thinkpad 600 error 161 163 192 dev 001 err 91 err 192 fru 3610 3810?

this isnt a question as such its a solution to all you thinkpad owners of the most common problems
SUMMARY OF HOW TO GET A THINKPAD WORKING (THINKPAD 600)

I bought 2 of these ibm thinkpad 600 s on ebay sold as faulty untested
and ive got one up and running so far.
First time id ever had a look at a laptop lol.
The first thing you need is the manual for it to refer
to from ibm homepage
url is here

http://www.ibm.com/us/

this tells you error messages etc.

At first they both had error 161 163 192.
161 and 163 mean time and date not set

any error like this is a dead giveaway youre cmos is dead.
Its a really common problem.

192 seemed to be incorrect voltage or fan
the fan blows out the side to the left and can
normally be heard or felt,

You need to do a check which is achieved by holding down F1
and powering it on,
keep F1 held down and wait and you should get the config come up.
Run the system board check.

On systemboard check you get
dev001
err 91
fru3610 or fru 3810
or something very similiar

It means the cmos battery is dead.
In case anybody else has these problems too
heres a summary of things i had to do

1 get an ac adaptor , mine came with no psu
so i couldnt even tell what they were like for a few days,
the correct one is 16volt 2.6 amps
Chargers on ebay are either 4.15 amps or 3.36 amps
get the 3.36 amp version
the 4.15 works but gets a bit hot.
1a youll need a floppy and a cdrom if youre installing youre
os from the cd probably
if you havent got a floppy
burn some boot disks to cd and use them
you may need a dos boot disk.
look on google bootdisk.com and allbootdisks.com
You might have to change the boot order to
so it boots off cdrom first,
go into config as outlined above with F1 key then power on
its the startup panel.
2 replace the cmos battery it was dead,
its a cr2025 watch type battery
cheap and easy to replace (this is for thinkpad 600)


Different thinkpads have different batteries so check first.

To do this you need to take the memory cover off on
the bottom of your thinkpad
undo it with a screwdriver
and youll see a white connector to topright or bottom left
depending how your looking at it
with a red and a black wire.
This is connected to the cmos battery
which is tucked under the black plastic of the case.
You have to wiggle
it round a bit and pull it out but its not connected.
The original one has a yellow shrinkwarap thing on it.
heres a link so you can see exactly what its like,

http://www.sabahoceanic.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=213

Undo the plastic with a pair of scissors
and prise of the metal clips soldered in place
with pliers or something
making sure you remember if red is positive or negative
Flatten the clips and then tape your cr2025 battery onto them
with electricians insulating tape
and then push the white connector back and
tuck the new battery back in position.

2a You might get a password lock come up.
This a standard security procedure to prevent
unathourised acces if its stolen,

You can have up to 3 passswords set on a thinkpad
if youre really unlucky
They are
1 bios password,
If you havent replaced the cmos battery already
undo the cmos battery wait for maybe 20 mins
and then connect it back or look at the manual
and short the jumpers on the bottom
of your thinkpad.
2 admin password
3 hard drive password
2 and 3 are usually the same password but not always.
The one that looks like a floppy disk and ? is on the
motherboard saved to an eeprom chip,
its an administrator password.
you can either get a different motherboard
or get a new chip from ebay,
if you fancy soldering the old one out
and a new one in.
They are small and delicate though and are designed to get corrupted if
your heavy handed with a soldering iron.

The one that looks like a cylinder and a ?
means your motherboards not locked
but your hard drive is.
You cant do much about this except get a new hard drive.
Ps type in google atapwd and also
try partition table doctor they may help
normally what happens here is that when you connect it
to another computer it shows up but you cant access it
in any shape or form, not even in DOS.
You may be able to get into it from a non ibm compatible os
such as mac or linux but im not sure.

3 fdisk the old hdd in dos with a dos boot up disk
I downloaded from the internet,
and then format it it had 2 non dos partitions on it lol
It came with an external floppy which was handy.

4 the cd drive didnt work at all.
What was happening was it had a foam pad on one side
that kept making them stick,
the solution was to rip it out with a piece
of bent wire with a hook at on end till the cd spun freely.
ps this is not generally recommended
lol they must have made cds smaller then

5 Install an os i had win98se

6 The cd kept spinning too much and couldnt
find files during install
because the hole in cd was fractionally too big
thinkpad cd drives are made to an exact spec
which normally fits the hole in a cd
the solution to this is a little blob of blue tack to hold it still.

7 Get and install the bios upgrade from ibm homepage

8 Get and install the track point driver from ibm webpage

9 Install the display driver downloaded from ibm
the one you need is called neomagic or neograph or
something dated circa 2000
I originally tried the newer one and couldnt do anything with it
so was stuck with 16 colours and a resolution of 640 x 480 for a few days.
The one you want changes the display adapter NOT the monitor .

10 I also had to install the modem driver downloaded from ibm homepage

Anyway one of my thinkpads works fine but one has a locked hard drive,
I just need a new hard drive I think then Ill get that one going.
Hope this helps .
regards Mark.