LGR - Restoring a 1997 IBM ThinkPad 380XD

The restoration of my IBM ThinkPad 365XL laptop has finally come to an end. After loading up the CD with essential tools and programs, I set out to tackle the task of revitalizing this old computer. The first step was to boot up the system and get a feel for how it worked. I was pleased to find that everything seemed to be in working order, although there were a few minor issues here and there.

I decided to start by adjusting the color depth settings, which resulted in a noticeable improvement to the on-screen image. The 16-bit setting made all the difference, and I was able to see things that I hadn't been able to before. Next, I focused on the audio setup, which proved to be a bit of a challenge. The Cirrus Logic Crystal Audio driver seemed to work seamlessly with the sound blaster, although there were some issues with the volume levels.

To test the audio capabilities, I decided to try playing a game that featured ad-lib sounds - Duke Nukem 2. The result was surprisingly good, with the sound effects sounding more lifelike than I had expected. However, my refrigerator started making an annoying noise during the playback, and some of the other sound effects were cut off due to poor quality.

Despite these minor setbacks, I continued on with the restoration process. Next up was installing a driver for the trackpad, which required me to use a utility called "nipple dot.exe". This was more of a technical exercise than an actual problem to solve, but it showed me that even in this old computer, there were still ways to tweak and optimize its performance.

As I worked on getting everything up and running, I also decided to add some personal touches to the system. I created a custom OEM information page, which included details about my computer's specifications, manufacturer, and contact information for technical support. This was a nice touch, as it added a bit of personality to an otherwise utilitarian machine.

Finally, I turned my attention to cleaning the laptop's exterior. The surface had become quite dirty over time, but a simple water and vinegar solution seemed to do the trick. I also discovered that one of the speaker grilles had a small puncture in it, which was clogged with debris - including macaroni and cheese. Cleaning this out revealed that there were actually some rather...unpleasant substances lurking inside.

Despite these minor issues, the laptop is now looking and feeling like new again. The surface has been cleaned, and the interior is spotless. I even added a fresh new nipple to one of the keys - a small but satisfying touch that shows I'm willing to put in the effort to keep my computer in top condition.

As I sit here enjoying my freshly restored laptop, it's hard not to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. This was a fun project from start to finish, and I'm glad I could share it with you. Until next time, thanks for watching!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and welcome to an LGR thing.This right here is an IBM Thinkpad 380 XD.This was recently donated to me from Greg.Thank you very much once again, sir.This one does need a little bit of work,which is what we're going to be doing today.And not only does it need to be cleaned, but I've already taken out the hard drive here,which came in this little caddy tray thing,and I've ordered a couple of replacements that are um,you know, original IBM parts because that's what I like to do.These are theTravel star..? *chuckles*They're not known for being um,particularly reliable but they are original parts,and these are supposedly tested and working.So there's a couple options that I have right here, and that is the uh,4-gig one, which is what it had in there,and then there's also the 6.4 gig... You know, I was just going to put what it had in hereoriginally when I received it the other day, but when I looked at up onlineIt seemed that the 6.4 gig was the maxed-out option for this and I figured eh, you know, why notwhy don't I just max this thing out to what it would have beenback in the day in the day, in like, uh, 1997?So yeah, that's that's what I'm gonna do.I'm going to put this one in here.I also got this little, uh, Cmos battery here because the battery is deadSo uh, that needs to be replaced, and there's also some little nubs which we'll replace on the mouseright there in the middle of the keyboard because otherwise those things are gross andthey wear down after a while,and I like the feel ofa fresh...nipple. *laughter*Yeah, those little track point nubs? The things get gross over time, but, just going to leave it on here for nowThat'll probably be the last thing,it's like...my sort of finishing touch you know, the cherry on top of putting these things back together and cleaning it up.The first order of business is going to be the hard disk driveand uh, that's just this little guy right here, soThere we go, model number DAR, uhTwenty thousand nine thousand or something like that.So yeah, the way this works is um, these actually have these littlesticky pads on the bottom here.Here we go. And just sort of sticks in place like that,um, but of course there's some screws that go in on the sides.Yeah, this part just sort of lines up with those little... slots there.And there we go!See that it has a bit of extra space because this is not as thick of a 2.5 inch driveBut uh, you know that's fine. It'll do the job.And that should just slide in place...there we go.Clean this up a little bit before I put that back on there because it's looking gross.And yes, I do have a woodgrain toothbrush. That's just...how I roll.This should just slide right back into place...there we go!And yeah, the way that you get that back out is eitherthere's a screw that goes on here, unscrewed that, and then this you just sort of press in, like with a coinIn fact this is supposed to unscrew with as coin as well.Okay! And yeah this is not the original power supply, but it's the original specs and it works just fine.Next order of business has to do with the batteries,um, for one thing the battery that's in hereis very dead, and I believeit's making like a weird noise, so...I'm just going to take it out entirely?Because it's it's making a concerning sound I don't have a replacement for that right nowSo we're just going to kind of run it straight off of B. Ac adapterNext is the C mo's battery because yeahWe need a the clock and whatnot and that just goes right in here next to the ramSo we have the ram right there and then the battery plugs in right there?Here we goAnd we'll just take a little sticky thing off hereand it just sort ofNestle's up underneath here a little bit because that's how the original one was soThere we go it should beyeah, bios Sorted let's get some power to it andSee what we get hopefully it's not making that same soundIt was like a whining noise, and they would crack alone stuff. Just it scared meI don't like that kind of noise coming from a batteryAll right, so we've got error 161 there whichMakes sense and here the hard drive coming on thereand 163 which means of course we've got theproblemsWith the cmos which is fine because I just replaced the battery for itI was getting this error anyway with the other battery that was dead, but this was new so it should be good nowI always like this little like flapping duck or whatever it isMouse cursor that ibm had at the time the year is it?Yep, that is it's got august rightThere we goOkay, so that error is fixedat 64 Meg's of Ram in this one which isPretty well maxed out for the time and of course we've got nothing onHere as far as to boot from so we're going to use is male gr. Boot disk with CD-Rom capabilitythis computer is really cool too because it is one of those that hasApparently there was a cdr t in here. What was this copy of print master ah I had not actually opened the CDDrive until now apparently that was jostling around in there got a little damaged. Hope it didn't mess up the driveI was going to saythis was a pretty cool machine at the time because it did have this nice combo drive here, so you had theHigh-Density three and a half inch floppyThe CD-rom which I think was 8-speed. Maybe 16. I should just be able to restart and get some stuff going onWhere is the link?It did actually have you know windows and stuff on there, but everything was wrong like the version of windows was wrongIt was too new for it. It was filled with a bunch of software just honestly it was bloatware andlike a gigabyte of the drive was filled withJust downloaded mP3s from like napsterWhich was highly nostalgic, but is not exactly what I?Wanted for this machine, so I'm just redoing everything alright. See if it actually saw the CD driveAnd it did perfectly fine, so that's good doesn't seem the drive seems to be you know ruined or anything alrightSo let's just run fdisk, and this is the version that came with Windows 95, Osr2Includes the large disk support thing which we want because this is a 6.4 gig driverI don't want like a ton of partitions current fixed drive isNumber one, which is the only one in their end. No partitions are defined, so let us Define onewith all that sizeYes, they define. My integrity let's doing that. I'm gonna make work up IMust restart my system. Yes, all rightNice, okay. Let's go over to format and drag going ohYeah, so we got the full six point. Whatever gigs sweetcoffee andMemories Ihave quite a fondness for these ibm, thinkpads largely becauseAround 10 or 12 years ago. I was in between jobs, and I would go to local goodwills of courseNo surprise there, but no they used to have laptops a ton of Ibm thinkpads in particularFor like 5 bucks and you could also buy the blanked out hard drives separately for anotherI don't know 5 bucks or something it was really cheapSo you can get a whole working system usually for around ten to fifteen dollars depending on the unit. Yeah. It was coolI would get those and I would do what we're doing here. You know justPlop the hard drive in thereI wouldInstall windows and get on nice and fresh and clean it up a little bit throw it on ebay and make me a little bitOf a profit which was nice because it didn't have a job so yeahThat was about a year or so that I did nothingBut I would do I'd repair jobs for peopleYou know just friends and family and a couple local businesses and also go to Goodwilland just fixed up different computers like this in fact some of theMachines that I still have in there are from that timeI think I sold all the laptops that I fixed up except for one I kept one thinkpadBut the my main capture PC was one of thoseJust blanked outComputers, you know it was a desktop you get everything in there - the hard drive, and maybe the ram for 10 bucksI really miss when they did that because now they just take any machine like thisAnd it just gets straight-up recycled so you can still buy like at least around hereDell computers those are the only ones they sell though that that's that's it. And they're like$150awesomeGet that windows installation startedohscandisk the Blank DriveYou'll be okay. We're go to check though. We might not be okay. I agree to your outdated agreementYeah, okay. Let's look for everything pleasebecause I want everything we have no network butThis will doAlright, it looks to have found pretty much everything that it's got going onUnknown monitored, I mean I would just go plug and play monitor for now because you know whatever. We'll see if theIbm has any specific drivers for this panel?I'm sure they do now you might be noticing these black edges around the picture in the middle thereand that is because this display is made for 800 by 600 resolution andThere's no hardware scaling actually in the display. So it just doesn't it does doesn't even bother so like lower res things like thisRight here is a shrunk downInstead of stretching it and honestly that's fine because take a look at this here's a Gateway solo 2100 laptopThat does scaling and it's disgusting it just doesn't do it properly because the integers don't match upCompletely between like the lower res upscaling to 800 by 600 so I would rather have the black bars than uglyScaling so I'm okay with that in this case. Oh yeah, I've got some fresh windowsYeah, that floppy diskI've done this so many times, but like getting ready to run windows 95 for the first time stillJust trigger something in my brain. I'm like oohWhat's it Gonna be like?When does 95 was so exciting like what it first came out?I just couldn't believe that the fact that that had a start menu instead. It's the program manager was so cool to me andYeah, I was so happy to upgrade to 95 when I did which didn't happen until 1997 actuallyOkay, why is it doing this?yeah, it's looking for these cad files, soWhat we're going to do here isboot from that boot disk againCopy over all those windows files all rightSo we're just going to make a win95 directory here, and then we're going to go over to the CDDrive switch over to that directory, and I'm going to copy all of the cab filesto thethingThat should get pretty much everything we need so it won't be trying to look for a cD drive when it doesn't have the driversTo look to the drive through 95, it's just a weird Catch-22, but this worksIt's also handy to just do this anyway, so you don't have to dig out a windows 95CD-Rom anytime you're trying to you know upgrade driversOr adding a new piece of hardware or software or something that needs something off of that windows 95 CDSo if you've got the space for it which obviously do with over 6 gigs then that yeah?This is just something that I normally do anywayI'm hoping that it's also going to find like the sound and whatnot but if not then that's okayI'll just go and grab some drivers online or something or just from thatbackup that I made of the drive that this came withHey guys, I found a disc drive. Do you need this yes? I do computer. That's okay. Yeah Eastern timeThat is the correct time. I don't have a printer so screw yoummm that classic windows 95 Splash startup thingyMakes me happy all right, so it doesn't seem like we have any sound and probably don't have correct video drivers eitherYeah, we don't so we got 16 color and monochrome at 640 by 480 only so yeahWe at the very bare minimum are going to each sound and video, but let's see what else oh goodnessSo there's a lot of things that it doesn't know what to do with wellLet me go see if I can find the drivers for those from you knowI don't know if Lenovo still had them up for download orThere's an archive of IBm stuff somewhereI'm going to look for that first because I would rather get like you know the latest drivers before we do that thoughI just got to see I got some dos games on this CD hereI wanted to see if it'll run commander keen I mean I know it will but I just want to see it do it likePC speaker, haAll right, ohMan, that's awesome. Yeah, I was thinking that PC speaker was kind of loudAnd it actually comes out of the speakers on the front of the computer, which is coolWow, what a loud like crunchy sounding PC speakerThat's great. It's like reverberating through my dining room hereKill myself let's get the other sound and things going now, but that right there makes me happyMmm CD-rw 650 megabyTesAnd we using this I just loaded it up with all the drivers and stuff that I could findWhich as I thought was pretty easy to track down it is an iBm product after all okay?So I have loaded up the CD with things that I need first order our business here is going to be the videowhich I haveAptly named videoawesomeHopefully that'll do itnicefull screenFinally as much better. We should be able to adjust the color depth as wellYeah16-bit is a thing let's apply that crap without restartingSweet give me them cloudsExcept that. They're actually we could title them, but that's going to look stupid. Let's just go withstitches for nowYeah, there we go. Okay. Let's get some of these other things going we got audioListen actually as a setup program which is niceCirrus logic Crystal audio, I haven't actually tried this out with da stuff, so I'm curious all yeah, ILove how when he tell windows 95 where the drivers are and it instantly forgets?That's so annoyingAwesome. We've got a little speaker down here, soYeahLet's try wave firstclassic time for some of that canyonsounds pretty sweet actually so I'm going to try a dos thing with going to be Duke Nukem 2 because it has ad-lib andSound blaster sound which I know how it should sound so it's a good test for meIt's pretty goodOf course my refrigerator is coming onI ever buy and the Fm sound is really quiet even though I didI think turned it up in Windows or whateverYeah, a lot of sounds are getting cut off like the sound blaster soundsNo, no sounds alrightYeah, like right there. That sound didn't play all the way throughOkay, I'm not going to make you sit through all the other installation thingies here like you know nipple dot exeThat's just to get the trackpad the trackpoint working a little better, but I am going to do this here, soLet me show you what this is going to be doing when you go to the properties at my computer you'll see thatthere's this big blank spot here andWell, you know if you have a computer, typically back then from a companyor actually even still from a manufacturer like ibm, then you're going to be seeing some information there, so these are actually theOem infos that go toThis particular thinkpad or at least there's some that I've downloaded that should be right so they go into the system folder hereAnd I'm just going to paste themAnd there we goso advil Ivm logo right there andSome stuff that says what kind of computer it is and it's from Ibm and look we even get a little support information thingyI know the phone number at a website so in case you have any problems like and call them right upThat's pretty much it forWhat I'm going to be showing and as I'll fix that up here in a momentBut it's not pertinent to what I'm showing here todaybut yeah, let's get this thing cleaned up andYeahI'll just due to the nature of these computers having this sort of gray black finish. It's actuallyDeceptively dirty, I'm guessingThis is just a water and vinegar mix, but yeah, you can see. That's a yeahYeah might not be the biggest difference visually, but it makes me feel better. OhActually, it does feel better and look it actually got that little little spot off thereThat's looking wonderfulThat actually is pretty gross in thereYeah, ohYeah, and I forgot to mention this does actually have a uSb on the back which is 1.0Is still pretty cool for your computer from 97?ohYeah looking goodAll things considered this is actually in pretty good. Shape ISeem like these speaker grilles have little you know get holes punctured in them and macaroni and cheese and poop gets in thereIt's really gross sometimesnow if you wanted to it's actually really easy to just take off all of these keys andLike give them a nice soak which I might do eventually right now. I just want to get it superficially cleaned ohThat's gross. Maybe the paper towel first on this that was nastier than I noticed it was buttwinkyeah, still definitely needs a deeper clean than that, butEven just after a surface cleaning here. It's looking a lot betterless grimyOh yeah, and for the cherry on top a nice brand new nippleCheck that out.Oh, that is a delightfully satisfying. Fresh computer!Well, that's it for this video. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of a restorationDealio here pretty straightforward, but you know I thought it might be kind of entertaining to watchSpeaking of watching thank you for watching we'll see you in the next LGR\n"