Hey guys, I just obtained an IBM thinkpad with a pentium II 300mhz processor and 32mb memory. I dont want to upgrade a $10 computer lol but I wanted to know if there is any cool shiot I can do with it. Could I tear the screen off and use that to "upgrade" a portable dvd player screen etc? Any cool ideas would be appreciated, its summer and time for a cool project. Thanks

personally...I would use it to play all the cool old games that ran in DOS like Privateer, Wasteland, Fallout, etc

I have an old 700Mhz P3 laptop and I use it for just that, as well as my SNES/Sega Genesis emu (so I dont have to dig either of those systems out of storage lol)

old laptops are cool to re-live old retro games that we have all forgotten about with the new-fangled spicy graphics etc

some of the best games ever were old Interplay RPG's like Wasteland, Bard's Tale I, II, & III, Dragonquest, King's Quest, etc.

Im liking that Idea alot actually, unless I hear of something better thats what Im going to do.

Since it was only $10 and please take note that im twisted like this.

imagine, 2 - 1/4 or 1/2 sticks of dynamite(depends on your idea of fun) and the thinkpad......BOOM!!!!


If destruction is not something your into the rom idea is a good one.

Dos game player/simple web browser?

dont blow it up lol
id liek it for school/// if u dont want it
other than that...download "elasto mania"
awesome game

put 2-3 lan card and use it has a switch/firewall

or simply for DOS gaming

Heh, legacy hardware rules! :-)

Get some memory off ebay (32 mb is pushing it, with 128 you can at least run Win2k respectably) and use it... wait for it... as a laptop!

Indeed most laptop-y things CAN be done on a system like this - text editing, internet browsing, hell, even watching DivX movies... (Actually I think that this trip for absolute speed that we 're all wired into is kinda pointless - however I'll be the first to admit it's addictive!)

Last year I got a Sony VAIO PCG-C1XD off ebay, it's a PII 400MHz ultraportable with an 8 inch wide screen. I upgraded it's memory to 129mb and it runs Win2k like a charm! I've also bought a PCMCIA wireless card and I use it mainly for browsing teh intarweb from the other rooms of the house.. ;-)

we've got some nice ideas floating around here, even the dynamite one would be fun but upping the memory would be a start fo sho

if you use it for retro gaming you don't need any memory...it has plenty

I have an old thinkpad pII 500 with win 2k and 192MB of ram. Up until 2 years ago it when I broke the screen it was my only computer. It did browsed the web and played Tropico like a charm. I still have it sitting around because I loved it. I'd also recommend buying some replacment trackpoint covers (nipples) they wear out after a while.

If you prefer an ordinary OS which runs well on such a computer, even though I would recommend you to pick up some cheap 64MB memory module (I assume the 32MB means there's an extra slot for another module), why not install Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux. It's an easy way to get as much as possible out of your limited hardware. I assume microwinX also could be a nicer alternative, plus the extra fun of compiling it, than a deadly slow standard windows OS.

Anyone know what kinda ram this thing takes? Its a thinkpad Pentium II model 2640-b1u. Also is there a limit of what it can take I assume 128mb should do beautifully compared to 32mb lol thanks

HA pretty much this guy's thought would be similar to mine.

Hmm.. another cool idea, to me at least is to take off the keyboard, or just some of the letters to spell something or make a cool design, but make sure you can seel most of the Electronics and stuff inside. Then Flip the monitor so the whole thing is flat and frame it. Nice conversation piece to go in a room or underneath a glass coffee table.

Ive been looking, and it looks like you need EDO RAM with a max of 128MB. I'd open the laptop up to see exactly where the RAM is at first, because some sites are reporting some of these models have RAM soldered to the mobo.

Awesome, I checked and it wasnt soldered so its 144 pin edo ram?