The computer originally had Windows 98 installed on it, but when booting it would give a blue screen of death. I've tried a number of things to try and get this laptop working again:

1. I tried reinstalling Windows 98 since I have the original official disk, after the install and reboot the system displayed the error: "Invalid system disk Replace the disk, and then press any key" I don't know what it means by "system disk"

2. I tried installing Devuan daedalus, the last 32 bit version of the operating system. It failed.

3. I tried installing a really old Linux, Fedora 3. The installer ran successfully enough that the hard drive partitions and names appear on other Linux environments, but the system shows the error "Operating System not found"

4. I booted up TinyCore linux, which successfully runs as a live environment from RAM. It was the one that detected the previous partitions created by the Fedora installer. It also cannot install onto the hard drive (some USB error? I'm using DVD so idk what that's about). I ran fsck successfully once, it told me the hard drive is dos paritioned. So fdisk -l detects Linux partitions, fsck detects dos, what is going on?

5. I tried SystemRescueCD, which crashed with a kernel panic.

Is anyone familiar with the ins and outs of an IBM Thinkpad T20? Does anyone know what the "Invalid system disk" error is about, it does not show up in any user manuals I found online. Does anyone know how to get any operating system working on one of these, or a way I can atleast definitively diagnose the issue?

My thinkpad and also the docking station are purely USB 2. I added a usb3 expresscard (or whatever). It’s a strange beast. It has a barrel connector to add power that connects to a usb2 port. Someone told me the xpresscard bus has usb2 natively but not usb3, so I don’t know what kind of trickery it does but i've also read that mini pcie usb3 cards cannot be used in parallel with usb2 ports.

Is it all the same problem if I try to wire a USB3 card to a docking station? I noticed the pinouts are available for some docking stations, but they tend to have usb3 as some of the pins, which would not likely be the case with pre-usb3 docks.

I had to buy some floppies to get this to work.

1st, USB emulation, since it's more interesting of a use case, IMO.

A while back you may've stumbled upon the article Unlocking secret ThinkPad functionality for emulating USB devices where a dude patches nvram to enable xdci. I've been reminded of that recently and decided to find a way to achieve that with coreboot. After some time looking here and there, here's the solution: just add device ref south_xdci on end after device domain 0 on in coreboot's src/mainboard/lenovo/sklkbl_thinkpad/variants/t480/overridetree.cb. Yap, that simple; have fun!

Now on edk2: as one dude on reddit suggested, libreboot can be used to get the proprietary binaries and patched ME semi-automatically (although I've experienced some instability here and ended up feeding it blobs from an earlier build). As for the .config, I ended up following MrChromebox' advice and leaving most of the default choices be. Here's a minimal defconfig that generates working builds (fully flashable, not just the bios region):

# board choice
CONFIG_VENDOR_LENOVO=y
CONFIG_BOARD_LENOVO_T480=y
CONFIG_PAYLOAD_EDK2=y

# proprietary blobs
CONFIG_HAVE_IFD_BIN=y
CONFIG_IFD_BIN_PATH="../../../config/ifd/t480/ifd_16"
CONFIG_HAVE_ME_BIN=y
CONFIG_ME_BIN_PATH="../../../vendorfiles/t480/me.bin"
CONFIG_HAVE_GBE_BIN=y
CONFIG_GBE_BIN_PATH="../../../config/ifd/t480/gbe"
CONFIG_ADD_FSP_BINARIES=y
CONFIG_FSP_USE_REPO=n
CONFIG_FSP_M_FILE="../../../vendorfiles/kabylake/Fsp_M.fd"
CONFIG_FSP_S_FILE="../../../vendorfiles/kabylake/Fsp_S.fd"

# nice-to-haves
CONFIG_EDK2_FULL_SCREEN_SETUP=y
CONFIG_MEC1653_ENABLE_UART=y

You can walk around the menuconfig after making olddefconfig and see what other options you may like. However DO NOT TOGGLE the "allow pcie resource allocation over 4g" or whatever it was called (it's in the bottom of the device section), as on my machine that resulted in coreboot and systemd-boot displaying nothing, though there finally was image after Linux started booting. So, not fatal, but may end up requiring reflashing externally, depending on your setup.

The most useful thing in edk2 for me with that was the working platform setup menu, where one can disable the annoying fnlock on boot/wake and increase the memory limits for igpu. Although, nvramtool should work for that now, too.

OC by @HyperfocusSurfer@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Original question by @0t79JeIfK01RHyzo@lemmy.ml

The ThinkPad 500 was IBM's first subnotebook. It...wasn't perfect.

If you're one of the 3 people left on planet Earth with a ThinkPad 500 and you have the same problem, here's the 3D model of the bracket I made: https://www.printables.com/model/1262998-thinkpad-500-display-hinge-clutch-repair

Arrived yesterday and still got to do some customisation