This is a $20 laptop. It was a thrift store find, and I got a little
bit lucky in finding not just an IBM ThinkPad, which are bulletproof machines, but even the
same model that I briefly owned back in the late 90’s – a 600X. I jumped on it, despite initially having no
idea what I could realistically use it for. Join me as I find out whether 20-year-old
hardware can still serve a purpose today. It turned out to be a little worse for wear
than I initially thought. But I knew I wanted to nurse it back to health,
because giving old machines of all kinds a new lease on life is just something that gives
me satisfaction. I’d find a use for it later. Back in 1998 computers were running,
well, Windows 98. And this computer rocks a Pentium III 450
with a fully upgraded 576MB of RAM, so I’m not even going to be upgrading to XP. At least Windows 98 runs surprisingly smoothly
– in fact, it feels about as snappy as a modern PC running Windows 10. There were a couple of things I knew I had
to do before I could dive in and try to figure out a new purpose for this thing. The absolute first thing was to make a drive
image using Macrium Reflect. I’m sure there are other good drive cloners
out there, but they all seem tailored to a slightly different purpose, and Reflect works
really well for just quickly backing up and restoring entire drives, and keeping multiple
images handy. This is a free download and it’s a really
useful utility – with a 4GB drive like the one this laptop came with, it’s easy to
store a bunch of images on your main computer as you do other maintenance, just in case
you mess something up and need to restore one. The second mandatory task was a virus and
malware scan, and I discovered that this laptop had an even bigger infestation of unwanted
pests than my first Manhattan apartment. I have no idea what the previous owner had
been doing on this computer, but he had clearly just abandoned it along with all the software
and files he had on it because the viral infection had gotten so bad that it was affecting functionality. Even right-clicking no longer worked, and
trying to do things like defragging crashed the computer. I did the virus scan while the drive was still
hooked up to my modern computer for backup – much easier that way – and I did the
image first just in case my virus scanner nuked any system files while cleaning. I did have to try a few different scanners
before I found one that could cure my particular viruses without killing the patient. I didn’t get a disc copy of Windows along
with the computer, so I had to keep the one I already had on the hard drive. And I wanted to keep all the ThinkPad tools
that it came installed with too. The laptop also needed a few hardware fixes. The battery it came with was completely dead
– and this can be difficult depending on the model, but I managed to find a reconditioned
one for $15. As far as I can tell, it works just as well
as a new one. And I ended up spending 8 bucks on Ebay buying
a used 40GB hard drive to replace the one that came with the laptop, mostly because
the noise old IBM Travelstar drives make sounds like somebody spinning a bunch of roulette
marbles around the inside of a teacup. It doesn’t install confidence in the drive,
and it’s also just incredibly annoying. So all told, I really spent about $43 to get
the hardware fully restored, and upgraded. I finally fired it up and... I was back into the computing delights that
only Windows 98 can provide. Several defrag runs and some Windows patch
installations later and I had a lean, mean and clean machine that was ready for anything
I wanted to throw at it. The question was, now what? It was both enjoyable and satisfying just
getting this ThinkPad back in working order, but I wanted to really do something with it. I found several sites that list various tasks
you can use older laptops for, but most of them are either best suited for systems that
aren’t quite this vintage and can at least run a modern version of Windows, or they’re
just not things I’d ever use a computer for to begin with. Stuff like acting as a wifi repeater – I
mean, I’d rather buy a cheap router for that than leave a computer dedicated to it
24/7. It dawned on me that I have literally several
binders full of old CD games, and as luck would have it, my 600X, despite its age, has
a DVD drive. These computers came with their own version
of IBM’s Ultrabay, meaning they could be configured with different drives and end-users
could even swap them out. Most of these shipped with floppy drives,
but mine has a DVD drive and it’s probably one of the first laptops of any kind that
did. Now, an important digression here. The PC and Windows standards are known for
backward compatibility, but this isn’t totally reliable… in fact there’s one huge caveat. Back when Microsoft introduced Windows 7 64
bit, they completely broke compatibility with 16 bit applications – they just intentionally
stripped that subsystem from Windows. Nowadays most people are running 64 bit Windows
of some kind, leaving no real path for 16 bit applications or games. This can be a kick to the gut the first time
you’re feeling nostalgic for a game of SimTower or Close Combat and get absolutely shut down
by Windows. There are ways around this, most of which
involve running either a virtual machine and an entirely separate 32 bit copy of Windows,
or DOSBox. I don’t begrudge anyone that wants to do
this – it’s kind of a pain in the butt, but it does mean you can just use a single
modern PC for everything. I ran a virtual machine back when I was testing
Windows 8 on my Windows 7 computer, and I’ve tried out DOSbox for some of my older DOS
games. But virtual machines require a lot of system
resources and can be difficult to set up, plus you need another copy of Windows. DOSbox is an emulator, and like all emulators
it has its problems. Not all games may run faithfully, or at all,
or they may run with technical issues. Also, as its name implies DOSbox is a DOS
emulator; if you want to run Windows games, you again need to run Windows on top of it,
and install all the drivers manually. I’m not slagging off DOSbox here, but it’s
just always better to run games on real metal if you can. So if you haven't guessed yet, that’s one new purpose for this laptop: old games. It’s the right CPU speed and it’s got
the right operating system. An older computer can be as good as any vintage
game console for playing games – there are actually a lot more older games for PC than
any game system, and many of them will really only work on older hardware. That said, setting this up has reminded me
of how painful the transition from DOS to Windows was back in the 90’s. Laptops especially often use non-standard
or at least uncommon hardware, and by the Windows 98 days, they often only shipped with
Windows drivers – perfect for those 16 bit Windows games, but to run DOS games you’re
going to need to find and install DOS drivers specific to your hardware, and then manually
edit your autoexec.bat and config.sys files (remember those?) I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my
sound card drivers, which don’t seem to exist for DOS, although oddly I can get MIDI
music to play but not sound effects. If anyone knows where I can get some DOS drivers
for a Crystal Soundfusion PCI card, let me know. But, you might be thinking… is there anything
just a little more current that you can do on an old machine than run 20 year old games? Well, yes, to a point – you can install
desktop Linux on it. Now, most Linux distributions have advanced
to the point that they’re not going to run any better on old hardware than Windows 10
would, but a few are geared towards low-spec hardware. I had to try a few different ones before settling
on Point Linux, which runs pretty well out of the box on this machine and maybe ironically
for me, at least, actually has better driver support than Windows 98. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising now,
but the last time I installed desktop Linux I could not get half of my hardware working
at all – this time I even got wifi straight away, which has been a hellish and so far
unsuccessful experience in Windows 98 because of a lack of WPA support. But old hardware is still old hardware – don’t
expect to even be browsing a lot of modern web sites once you get Linux installed. Here’s YouTube running on a 20 year old
laptop – amazing that it even works at all, but it’s not really what I’d call useable. A lot of modern Linux apps also just won’t
work at all – for example, the Steam Linux client requires a 1ghz CPU and from what I
gather some sort of 3D graphics card with Linux drivers installed. But even the Opera and Chromium browsers both
require the SSE2 instruction set, which the Pentium III lacks. You could go just a little bit later than
this laptop and opt for a Pentium 4, though you’ll definitely pay more than $20 in that
case. Still, with wifi working on Linux, I’m able
to download any game patches I may need through regular old Firefox – which thankfully does
work - and then install them on Windows. It’s a little bit annoying switching back
and forth between operating systems, but I don’t do it that often. Of course with Linux you can teach yourself
programming, you can run a home media or file server, you can teach yourself… Linux, or all sorts of other things. It’s a modern OS but one with its roots
in Unix, so you can both learn a lot of things by using it and do a lot of fun things with
it. You’re still going to be pretty limited
by the lack of horsepower in an old machine, and even just navigating around the operating
system involves an annoying delay every single time I click on something, but unlike modern
versions of Windows, you can scale back Linux as far as you want to get it to run decently
on any hardware. So you might end up finding yourself wanting
to install it on a different machine too, but it’s still helpful to have it on an
old laptop since it acts as a bridge between older, DOS-based flavors of Windows, and the
present day. Now, let’s say you want go to out and buy
your own old laptop to try some of this stuff out on – there are a few things I’d look
for. First, seriously, buy a ThinkPad if you can
– they’re user-serviceable, they’re extremely durable, and they’re everywhere…
meaning parts are everywhere too. They’re also really cheap, obviously, so
a great value. If you can’t buy a ThinkPad, try to stick
with one of the big-name, popular brands – just to make it easier to get parts. Second, it is very handy to have at *least*
a CD drive, if not a DVD drive. A DVD drive is recommended because it’s
just easier to install Linux – very difficult to find CD-based install images these days. Failing that, a laptop with a bootable USB
port can substitute, although that would have been hard to find in the late 90’s. Even my forward-looking 600X can’t boot
from its USB port, though you can always look for something made slightly later. That said, an optical drive is still a must
for 16 bit Windows games; by then the gaming world had mostly moved on from floppies, although
having a system with both drives, or at least the ability to swap them out like many ThinkPads
can, would be ideal. Third, if you want to run any sort of modern
applications, look for a Pentium 4. You’ll pay a bit more, though. Finally, most of this applies to old desktops
as well, so if you swing that way, you’ll find things similar but a bit easier. I’ve actually got an old desktop from this
same era that I might do a separate video on as an addendum to this, but the basic gist
of things is that it’s easier to find old desktops with standardized hardware and great
driver support, or build one yourself. Now before you rush out to buy your own individual
components, just know that the costs of building your own old PC don’t scale well – you’re going to spend a lot
more than $20, though you can probably still keep it under
$100. But it might make more financial sense to
just buy something pre-built and customize it. I personally love old laptops like this, though,
specifically because they’re locked in time. There’s always temptation with a desktop
to upgrade it, expand it, and modernize it just to get that one more game running or
get a few more frames per second – and before you know it, you’ve just got a modern PC. Laptops are more like game consoles – they
are what they are, and seeing what they can and can’t do is part of the fun of owning
an older one. So that’s it, I hope you’ve enjoyed this
look at my ThinkPad 600X, and maybe it’ll inspire you to try to do something with some
old hardware you’ve got lying around as well. If you’ve got any good ideas for repurposing
an old laptop, leave a comment below, and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button
if you haven’t already. See you next time.
