IBM Thinkpad s30

The s30 was the last in the line of IBM's ultraportables and somewhat supercedes the 240Z. The s30 successfully continues the micro-punch of the 240Z with the same size display but in a smaller chassis, more RAM, more CPU power, higher resolution, better colour depth and with Wifi!.

The X20 may seem a dainty little machine but it had nothing on the s30. They were first released Japan in 2001 - before Lenovo bought all the Thinkpad estate from IBM. this series was only available in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

There was also an s31 which was slightly different and s30s which are branded as simply iSeries. I believe the s31's only difference was that it came with a non-Japanese OS and an international (US style) keyboard - likely for Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

The s30 range came in the standard rubberised satin black of most Thinkpads in that era but unusually was also available in 'Piano' or 'Mirage' black which is a high gloss finish. Many of my machines are also finished in a blue brushed metal which looks like Titanium, but I think this might just be where a previous owner removed the top coating.

The S30 and the S31 have an Analog Devices SoundMAX AD1981A codec and will function if you simply select Soundblaster compatible in DOS games.

The external display adaptor is completely unique (as far as I can tell) to the s30 and is known as the IBM ThinkPad s30 CRT Conversion adapter : 27L0659. I did see a guy in Australia selling one once but wanted a stupid amount of money, so I never got one.

The s30 won an IF design award in 2002.

Some Resources:

I have uploaded a zip file of all the drivers (generally for 98/Me/2000/XP and with the Ez Button software) I could find here.

There are rips of the original recovery CDs here.

Here is a copy of the s30 and s31 hardware maintenance manual.

Here are a couple of iSeries-branded s30 machines, one with the standard battery and one with the wider extended battery. Also pictured is IBM's own Thinkpad s-Series USB FDD finished with the same Mirage gloss black.

Here are some pictures comparing the 240 (left) to the s30 (right):

And here are some pictures of a matt-black s30:

Here is a picture showing the size differences with the 240 back-left, s30 back-right, Z50 front-left and X20 front-right:

Indeed this makes the X20 look massive by comparison!

Here is a mashup of a bunch of s30-series machines showing a variety of lids and finishes:

Many machines from Japan suffer from the humid climate. Some Japanese machines I have imported had a build-up of this white salt-like substence inside. It's almost crystal consistency and I believe it comes perhaps from being in a coastal, humid environment. If you take the machine apart you can generally just brush it all loose with a stiff brush and re-assemble, with no damage done:

Here is the OEM IBM s-Series Floppy disk drive, also in Mirage black:

Final Footnotes...

Couple of things I've found out that don't seem to be mentioned on the internet. The LCD is different to the 240, Transnote, etc and I have updated the https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/TFT_display to reflect this. The 240 (not Z) uses a Hitachi TX26D31VC1CAA and the S30 uses a TX26D20VC1CAB

I also bought 2 x TX26D20VC1AA which is one letter off the S30 boards, and initially looks the same but not only is the 2 wire inverter cable in the wrong place, even by extending it, the display does not show anything (even though the main connector is the same as the C1AB variation. Lesson of the story is that the TFT panels wiki page is now correct since I've updated the S30 details and you can't use *any* other variation of this Hitachi LCD even though they're extremely similar in specification and model numbering.

It's also true that the LCD in a 240 uses a completely different inverter. The inverter in an S30 is T181046.00 and has a different ribbon connector and is located below the panel, horizonally, whereas the 240 is on the right and vertical.

Worth remembering that only very specific high-end versions of the 240Z had 4Mb VRAM and could support 16m colours at 1024x768, whereas all s30s can do this as 4Mb VRAM was standard. So the 240-series displays were probably playing catch up to XGA throughout their release.

Anyway, it turns out the LCD works (albeit with Vinegar syndrome) but the inverter had a blown fuse. I didn't have an in-spec fuse to replace it with so I've jumpered the fuse with solder and am being very careful in plugging and replugging things in.