I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise. [more inside]
posted by deafmute on Jun 29, 2008 - 7 answers

I've got an old IBM Thinkpad G40 circa something like 1998 that runs Pentium II and I want to get it running as fast as possible while spending as little money as possible. [more inside]
posted by alona on Sep 10, 2007 - 8 answers

I just started a new job at a very large corporation and the office uses Lotus Notes 6.5 for e-mail and scheduling; while fooling around with it I decided to try the To-Do feature in Lotus Notes and quickly got confused. [more inside]
posted by Vindaloo on Jul 26, 2007 - 3 answers

The battery in my IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t went out of warranty 4/29/07. When I woke up today, the machine says "Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one." Is it really damaged? Could it be a broken sensor? Some kind of software glitch? Is this typical? Is there a better alternative to the $159 replacement?
posted by fourstar on Apr 1, 2007 - 15 answers

My IBM Thinkpad 600 (Pentium 2) has crashed. Whenever I start it up, I get error message 00192. I'd like to avoid going to a technician if possible. What do I do now? [more inside]
posted by alona on Feb 24, 2007 - 9 answers

I have an old IBM PCjr 4860 that once upon a time we added a jrCaptain Tecmar extension piece onto it so we could attach a printer. I have three questions. I want to get rid of this beast but I want to print everything off the disks (I was quite the prolific writer as a kid). Unfortunately we lost the jrCaptain power transformer and cable (power supply) for this extension piece so we think that's why every time we turn on the printer it stops the computer from doing anything (no keyboard, no running of whatever it was running) and then upon turning off the printer it suddenly is back to normal. Where can I get my hands on that power supply or what could I use in it's place that wouldn't kill the extension. (voltage?) Second question: what about a way to transfer the big floppies onto a modern storage device? What are the options out there? Anything I can do at home? Any places that do this for you? Third question: what do I do with an old IBM PCjr when I want to toss it? [more inside]
posted by toftk on Jun 11, 2006 - 6 answers

IBM Thinkpad Brick: I've recently come into posession of an IBM 600E Thinkpad. As a Mac user, I don't plan for this to be my main machine. But it'd be great if I could use it to test web design work, and perhaps to tinker with Linux. The problem is, it won't turn on. What's the best way to have it looked at and perhaps repaired? I don't particularly want to go to the local CompUSA and would like a solid estimate before sinking any money into it. [more inside]
posted by aladfar on Oct 22, 2005 - 10 answers

Why were computers, Apple and IBM compatibles, from a few years back available in beige and well just beige? Is there a reason why beige was the defacto colour of computing hardware?
posted by riffola on Dec 31, 2003 - 13 answers