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The 500-Series was marketed as a model range which was relatively full sized, but without removable drives which take up a lot of the space. Therefore none of the 5xx-Series machines accomodate a built-in magnetic or optical drive. They tend to be larger than the ultraportable 2xx-Series, aimed at the enterprise above the consumer 3xx-Series and yet smaller than the full size 7xx series machine (which often had a magnetic drive, an optical drive, or both!
There wasn't a 520 or 540 Model and the 5xx models aren't strictly chronologial for 2 major reasons. Firstly, the 550/555BJ came out very early as the transition from portable and japan-centric notes emerged - which you can somewhat see in how the 550 doesn't have a trackpad, whereas the 555 does and they're fairly big. I guess these should not have had the 5xx model-range attributed to them.
Then you had stuff being created in at least two different labs, somewhat competing and then merging or taking over. Both were creating 'small' and 'medium' machines, and the US ones started more like small and got bigger.
500 (Lexbook SE10) - USA
This blue-logo'd machine contained a 50 MHz 486SLC2 and a 85 or 170 MB HDD with a Mono Display. Designed in the United States by the same team who went on to design the 701c and 701Cs.
Here we have the author's 500 on the left with the monochrome screen and blue LCD bezel buttons and 510Cs on the right, with a partially repaired vinegar syndrome screen.
510cs - USA
This colour-logo'd machine had a similar in design to the 500, but without the distinctive blue contrast and brightness buttons, a colour DSTN display and a blue lightening processor. The brightness and contrast controls where embedded as softkeys under regular keyboard buttons. It has a weird breakout box which came with the machine which allowed you to connect things like an external video display and a floppy drive via the dock connector.
- WD90C24A2 video controller with 1MB
- 7.7" STN display with 640x480 resolution
530Cs - Yamoto
Often aligned with the smaller 230Cs and share the same manuals. It was designed in Yamoto, Japan, whereas the 500 and 510 came from the US.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of a 535X on the left and the 530Cs on the right (or the 530Cs being on top). You can see that the 530Cs is slightly smaller than the 535 and has a slightly older design logic with a painted metal case, rather than a black plastic one:
535, 535E and 535X - Yamoto
Very nice to work on, but best with a TFT screen, as DTSN was also an option. There is a dodgy hibernation battery inside the earlier models which tend to corrode the inside. I've done a bigger article here. I think it only was released in Asia.
Easy to dismantle but be careful of the hairline pins/traces which can very easily be knocked on the earlier 535 models with a more exposed CPU.
550BJ (Canon)
Came out before the 500 machine, before IBM even knew what they were doing with their model designations/numbering scheme. Sat alongside the 350 (weird PS/note rebadge) and the 720 (a step on from the iconic 700C). The 550BJ is a strange collaboration with IBM Japan and Canon Japan with a built-in bubblejet printer (hence the name!) and a monochrome display and no trackpoint. I've done a full article and teardown on this model here: https://ret.rocks/index.php/ibm/500-series/ibm-thinkpad-550bj
Weirdly the 550 and 555 machines were a complete departure from the rest of the 5xx-Series because they were full size machines, made even bigger by incorporating a printer and floppy disk drive. There were various other Canon-branded machines which share a similar design and ethos to the 550.
The 550 suffers from a wide array of surface mounted elerolytic capacitors that are all going bad now. I had 4 and could only get 2 of them working, because the leaking caps had damaged so many different traces on the motherboard.
555BJ (Canon)
Similar with the 550BJ, but with a trackpoint and a colour screen.
560, 560E, 560X and 560Z
Another design direction more closely aligned with it's bigger brother, the 760, the 560 series was a more widely released small notebook machine. The 560 series feels more plasticky and lightweight than came before, even if the 560Z does tend to cram a lot into a small space and feel a bit weighty again.
The 560Z was very different to the other 560 machines, although it wasn't obvious on first sight. It only came with the largest 12.1" TFT display, the Z came with the fastest 233 or 300Mhz CPUs and the HDD was accessible by a removable door on the outside of the machine.
570 & 570E
Again, more widely-released machine with Intel Pentium 333Mhz to 500Mhz CPUs and either an SVGA or XGA display. Marketed as a 'transformable' computer which was relatively light without any removable drives, but easily docked. It bugs me that the last 'official' western 570-series was an E which would either signify 'cheap' or 'cut down educational market' model, which is isn't. IBM released the 570E and decided to start lettering models. The 570E was replaced (alongside the 240) with the X series.
Yeah, so there was no 520 (because it kinda overlapped with the 230Cs) and there was no 540 because it didn't make sense inbetween the release of the japanese 535 and American 560. The 550BJ came before all of them.
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500 from 1993
beware~!! Like the 510 which came after it, this Lexmark-manufacturered Thinkpad has a reverse-polarity power adaptor!!
The 500 and 510 were IBM Raleigh designed and built which is why the serial numbers are starting with 23. The same team that designed these did the 701Cs and 701C.
- An Intel 486SLC CPU @ 50MHz
- A Cirrus Logic video chipset with 256 color/mono vga graphics and a max res of 640x480
- PCMCIA Slot
- 3.5" External Floppy Drive
- 170mb Segate Cavalier Hard Drive
- 2.5 hour battery
- 12mb of RAM
- Windows 95 and MSDOS 6.22
- PC Speaker for Sound
- VGA monitor Out
- Parallel/Serial ports
500 is on the left and the later 510 (without the blue buttons on the LCD bezel) is on the right,
Ports on the back of the 500
The 510 is reasonably similar to the 500 but without the four blue buttons and some slight technological improvements,
I previously stripped down the 510 for two reasons - to find out if there was any damage inside from leaking caps or batteries and to repair the vinegar syndrome screen. It was a bit of a nightmare because I don't believe it's built by IBM - it's got a Phoenix BIOS and a Lexmark sticker inside (not on the keyboard). Also the plastic which has RF shielding built-in is becoming very brittle.
For anyone feeling the need to take one of these apart, it feels terrible when it's unknown but simply put - you take all the screws out of the base and then with the machine the right way up, you kinda creak the front plastic forward to lift out the keyboard which has big plastic tabs at the back - you then lever it up from the front.
Then the base comes off completely by using a spudger either side to seperate the base from everything else.
Upside down with the base removed, you face a motherboard which simply lifts off from the DC daughterboard which is built into the keyboard bezel. The only electrolytic caps on the 510 were on the DC/DC board:
This is connected to the mainboard via that 24 pin connector, but you're more like attaching the motherboard to the tiny DC board than the other way around.
The hinges for the lid do not have great foundations and are all very weak now due to the brittle plastic. They crack and break and I suspect in another decade or two all 500/510 machines will have broken lids.
The lid itself is one of those ones where the top - the bit you're looking at with the laptop closed, lifts off the display which remains hinged in place. You undo two screws on the LCD bezel and then the whole back pushes back at the base and then slides up and off 5 tabs at the top which hold it onto the LCD bezel. Again the plastic is brittle.
Here are the tabs at the top of the lid, which need to be slid upwards to hinge the lid off:
My 500 is in much nicer natural condition because it's not an asian machine.
As you may tell from the FCC ID, this was designed and made by Lexmark for IBM. Lexmark today is known for printers, but they were founded in 1991 as a spin-off of IBM Information Products Corporation, which controlled IBM's US-based keyboard, printer and typewriter production. For a brief time (1992 to 1996), Lexmark also made laptops for themselves known as Lexbooks and as an OEM for others. The ThinkPad 500 has a Lexbook counterpart called Lexmark SE10 (codename "Enchilada"). The main difference is that instead of using a TrackPoint, its keyboard has a mouse-key button.
Speaking of the keyboard, the ThinkPad 500 was the first IBM laptop I know to use IBM Model M6-1 keyboard assembles. A minor revision of the original Model M6 buckling sleeve keyboard. Both were used on many early IBM (and Lexmark) laptops and even OEM'd for other companies like AST, Apple and Tadpole. The 500 has what I call a "Type 4" M6-1 shared with the aforementioned SE10, Lexbook MB10/M15, ThinkPad 510 (colour version of the 500) and the Apple Newton X0044 keyboard. They all use a version with slightly smaller keys compared to other ThinkPads that use M6/M6-1 like the 350 to 365, 700 to 755, Power Series 850 and RS/6000 860.
You could order the custom metal plate engraved after you received it. The process must not have been that expensive because I remember ordering mine. I didn’t realize the 486 was much slower than it should have been, because I remember trying to run X on Slackware and it was just so incredibly slow.
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More pics of the disassembled 510 here:
https://imgur.com/a/DANuQOM