ThinkPad 850…

(note this is a guest post from Tenox)

So after around 15 years of searching and going through 3 or 4 dead units I finally laid my hands on a working system! For those who don’t know, ThinkPad 850 is not an ordinary laptop because it rocks PowerPC!

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It means that apart from AIX, I will be able to run such cool operating systems like OS/2 PowerPC, Solaris PPC or Windows NT PPC.

ppc1

The system is quite banged up, the keyboard has broken keys and the built-in cdrom doesn’t seem to work. The battery is of course dead. But the base system works just fine. Here is a screenshot of a top secret firmware prompt:

ppc3

11 thoughts on “ThinkPad 850…

  1. I have the VIsual C++ in a fact we bought it together with Jason and it was covered on the blog earlier. I used it to compile aclock and ttg for WinPPC but not on my own system.

    I have got a replacement cdrom and it works, but won’t read my freshly burned CDs. Some old ones, no problem. But not the new ones. I guess I will need to do some shopping for older type writeable cds.

  2. Does it have Open Firmware? As far as I googled it doesn’t have it built in, but since it can boot Solaris, it must have it somewhere on an external media (floppy?). Have you played with AIX or Solaris on it?

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