Power supplies are pretty good and most are not giving any trouble besides the ones of the very late 90s to the mid 2000s. People in retro-computing massively overestimate the cap problem of vintage TVs and radios. The tiny ones are more prone to failure on boards. But the normal size caps of power supplies rarely go bad. They were made much better than the old ones in tube equipment and they usually have less voltage across them. Space is where laptops do shine. No doubt about it. Most old games look terrible on even modern laptops or modern LCD monitors. They were made to be displayed on a CRT and that is how they are best displayed. OTOH, I do understand that not everyone has the room.
There are some surface mount soldering specialists like Northridge Fix that could salvage that logic board; they inspect all the traces under microscope and in many cases desolder/resolder some chip from old donor boards to make it working again.
If I had that machine on my work bench, I could bring it back to life. I have the tools here to do so. Such a shame that IBM cheaped out on the battery. But after seeing the carnage that this 701c suffered, it makes me glad that I got a 506E instead.
I need your email address so i can contact you for any of my vintage IBM laptop needs. I'm the kinda person who wants to save ALL vintage IBM machines. Love your comment BTW
I remember reading about this laptop in the computer magazines back then. I never got to use one, but a couple years later I was toting a Thinkpad 365X around campus, and a nifty camera that could take pictures digitally (hey! It was 1997; most cameras were still film!). The laptop was actually being used to review images, as the camera didn't even have an LCD screen. Oh sorry, just got a bit nostalgic.
I had a (used) 701c many years ago. I remember loading FreeBSD via floppy (it was a royal pain because there was something like 42 floppies, and if you ran into a bad floppy you needed to restart at the beginning. Thankfully I only had 2 bad floppies.) It was a wonderful machine to work on back then, but I don't miss it today. I never really had any issues with mine, but it was only several years old back then. One thing I really liked about it was compared to other laptops of the age it was more compact... but lugging around the external floppy isn't something I miss. As always really enjoy your efforts and explanation Colin. It was a nice trip down memory lane.
Hey Colon, good on you for saying "straight into _recycling_ it went" about the battery. Most people would just throw it in the garbage. Batteries should always be disposed of properly, especially large batteries like that.
I have a few of these in my storage box. I wanted to restore one to its original condition, and mod another with new NUC mobo and display, but never actually had a chance to get into it. This video fired up my passion once again :D Also, I hope you extracted the end plate on the battery pack before throwing it away. That bit is pretty hard to come by.
From what I remember reading on a number of forums the memory error is actually related to the dead CMOS battery. The CMOS battery is actually on the underside of the system board and fortunately is a coin cell although it is spot welded to a tab. As for getting the machine to boot to something, I suggest taking the hard drive out, making a bootable install on another laptop (preferably Pentium-era), and then moving the hard drive back into the laptop. The performance of these machines were held back by the lack of L2 cache and this is a common thing with the 486 and Pentium-era Thinkpads.
Hey Colin, as usual I greatly enjoy your ThinkPad videos. Regarding the coating, I've had some success with Nivea creme on the T and X models. It is great to remove grease and give the shiny look back to it. Granted, the ones I used it with were not as old as this one. I've tried this method with T/X40 and newer and they look pretty good.
I'm glad I was able to get a working one a few years ago for a fair price. The battery had started leaking but it wasn't nearly as bad as this one and I was able to take it out without too much damage. I boot it up from time to time and so far so good! That keyboard is pretty satisfying.
Literally two days ago I looked for a video about the IBM Butterfly laptop on your channel. Sad that it didn't hold up, I remember thinking that it was a cool idea when it first came out.
I have a Dell Latitude XPi CD and love it for some of my retro gaming from childhood. There are some “less gimmicky” laptops that can get the job done, as IBM eventually did.
I used one of these to do my Liberty BASIC development on the train commuting to and from work. It was fantastic. Later I graduated to an HP Omnibook 800CT, also great. :)
The 701c was one of my early work PCs and I loved it. I managed to convince my boss to get me one though it was a bit more expensive than our usual PCs. I usually carried the dock with me because connectivity without it was terrible. I know I had the cheaper model but it was fine for all my work needs. The screen was small but I was in my early 20s, so that was OK and I had an external screen in the office.
Great video, and even though you could not really save this machine, it will make for a good parts machine if you ever come across another one of these, and given how rare they are these days, that still a 👍 win.
As time went by, increasing screen sizes meant that keyboards could be made large enough to match 13" and above screens, and so there was no longer a need for an expanding keyboard.
I smiling with that comfortable sense of nostalgia while watching these videos, I'm 60 so remember these early computing days quite well. Aaahhhhh, mothers gravy 🤓
The leaking battery in that thing reminded me of the time when the battery in an old Dell Latitude LM I had in my collection blew up in the middle of the night. I heard a loud POW from the room where my computers were stored and I just thought my cat knocked something over. When I woke up the next morning and went in there I found that it had sprayed battery acid everywhere. That was fun to clean. I have no idea if the laptop works because I don't have the charger for them, but it's most likely dead.
I do have a soft spot for the functionality and boxiness of ThinkPads, even if they aren't as sleek as other models. It's funny seeing how little the aesthetic has changed from the OG IBMs to the Lenovo ones now
It surprised me that the battery had both European and Brazilian Portuguese instructions! And the bottom one even has a typo: "PROVOAUE" should be "PROVOQUE"... common mistake judging by the keys placement on a keyboard, haha.
I've been a Thinkpad enthusiast since the first IBM Thinkpads came out while i was a child. Anyone in the community knows that these 701C's are the holy grail of collectable machines. The entire time i was watching this video i was screaming at Colin to fix the machine no matter what it's condition. Unforumately, it appears that this machine will give it's own life to donate it's savageable parts to another needy laptop. I watch and love this channel because to me there is such great satisfaction watching Colin rehab/fix/save old forgotten laptops. This was the one video i was waiting for and it's now finally here. Not the ending i was hoping for sadly.
If you replaced that RAM I bet you it will boot. Had a similar issue on a T23. Swapping RAM at least enabled it to boot. I reckon you've got a good chance of at least some interesting content. One other thing, some spray on silicone dry lube on the keyboard sliders will help it work smoother, causing less wear on the components. Keep up the good work!
My grandpa had one of these!! He was an insurance salesman in the '90s and needed a portable workstation. The butterfly ThinkPad was his laptop of choice. He got a portable printer and a beautiful leather carrying case that I used for years with my contemporary setup. Unfortunately, the right-hand side hinge mechanism on the laptop broke. From where it broke, I can only assume it was due to mechanical stress from opening the butterfly mechanism over the years. Now, to get the keyboard mechanism to work, you have to carefully open the screen about an inch or two, grab the stub of the actual hinge mechanism, and put pressure on that with your thumb while you open it to prevent further damage. Now that I think about it, I've never tried to boot it... If I'm able to find the charging cable, what precautions should I take before powering it on??
I loved the keyboard on my 701c. Standard size not-mushy-ass keys that actually had a little bit of travel (especially compared to today)! And the nipple (Trackpoint) mouse was much better (and remains so) than any trackpad that your arms constantly set off. The keyboard got "stuck" once when opening the notebook, but it self-corrected the next attempt to open it. Higher resolution would have been appreciated. Even though the screen was small, it was in the time of the 4:3 aspect ratio LCD screen, so you could actually read the text on the screen. Ah well, good times.
Hey Colin, I was watching some of your old podcast episodes, any chance of bringing them back? :) Nice video btw, this laptop is really cool, hope you can restore it fully in the future :)
Nice video! Still have mine but I haven't opened it in 15 years. (I'll have to do that now.) Luckily I took the battery out and put in in a sealed bag when stored. At the time, I upgraded to Win 98 and a larger hard drive, maybe 5GB? Would work fine with the card/dongle wired network, but I could never get the 8-bit wifi card passed modern standard security. Let's face it, it's an iconic design, but mine, at 75mh, it wouldn't even play an mp3 without stuttering. I did do emailing and web surfing back before things became so graphic intensive. I'll have to check those eBay prices.
that laptop is quite a challenge to get working. I reinforced the hinges because the cover broke with the force of the keyboard mech, and had to replace the ram chips, quite a challenge to even find a replacement and to solder back (because I broke some traces). I leave it open to cause the least stress to the hinges.
I bought a 600X (my first ever ThinkPad) and it has a corrupt BIOS.. so much for the seller saying it just needed a new CMOS :P Seems a lot of old ThinkPads are dying, not just in the battery leaking cosmetic department, but lots of them get faulty boards that most can't repair.
Last year I got my hands on one of these - and it works! It's not in the best shape, and the battery has been (luckily) removed. The HDD is dead and I have to replace it one day - I want to put the original OS it was sold with (well, there were two choices available, but if you're a true ThinkPadder, I believe OS/2 is the only real option for machines of this era) on an old IDE HDD that the old bastard can at least recognize. I was damn lucky too getting it. I was working in a recycling facility where we fixed PC's for resale. Of course not this old PC's, without me it would have simply gotten trashed!! ...and that's why I got my own 701c - for free! Lucky, so lucky me =)
The condition of this one is just horrendous and way worse than even mine which I still have yet to rebuild between the defective DSTN screen as well the rubber coating have long since expired.
I wonder if you could just remove the soldered RAM off the board and try to run with only the aftermarket module until you can try to source compatible chips to replace the onboard? I'd be willing to bet the memory issues are why it's not booting correctly and freezing up. The CMOS battery issues, I'd be looking closer for damage from the battery electrolyte, though it could be unrelated too.
Very rare and valuable machine. Deserves a lot more than just a wipe with a cloth. Please completely strip and refurbish it, or pass it to an enthusiast who will.
What a great laptop this was (mainly the ThinkPads from this time, not specifically this model). So many features to like . It's a shame they chose that rubber coating and the unreliability today.
This really is awesome! What would be cool is if someone figured out how to modify one to work with something like a Raspberry Pi so that it could be made to be functional again with that design, but without the flaky Motherboard issues. The RPi would also be dramatically more powerful than the base setup to. Might be a cool mod idea if anyone ever wants to try that. :)
Hello, you replaced the wrong battery, that was the backup battery used for hibernation. There is another coin cell soldered directly onto the lower motherboard. If you replace it you will most likely fix the RAM problems (it sounds like it makes no sense but it worked for my 701C). I replaced it with a regular CR2032 with two wires point-welded on it. Its very cramped so make sure its isolated well.
Lovely machine! In my experience the boot errors persist until you've been into the bios setup and written/saved new values. Something to do with the cmos data being corrupt, but easily fixed. How did you get on? Great video! I'd still use one of those machines today if they made them!
It's a bit sad for that notebooks case. I have a similar problem with a kind of rare 386 notebook. The battery leaked and there are no replacements. I might just build my own Li-Ion pack for it.
There's a 25% chance that giving the M/B a 6 hour deep cycle in a sonic bath will bring it around. I wouldn't bin the battery myself, that can be gutted, cleaned and re-celled with modern chemistry and electronics. Tell your mate not to give up on this machine as it's not as bad as it looks, hard work and a few bucks yes, but well worth it.
When I think of all the subnotebooks, tablets, and even PDAs (Gemini) that could benefit from an expanding keyboard like this, I have to wonder about the companies making those products.
Nice notebook, maybe worth some effort. Would you try to recreate the broken plastic with either super glue + sodium bicarbonate or a 3d pen? Great video.
Nice video, love these Thinkpads! I have a few information, which may be useful.
This laptop have 3 battery inside; the normal leaky main battery, a rechargeable 'standby' battery and the cmos lithium battery.
The green circular one is the standby one, not the cmos. And the laptop will try to charge it, so if the new one is a non rechargeable lithium one, then a charge blocking diode is recommended. (But this battery is an optional one, the laptop works without it. The purpose is to provide main battery swap ability in suspended mode without completely shutting down the machine.)
There is a very high chance, that the error codes (memory,datetime,config) caused by the flat real cmos battery. Yes, this laptop can glitch out and even freeze, plus reporting memory error without good cmos battery.
The cmos battery is located and soldered(!) in the very bottom of the mainboard, to replace it the laptop need to be fully disassembled.
And in the end, all 3 battery prone to leak in the Butterfly which makes the preservation of these machines very hard.
Even newer machines lock up the BIOS because of the CMOS battery, I've had happen recently on a newer ThinkPad R30. On mine, one of the solder joints of the battery socket was loose and it caused the machine to freeze in the BIOS and in Windows.
@@MihaiGradin salut cf pe aici😉
Even when it's not a complete win, it's always great to see the process and attempts. That battery really did a number on it, such a shame.
Given just how rare and valuable these are, it is definitely worth trying to at least desolder the built-in RAM and seeing if that somehow fixes it.
i agree. Do the repair Colin!!!! You know you want to !!
This.
Hi, nice video. Your machine is fixable. There is a soldered coin cell for RTC/CMOS at the backside of the mainboard, you have to totally dissasemble the whole machine to reach that. An empty one is always causing this hanging and freezing issues and reporting the 201 memory error. Just solder a new 3 volt cell in and your Butterfly will magically come back to life. I am a Thinkpad collector and i have repaired a few 701CS in the past. The battery you replaced is the standby battery (to keep memory content to change battery packs in standby) and must be a rechargable one, you should not pop in a non-rechargable cell. You can also just leave this one out, it's not needed for proper function.
First time I've heard that battery fluids can make plastic britte, but it actually lines up with what I saw on a Toshiba Satellite 105CS from my Uncle. It had cracks all over it and at the parts near the its batteries (3 of them Ni-Cd, Ni-Mh, Li-Ion) that had all leaked and destroyed anything metal and the whole pcb. Upon touching the plastics they cracked and crumbled even more and I just had to get rid of it. Only thing left with me is its laptop bag that I was able to clean up but don't have any use for at the moment.
Oh and among the batteries the ones that blew aup and leaved the most were made by Varta.
My uncle had one of these back in '94-'95. I thought that keyboard was the coolest thing! I have no idea what he did with it though.
And it was hardly his first IBM. He worked for IBM from the 1960s-2000s, so he's used pretty much everything from System/360s to original IBM PCs to recent ThinkPads.
You don’t see lifetime hires like that anymore! I bet your uncle got to play with a lot of cool stuff :D
Great video-as always-about a laptop that I was mesmerized with when I first heard about it: I thought this was the coolest thing in tech when PC Magazine first previewed the 701c and it's TrackWrite keyboard back in '95. Even though this particular unit still had issues, I'm sure at least it was interesting to see in person. The only thing I remember from that particular time period that I thought was as neat as the TrackWrite keyboard was the Thinkpad 755C(?) where you could remove the back of the screen and use it with an overhead projector!
I stumbled across one in 1998. It was just an impulse buy. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about it at the time, except how cool it was. It was actually quite nice.
Nice video Colin, love the production in your videos, so relaxing to watch and learn.
Ah the 701c! When I worked at Xerox back in ~2003 I found a dozen or so of these in storage that had been there since 1994 or so. No idea if any worked and sadly I wasn't allowed to take any and they were transferred to a recycling facility :(
So sad :( they didn’t want them anyway!
Damn :(
@@kaitlyn__L indeed but this was early 2000s and enterprises were very difficult about giving away old hardware for liability reasons back then even when the hardware was essentially worse less. It’s better today but still not as good as it could be.
@@satysin630 I used to work in a recycling facility and got my hands on one there - brought it back home and it seems to be in working order.
However this was last year (and in Finland), so not the same computers, lol ;) I was damn lucky, I had talked so much about my retro computing hobby and mentioned that specific model, and somebody noticed it before it got thrown away (we were fixing old PC's for resale, but more like 5 years old PC's than over 20 years old - normally that would have just ended up processed as materials, but my co-workers knew of my interest, so this one got saved). The battery had already been removed and it had a broken HDD, and I have not yet managed to replace the tiny HDD, but I have planned to. I want to install the original OS on it, but not DOS+Win3.1 or whatever M$ option they had, but OS/2 - which was the other OS choice for the system back in the day, and way cooler ;)
But working there I too sometimes had to butt my head against the brick wall of bureaucracy - some newer, but still too old for regular resale, machines I had interest towards had to have their HDD's completely wiped (by multiple overwrites) and if they didn't have the setup to wipe some more arcane system than usual - I saw some quite non-standard HDD's in some of those systems. And you couldn't have them unless it was without the HDD (which in often cases would result in a system I couldn't likely ever find a replacement HDD for) or you could get them wiped. Yet I could have gotten them to work, I boot tested them and they would have worked - and the guys knew I had no interest whatsoever what might have been on the HDD's before. I guess with the 701c they just thought it was so old that I could have it anyway - I know they didn't test it before.
It's better today but still not as good as it could be, for sure. But I also feel like a damn lucky bastard =)
I got my hands on a few things from my father's work. I was able to get two computer cases (one I ended up giving away, but I still have the other one,) and a wireless display device. It worked, but I never figure out how to get it to work on Linux, so I have it put up, and I haven't messed with it since.
Great video as always! I've been loving the unique machines you have been covering lately!!
Your channel is my gateway to seeing moldy old computer products. Pure bliss. ❤️
I got to see one once in person many years ago. A friend who I used to play LAN games with was a key IT support person at his work and brought one with him one day to show off. We all thought the butterfly keyboard was cute, but that's all I remember. Even back then, it was obviously a short-term solution because larger screens were already dropping in price.
11:35 "The 75 MHz (DX4) was barely faster than the 50 MHz (DX2)". This was a common problem. I "upgraded" my system from a DX2/66 (overclocked to 80MHz) to a DX4/100 and noticed that my computer was also running around the same speed. The problem was that a DX2 ran at twice the front side bus speed, and the DX4 ran at 3 times the front bus speed. So if you had a DX4/100, your system ran at 33 MHz vs. a DX2/80 with a system bus at 40 MHz. A lot of people weren't happy with that.
The small battery you replaced under the square cover is NOT the CMOS battery, it's a standby/sleep battery! The CMOS battery is soldered to the underside near the ram slot, you have to remove the boards to get to it.
I'd like to think the current lift and lock keyboards on ThinkPad yogas are this thing's spiritual successor! Great vid
I had one of these back in the early 2000's, fun little machine. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
This profile needs to come back with 2 x the battery capacity, the butterfly keyboard, and six usb ports in the same footprint. It really is a missed opportunity. (edit double average battery capacity of contemporary laptops)
There's one of these on ebay right now! This is the holy grail of ThinkPads. At least that's what most of us ThinkPadders agree on.
I loved when LGR reviewed this laptop and wanted to get one of these
Same
You only think you want one. Retrocomputing just isn't much fun with laptops. The thing most people do with retro-computers is play retro-computer games and these laptops are absolutely unsuitable for gaming. They are slow, non-standard and the LCD screens are primitive and look absolutely awful in anything but its native resolution. You can get around this by hooking it up to a CRT, but then it's not a laptop anymore.
@@tarstarkusz I beg to differ, I've got my hands on an 1997 Dell Inspiron M200ST and managed to get it working with a clean install of win 98, and enjoy some good retro gaming with it
@@tarstarkusz On the other hand, you don't have to deal with yellowed, brittle beige plastics, the power supplies are external (so they can be easily replaced), they're much easier to store away, you don't necessarily need a keyboard and mouse, and they don't look weird with a modern LCD monitor attached, unliked retro desktops designed for a huge CRT.
@@kirishima638 The laptops get just as brittle and most discolor as well. Plastic is plastic and there is a lot more plastic with a laptop.
Power supplies are pretty good and most are not giving any trouble besides the ones of the very late 90s to the mid 2000s. People in retro-computing massively overestimate the cap problem of vintage TVs and radios. The tiny ones are more prone to failure on boards. But the normal size caps of power supplies rarely go bad. They were made much better than the old ones in tube equipment and they usually have less voltage across them.
Space is where laptops do shine. No doubt about it.
Most old games look terrible on even modern laptops or modern LCD monitors. They were made to be displayed on a CRT and that is how they are best displayed. OTOH, I do understand that not everyone has the room.
There are some surface mount soldering specialists like Northridge Fix that could salvage that logic board; they inspect all the traces under microscope and in many cases desolder/resolder some chip from old donor boards to make it working again.
If I had that machine on my work bench, I could bring it back to life. I have the tools here to do so. Such a shame that IBM cheaped out on the battery. But after seeing the carnage that this 701c suffered, it makes me glad that I got a 506E instead.
I need your email address so i can contact you for any of my vintage IBM laptop needs. I'm the kinda person who wants to save ALL vintage IBM machines. Love your comment BTW
I remember reading about this laptop in the computer magazines back then. I never got to use one, but a couple years later I was toting a Thinkpad 365X around campus, and a nifty camera that could take pictures digitally (hey! It was 1997; most cameras were still film!). The laptop was actually being used to review images, as the camera didn't even have an LCD screen.
Oh sorry, just got a bit nostalgic.
I had a (used) 701c many years ago. I remember loading FreeBSD via floppy (it was a royal pain because there was something like 42 floppies, and if you ran into a bad floppy you needed to restart at the beginning. Thankfully I only had 2 bad floppies.) It was a wonderful machine to work on back then, but I don't miss it today. I never really had any issues with mine, but it was only several years old back then. One thing I really liked about it was compared to other laptops of the age it was more compact... but lugging around the external floppy isn't something I miss. As always really enjoy your efforts and explanation Colin. It was a nice trip down memory lane.
one of those channels you come across and subscribe 10 seconds into your first video, love it!
Hey Colon, good on you for saying "straight into _recycling_ it went" about the battery. Most people would just throw it in the garbage. Batteries should always be disposed of properly, especially large batteries like that.
Your videos are a joy to watch, Colin. Thank you for producing well researched and superbly produced content.
I have a few of these in my storage box. I wanted to restore one to its original condition, and mod another with new NUC mobo and display, but never actually had a chance to get into it. This video fired up my passion once again :D
Also, I hope you extracted the end plate on the battery pack before throwing it away. That bit is pretty hard to come by.
From what I remember reading on a number of forums the memory error is actually related to the dead CMOS battery. The CMOS battery is actually on the underside of the system board and fortunately is a coin cell although it is spot welded to a tab. As for getting the machine to boot to something, I suggest taking the hard drive out, making a bootable install on another laptop (preferably Pentium-era), and then moving the hard drive back into the laptop. The performance of these machines were held back by the lack of L2 cache and this is a common thing with the 486 and Pentium-era Thinkpads.
That out of all the thinkpad was iconic. That plus the awesome keyboard
I have a still functioning T23 sitting on my shelf, these things were amazing devices.
Hey Colin, as usual I greatly enjoy your ThinkPad videos. Regarding the coating, I've had some success with Nivea creme on the T and X models. It is great to remove grease and give the shiny look back to it. Granted, the ones I used it with were not as old as this one. I've tried this method with T/X40 and newer and they look pretty good.
I'm glad I was able to get a working one a few years ago for a fair price. The battery had started leaking but it wasn't nearly as bad as this one and I was able to take it out without too much damage. I boot it up from time to time and so far so good! That keyboard is pretty satisfying.
The memory defect is probably preventing the machine from booting
I'm so glad you were wearing gloves! I always wear them when I work with leaky batteries and old electrolyte.
I remember back in the days when this was featured on PC Magazine sometime in 1995. And I am old.
Literally two days ago I looked for a video about the IBM Butterfly laptop on your channel. Sad that it didn't hold up, I remember thinking that it was a cool idea when it first came out.
I have a Dell Latitude XPi CD and love it for some of my retro gaming from childhood. There are some “less gimmicky” laptops that can get the job done, as IBM eventually did.
Hold on to it mate, it may become a collector's item in 100 years!
I had one of these back in the day. Upgraded to a thinkpad 240 I think. Both were amazing machines in their own sense.
I used one of these to do my Liberty BASIC development on the train commuting to and from work. It was fantastic. Later I graduated to an HP Omnibook 800CT, also great. :)
The 701c was one of my early work PCs and I loved it. I managed to convince my boss to get me one though it was a bit more expensive than our usual PCs. I usually carried the dock with me because connectivity without it was terrible. I know I had the cheaper model but it was fine for all my work needs. The screen was small but I was in my early 20s, so that was OK and I had an external screen in the office.
Great video, and even though you could not really save this machine, it will make for a good parts machine if you ever come across another one of these, and given how rare they are these days, that still a 👍 win.
As time went by, increasing screen sizes meant that keyboards could be made large enough to match 13" and above screens, and so there was no longer a need for an expanding keyboard.
I smiling with that comfortable sense of nostalgia while watching these videos, I'm 60 so remember these early computing days quite well. Aaahhhhh, mothers gravy 🤓
The leaking battery in that thing reminded me of the time when the battery in an old Dell Latitude LM I had in my collection blew up in the middle of the night. I heard a loud POW from the room where my computers were stored and I just thought my cat knocked something over. When I woke up the next morning and went in there I found that it had sprayed battery acid everywhere. That was fun to clean.
I have no idea if the laptop works because I don't have the charger for them, but it's most likely dead.
I do have a soft spot for the functionality and boxiness of ThinkPads, even if they aren't as sleek as other models. It's funny seeing how little the aesthetic has changed from the OG IBMs to the Lenovo ones now
I had one of these back in 2000´s ...miss this litlle machine!
It surprised me that the battery had both European and Brazilian Portuguese instructions! And the bottom one even has a typo: "PROVOAUE" should be "PROVOQUE"... common mistake judging by the keys placement on a keyboard, haha.
It's nice to see a laptop with great and complex build that has a Made in Mexico logo
Great video Colin!
i had one in 1995 and it is still in good condition :) Iused my Thoshiba back then for my small business!
I've been a Thinkpad enthusiast since the first IBM Thinkpads came out while i was a child. Anyone in the community knows that these 701C's are the holy grail of collectable machines. The entire time i was watching this video i was screaming at Colin to fix the machine no matter what it's condition. Unforumately, it appears that this machine will give it's own life to donate it's savageable parts to another needy laptop. I watch and love this channel because to me there is such great satisfaction watching Colin rehab/fix/save old forgotten laptops. This was the one video i was waiting for and it's now finally here. Not the ending i was hoping for sadly.
Oh man. A little early in the morning for gore.
Good job doing what you could do with this one.
I remember seeing the ads for these as a kid and thinking how cool the keyboard was
If you replaced that RAM I bet you it will boot. Had a similar issue on a T23. Swapping RAM at least enabled it to boot.
I reckon you've got a good chance of at least some interesting content.
One other thing, some spray on silicone dry lube on the keyboard sliders will help it work smoother, causing less wear on the components.
Keep up the good work!
My grandpa had one of these!! He was an insurance salesman in the '90s and needed a portable workstation. The butterfly ThinkPad was his laptop of choice. He got a portable printer and a beautiful leather carrying case that I used for years with my contemporary setup. Unfortunately, the right-hand side hinge mechanism on the laptop broke. From where it broke, I can only assume it was due to mechanical stress from opening the butterfly mechanism over the years. Now, to get the keyboard mechanism to work, you have to carefully open the screen about an inch or two, grab the stub of the actual hinge mechanism, and put pressure on that with your thumb while you open it to prevent further damage. Now that I think about it, I've never tried to boot it... If I'm able to find the charging cable, what precautions should I take before powering it on??
I’m disappointed too. I was so ready to see it working again. At least u have spare parts for next project
I loved the keyboard on my 701c. Standard size not-mushy-ass keys that actually had a little bit of travel (especially compared to today)! And the nipple (Trackpoint) mouse was much better (and remains so) than any trackpad that your arms constantly set off. The keyboard got "stuck" once when opening the notebook, but it self-corrected the next attempt to open it. Higher resolution would have been appreciated. Even though the screen was small, it was in the time of the 4:3 aspect ratio LCD screen, so you could actually read the text on the screen. Ah well, good times.
Hey Colin, I was watching some of your old podcast episodes, any chance of bringing them back? :)
Nice video btw, this laptop is really cool, hope you can restore it fully in the future :)
Did IBM use Magnesium alloy in the case in 1995? Could be a reason why the battery corrosion extended to the case.
Very cool. Thanks for sharing.
Nice video! Still have mine but I haven't opened it in 15 years. (I'll have to do that now.) Luckily I took the battery out and put in in a sealed bag when stored. At the time, I upgraded to Win 98 and a larger hard drive, maybe 5GB? Would work fine with the card/dongle wired network, but I could never get the 8-bit wifi card passed modern standard security. Let's face it, it's an iconic design, but mine, at 75mh, it wouldn't even play an mp3 without stuttering. I did do emailing and web surfing back before things became so graphic intensive. I'll have to check those eBay prices.
Hi love your videos could do a video on the Panasonic toughbook cf-u1 because there are not many videos on it
watching battery leaks while eating lunch is perfect !
fatt
@@ps5hasnogames55 you describing yourself or the battery ?
@@SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim damnnnn
@@dotmatrixmoe he pretty much asked for it with a double T 😂👀
that laptop is quite a challenge to get working. I reinforced the hinges because the cover broke with the force of the keyboard mech, and had to replace the ram chips, quite a challenge to even find a replacement and to solder back (because I broke some traces). I leave it open to cause the least stress to the hinges.
This fix looks like a job for Adrian's digital basement
*edit* never mind, it's a loner and sending it to Adrian to fix is not a decision for you to make i suppose
I saw the title, and I thought about the apple butterfly keyboards.
Without doubt my favourite IBM laptop.
Nice video, you replaced the standby battery, the errors are related to the CMOS battery that on that model is under the motherboard soldered
I like to see them. For what they can do there are free options in my own pile of things.
I bought a 600X (my first ever ThinkPad) and it has a corrupt BIOS.. so much for the seller saying it just needed a new CMOS :P
Seems a lot of old ThinkPads are dying, not just in the battery leaking cosmetic department, but lots of them get faulty boards that most can't repair.
I love it! I had one of these when they came out.
Last year I got my hands on one of these - and it works! It's not in the best shape, and the battery has been (luckily) removed. The HDD is dead and I have to replace it one day - I want to put the original OS it was sold with (well, there were two choices available, but if you're a true ThinkPadder, I believe OS/2 is the only real option for machines of this era) on an old IDE HDD that the old bastard can at least recognize.
I was damn lucky too getting it. I was working in a recycling facility where we fixed PC's for resale. Of course not this old PC's, without me it would have simply gotten trashed!! ...and that's why I got my own 701c - for free! Lucky, so lucky me =)
I would so love to own one of these again!
The condition of this one is just horrendous and way worse than even mine which I still have yet to rebuild between the defective DSTN screen as well the rubber coating have long since expired.
I wonder if you could just remove the soldered RAM off the board and try to run with only the aftermarket module until you can try to source compatible chips to replace the onboard? I'd be willing to bet the memory issues are why it's not booting correctly and freezing up. The CMOS battery issues, I'd be looking closer for damage from the battery electrolyte, though it could be unrelated too.
"Plastic welds" that should never be a phrase used when referring to a computer (makes me think cheap and lazy engineers).
I had one of these laptops in school, though really just used to to play NES games. The Keyboard foldout was unique though.
Oh god, ejecting cards....when laptops didn't have built in modems.
I've got one of those! Neat little machines.
My fav era of ibms 🤗🤘😍
Probably just a bad memory chip. Bad memory can cause such lock-ups
You should have sent this to the 8 bit guy, he would have had dramatic music & reaction shots
Very rare and valuable machine. Deserves a lot more than just a wipe with a cloth. Please completely strip and refurbish it, or pass it to an enthusiast who will.
What a great laptop this was (mainly the ThinkPads from this time, not specifically this model). So many features to like . It's a shame they chose that rubber coating and the unreliability today.
you got me the second it opened, take my non existent money!
Nice! I also have one of these, the battery is stuck in it and i'm trying to muster up the courage to open it up.
One of the rarest laptops I could find from IBM…
Better than Apple’s butterfly keyboard, that’s for sure!
Thinkpad! Love ur vids and when it's a thinkpad I scream. I own a x60 with a 250 gb ssd and 1 gb ram which I'm putting 2 in
This really is awesome! What would be cool is if someone figured out how to modify one to work with something like a Raspberry Pi so that it could be made to be functional again with that design, but without the flaky Motherboard issues. The RPi would also be dramatically more powerful than the base setup to. Might be a cool mod idea if anyone ever wants to try that. :)
Hello, you replaced the wrong battery, that was the backup battery used for hibernation. There is another coin cell soldered directly onto the lower motherboard. If you replace it you will most likely fix the RAM problems (it sounds like it makes no sense but it worked for my 701C). I replaced it with a regular CR2032 with two wires point-welded on it. Its very cramped so make sure its isolated well.
Lovely machine!
In my experience the boot errors persist until you've been into the bios setup and written/saved new values. Something to do with the cmos data being corrupt, but easily fixed. How did you get on?
Great video! I'd still use one of those machines today if they made them!
It's a bit sad for that notebooks case. I have a similar problem with a kind of rare 386 notebook. The battery leaked and there are no replacements. I might just build my own Li-Ion pack for it.
My dad brought one of these home from work in the 90s. We thought it was the business.
Would be worth taking apart and look for any corrosion on the mainboard etc. Might be an easy fix.
There's a 25% chance that giving the M/B a 6 hour deep cycle in a sonic bath will bring it around. I wouldn't bin the battery myself, that can be gutted, cleaned and re-celled with modern chemistry and electronics. Tell your mate not to give up on this machine as it's not as bad as it looks, hard work and a few bucks yes, but well worth it.
When I think of all the subnotebooks, tablets, and even PDAs (Gemini) that could benefit from an expanding keyboard like this, I have to wonder about the companies making those products.
Nice notebook, maybe worth some effort. Would you try to recreate the broken plastic with either super glue + sodium bicarbonate or a 3d pen? Great video.
When butterfly keyboard meant good keyboard and not horrible keyboard.