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A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995

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Re: A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995

#24

I owned one of these back in the day and loved it. Not long ago I did a total restoration of one: https://blog.jgc.org/2023/12/restoration-of-ibm-thinkpad-701...

I was riveted by your account, because I own one and I'd love to get it working again.

Re: A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995

#25
post #8

I got ahold of one long after it was obsolete and that keyboard was awesome. Someone needs to bring back the design.

Oh yes, I bought mine for £400 in about 1999 or 2000. It ran Windows 95 well, Win98SE OK if cut down hard with 98Lite, and Windows 2000 very very poorly indeed.

I would have run OS/2 Warp on it, but the internet connectivity was lacking.

I had two Xircom RealPort2 cards in mine, giving it 10MB/s Ethernet and a 56K modem.

Re: A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995

#26
post #24

I owned one of these back in the day and loved it. Not long ago I did a total restoration of one: https://blog.jgc.org/2023/12/restoration-of-ibm-thinkpad-701...

I was riveted by your account, because I own one and I'd love to get it working again.

Do it! To be fair, it was a ton of work to get it working again but I'm happy-ish with the result.

Re: A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995

#30
I had one just as they were leaving the retail market. I loved that compact little guy. Trackpoint nub and full-size keyboard, very lightweight for the time, and I was mostly programming in EMACS via a terminal emulator when I wasn't MUDding via terminal emulator or writing specs.
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