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Omnios
March 1st, 2007, 08:39 PM
Hi hi, after waiting since summer I finally managed to pick up my old new laptop from my sisters. It is a IBM T20 700mhz. Unfortunatly it has a broaken CD rom and the ribon cable is broaken. The laptop will not seem to boot without the cdrom in the bay though my sister told me it will boot if the broken cd is in the cd carriage. Basicly Im hoping to boot to the biosly and hopfully change the boot from the cd to a usb stick. I am also looking into seeing if I can replace the broken ribbon. Anyways now I have to wait for the cd-rom as it was stored away and my sister is looking for it.

Anyways my main problem right now is with power on it boots with a cd error and trying to boot with F1 or F12 just hanges.

Anyone have any suggestions?

muguwmp67
March 1st, 2007, 09:13 PM
Will it boot without the CD drive attached? Are you sure it is a cd error? I have a thinkpad (much older than yours) that gave me an error code, and after googling it, it was a dead CMOS battery.

I have also found that parts for old laptops are much less expensive than I expected. You might want to check ebay for a replacement CD drive or ribbon cables.

If you get into the BIOS and can't get it to boot from usb, you might want to try a PXE (i.e. network) boot if it has an integrated ethernet port (and you have a working ubuntu machine on your network)

mips
March 1st, 2007, 09:50 PM
Older devices might not allow for boot from usb. Im sure this should not be to hard to sort out. Also try the excellent thinkwiki site for information.

Omnios
March 16th, 2007, 12:18 AM
I finally found the error for the poor old laptop and unfortunatly it is a bad eprom wich requires a new motherboard. I will probably see if I can sell it for parts.