Based in Milton Keynes, England

IBM Thinkpad 220

The joint venture between IBM and Ricoh was called RIOS and it came out with some cool ideas, each with code names. An early, unreleased IBM ultraportable was the 200, which was codenamed 'Monolith'. The team went on to develop the 220 and 230Cs. This codename was also seen in production on one of the PCBs inside the PT PC110 (which was perhaps a little too-far removed from the specification of the Thinkpad to get the name, but you could think of its as the PadThink 210) as 'a' Monolith. This all happened before the Monolith 'team' ended their reign of flawed, early 'ultraportables and the 'small notebook' came-of-age and the 235 and 240 was released.

The Thinkpad 220 is not such a difficult machine to get, but its very difficult to get in good working condition. The plastic used to make them tends to scratch easily, and with age has gone quite brittle. The machine ran from AA batteries, which in many cases have been left in situ and leaked. The 'Gameboy' display is delicate, impossible to replace and suffers from both Vinegar syndrome and LCD rot.

My machine was obtained and repaired in reasonable condition and boots to the original installation of it's Japan-centric menu. It comes inside it's own IBM leather wallet.

Model IBM Thinkpad 220 (Monolith Mk2)
Machine Types 2432-SJx
Release Timeframe Sold from May 1993 for around 1.5 years.
Preceded by Sold from May 1993 until August 1994
Superceded by PC110
Motherboard Specs 230Cs
Display Specs  

 

Here are some pictures of my 220s The first one is about as practically complete as you could get with a complete sealed set of documents, manuals, disks and a 220 VHS videocassette. I've restored this to remove the hibernation battery, replace the CR2447, recapped the motherboard, upgraded the RAM and the hard drive boots with the factory PIM software which is a Icon-based manager (a little like IOS on an iPhone).

The second machine is also preserved from damage and recapped but the screen does not work. I have two further machines with missing screens (too damaged to keep) and some spares such as a good working motherboard. 

It's really hard to keep good, working 220 machines as they're so fraught with issues - particularly the screen.

So I tried to take a 220 apart and it's possibly one of the worst vintage thinkpads to disassemble. The designers were obviously working with new display technology as well as new materials, and neither have aged well

The base is held on with a few screws with a hidden pair in the back corners, under the hinges. This will enable you to remove the base, revealing the motherboard:

At the same time, the top bezel which is above the keyboard is clipped in by friction around the edges and some sticky tape in the middle. So warming it up might help a bit, because it tends to be very weak plastic now that just snaps. Here is underneath:

Underneath the bezel above the keyboard are two screws holding the keyboard down:

With the base removed and the top bezel and keyboard loosened, you can get to all the ribbon clips - 3 for the keyboard, one for the hard drive, one for the PS/2 port and one for the screen's ribbon connector. There is also a 2-pin power cable for the display.

Here are two high resolution images of the mainboard top and bottom:

The display itself is a deeply flawed and fragile design. It's the only LCD i've encountered that is frameless - as in nothing actually holding it together apart from the lid it sits within.

Here is a picture of the display flapped down (viewing the rear of the panel):

And here is behind the panel with the inverter (which is placed 'backwards'):

It also doesn't have a make on it (although I suspect it's made by Citizen) and the only model number looks like KL544BV:

The 220 also has a 'baby' DC board attached to it, which looks like this:

Leaky Caps

There are 8 surface mounted electrolytic capacitors on the 220 motherboard and all of them will have failed and be leaking. In bad cases, the leaking fluid will rot away other components, like it has done to an NEC IC inside one of mine. The machine still boots and functions reasonably well, so I suspect the NEC IC is doing something which I'm not using - possibly driving the PCMCIA card slot.

7 of the capacitors are really easy to get to by just taking off the base plate - 5 are near to the memory upgrade connector and the other 2 down one end of the same side of the motherboard. The other one is on the other side in one corner of the motherboard. I replaced all of mine with tantalum capacitors and the machine still boots as it was before. Tanatlums cannot leak and simply short when failed.

Ancilliary Batteries

There was three types of battery onboard the 220. The main one runs from AA batteries. The second is a 2477 CMOS battery, which is still widely available. The fact it's a cell battery means it's quite unlikely to leak. The third battery is the 'bridge' hibernation battery, which would keep the system running whilst the main battery was swapped. This one is soldered in and should be removed as a possible source of future damage. 

Tiny Daughterboard

In one of my 220 machines, next to the RAM upgrade there is a tiny daughterboard BE-0010-HP-01 which I don't know what it does. 

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IBM External Floppy Disk Drives

Due to the different IBM labs and companies developing IBM portables and the time period over which they existed before USB, there are a lot of different types of IBM floppy drive.

Whilst we're only covering external here, there are at least 3 types of connector:

26mm / fattest: Found on the 701c

21mm: Found on the PS/notes, 850, 7xx tablets. 360, 365

17mm / Thinnest: Found on the later models which favoured optical drives built-in such as the 755CD, 760, 600 and various 3xx series. Ultraslim floppy drive.

21mm

This early floppy drive 66G5069, also known as "UltraBay Diskette Drive enclosure" actually contains the original multibay floppy within it's large outer shell. There are also fixed standard external 21mm drives.

These ultrabay floppy drives came in various models from various manufacturers, so externally each 66G5069 drive may look the same, but internally it could be totally different.

TEAC FD-05HG

Here we have a TEAC FD-05HG drive, which has one eletrolytic cap, which as far as I know should only be replaced with an electrolytic. I have had drive read issues by replacing these with a solid capactor. It's a 100u / 10v capacitor seen below:

You can get away, like I did with a 7.7m through-hole capacitor with the legs splayed outwards:

Whilst it's open you may (or may not) want to clean the magnetic heads with a little IPA and check the corkscrew spindle which moves the heads forward and back across the diskette is moving smoothly.

 

Even though this 7.7mm tall capacitor is longer than the original surface mounted cap, it still just fits under the floppy drive chassis - although you cannot go any more than this.

Sony MPF720-2

And here is another 1.44Mb ultrabay floppy drive - the Sony MPF720-2 (weirdly suggesting it's a 720Kb drive, but it's a 1.44Mb drive):

This Sony drive is similar, but you do not need to remove the little PCB in order to replace the 47uf capacitor:

In this case, small 6mm through hole capacitors with the legs splade are a good replacement:

 

 

 

 

750 Series

I've managed to restore an almost complete set of the 750 series machines. Here are some of the collection:

Read more: 750 Series

Translating PS/55 note Japanese keyboard to English keyboard mapping

If you connect a western keyboard to the earliest PS/55 and PS/55 N23 SX notes, the keyboard mappings are all messed up. Here is a rough map of what key is mapped to what real keypress:

Read more: Translating PS/55 note Japanese keyboard to English keyboard mapping

IBM 5535 Multistation

IBM Japan had a range of Kanji-character-enabled desktop computers, called the Multistations. This was part of that family with the addition of a greyscale LCD display. Although 5535 is the 'laptop' range of machines, With the sheer size and weight (7kg), I think you would consider it more like a 'space saving desktop', much like the IBM Convertible. It has a sibling called the 5535-S which has a slightly different design and is 'less boxy'.

Read more: IBM 5535 Multistation

IBM PS/Note N45 SL (Zenith)

This is one of three N45 SL machines I have in a box. I previously gave up a day and ended up with one complete boxed one, a second unboxed one as a nice working companion and a third 'parts' machine. The N45 came in two models sporting different CPUs - the SL and SX.

You'll notice the case badge has similarities to both the 2141 (a PS/1 type) PS/note 182 and the PS/1 case badge - unlike the other PS/note and IBM Thinkpad oval badges, you'd think it is architecturally closely related to the (same year) PS/Note 182. However this machine feels Zenith-made through and through - much like the Thinkpad 300 which usurped it as the 2615. It shares a similar case plastic, power brick, display, keyboard and battery. Perhaps IBM were briefly marketing the N45 as the low-end (outsourced) notebook and the N51 as the high end (IBM-built) notebook, which eventually became the Thinkpad 300 as low-end and 700 as high.

Putting it another way, IBM were obviously toying with what to do about the cost-reduced 'low end' and had the 2141 "Lexmark Lexbook AR-10" PS/note and the Zenith-made N45 SL then "Zenith Z-Note 433Lnc+" 300 all coming out at once. You'll find some very reputable sites not even acknowledging the 2141 or 261x machines because they do not follow the 'true bloodline' of the IBM notebooks. The N45 SL may well have a Zenith step brother, but I haven't found a reference to it.

My first machine amazingly has a i387 upgrade chip (a maths coprocessor for the 386) fitted.

Read more: IBM PS/Note N45 SL (Zenith)