Most of the price research here was done from July… yeah i’m late, hella!
Also some might be missing! but check the spreadsheet

Links

• TPG V8 Spreadsheet – (2001 and later systems in progress)
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oaD3FJqTWnMLXuyhNXQ9t_LeiQdtunM2t59Sg-cyzN8/edit?usp=sharing
• Japan ThinkPad Poster 1990 to 1999?
  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x51YLUfISGBontivG3VnBsPNrpaYqu6O/view?usp=sharing
• Timeline of IBM Laptops, Portables & ThinkPads – 1984 to July 2022
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rQMIs__eXx4a4cfeFg79GGpiFYXsVaCEDmocwmBt2Yk/edit?usp=sharing

Why choose a classic ThinkPad?

~ have the best keyboards vs what current ThinkPads and others are now
~ great durability on some, but plastics can be bad…
~ leaking batteries, dead caps, days on end finding obscure software for them
~ helpful communities on thinkpadforums, thinkwiki.de & leddit (ugh)
~ classic design deters thieves from stealing them
~ service manuals readily available & parts fairly obtainable

Why other laptops can be better

• Dell Latitudes have an ogre overly built style & can take a beating
• Most Toshibas only require a 2 pin power cord instead of proprietary
• Toshibas also dominated the market in the day, so there are thousands of them
• Apple fans probably have a solution for you

In my opinion there are 6 “eras” of IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads

Pre ThinkPad – PS/2 Portables, PS/55 Japan only laptops, IBM Compatible or MCA machines, almost no color displays. Major differences from the USA and Japan.

Bento Box ThinkPads – Sapper design, Trackpoint on most, durable, dependable, a lot of daughterboards, thick LCD lids and parts, volume dials.

Modernized IBM TP – T/X/R/A/G Series, 2000 to 2005, 4:3 displays, some IPS, chassis separate from exterior, fun modding and upgrades.

Classic Lenovo – 2005 to 2012-ish, 7 Row Keyboards, Durability, OG IBM staff still working, some slimming down & cost cutting, eventual removal of IPS screens

Modern Lenovo – Slimmer, less LED indicators, more internal batteries, “macbook topcase” motherboards, & 6 Row keyboards, 2013 to 2019, drop hinge LCDs

Current Lenovo – 2020, More iGPUs, soldered RAM, some 16:10 displays

There is no ‘Golden Era‘ of ThinkPads, this will be argued until the extinction of earth or goalposts will be moved. Each had their faults and strengths, it depends on the end user and what they did with them. However there were plenty of select machines that had a lot of mod-ability from 1998 to 2012

Before you buy a ThinkPad or any used laptop from ebay…

• You’re probably going to need to install an operating system
  • On some machines’ you’re gonna be fucked if it doesn’t come with a hard drive due to it needed a proprietary connector
  • If it does have one, swap it with a CF card or mSATA adapter
• Don’t buy Windows, there is a OEM key at the bottom or underneath
  • 2013 and later have OEM keys in the bios, so it activates online
• Check to see if it has a hard drive or HDD / OS
• Be skeptical of new/low feedback sellers esp if its “a steal”
  • At worst, they don’t know how to ship a laptop, esp if its super cheap
  • Or they ship it nicely 🙂
• Does it come with a charger?
  • buy used/pre-owned chargers from $12 to $30
  • DONT buy new “compatible” units, stick with used IBM
  • Stock photos are a giveaway, unless its from a reputable eWaste seller
  • Most are powered by the “universal” IBM coax cable
  • 700 to 755 Series require the 4 pin trapezoidal cable (not dell’s)
  • Early 300 and 500 series had a different coax cable adapter
• Does boot or get to post?
• Is the screen broken?
  • There’s quite a bit of laptops in this era with “Vinegar syndrome” which can be repairable, but I haven’t research it.
  • Some screens require their caps to be replaced if they don’t power on.
• Don’t expect to have a fully working battery
  • Consider part costs & upgrades before pulling trigger
  • look at other machines at specs you want & what they sold for

“This ThinkPad is locked”

Try not to buy a locked ThinkPad. Most R2, ready for resale, sellers will state if its locked or not. often times they wipe the drive and offer no OS. Unless they intentionally state there is no bios lock, you’ll most likely be fine. Buying as is, untested machines is a gamble, shady sellers “wont be able to test” laptops, despite them selling the same exact laptop in another listing or similar machines. There’s also the chance of someone selling a laptop they bought that is locked & they are selling it as is or saying simply it is locked. It just depends if they sell laptops alot, so see what the sell and sold, if laptops aren’t a thing, maybe they just bought a bad laptop or legit don’t have a ways to bother with it, or literally are computer illiterate & it can just be a simple login password. Latter is fine because we will want to clean install windows or linux on this thing anyways and I assume you’ll know how to do so. 🙂 Here’s my outdated way of Installing an Windows Operating system. There are plenty of guides online, its honestly pretty easy, just like driving or changing oil on a car, the worst part is that it takes time.

There are multiple ways these “can be locked”.

• Windows login lock – Via USB – without USB – Connecting online
• Hard Drive Lock – superuser topic – George’s linux guide
• BIOS lock / Supervisor Password

The first, who gives a fuck, You’ll want to do a clean install of Windows XP, 7 or 10 anyways errr Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME or NT? Make a bootable USB for Windows whatever. Actually I don’t know which way is best to install old ass software on these… Here’s a guide from software keep on how to do that. Or you can just reset the computer abruptly and it’ll do the “something went wrong” & you can do the reset from there. Also in a very rare case, it may prompt a email/password if you update Windows online during the new computer start up process. Basically don’t connect to to the internet until after you get into the desktop. I had this happen to me ONCE since I started tinkering with laptops from 2012, with over 300 computers I’ve fucked around with.

Hard drive locks I don’t bother with personally. Rarely do I come across one, but when I did, it was usually on a HDD which was gonna get an SSD anyways. I think I was able to remove a lock once with Parted Magic, but honestly I didn’t really bother solving it as I was working at eWaste, & time is money; wiped, scrapped for it’s materials.

BIOS lock

Right now, there are about 3 different era’s of locked ThinkPads.. maybe 4 if we talking the old old ones, but those aren’t covered in this guide. DO NOT remove the CMOS battery, this is not a desktop, this is a laptop which for some odd reason, will fuck you over. Because now you’ll have to set the time, and in order to set the time in the bios, you’ll need to enter it, and if you don’t have the password… A locked bios isn’t the end all, be all. Just toss a HDD or SSD with an operating system and see if it works. Update drivers and, well you’ll have a mostly working ThinkPad.

BIOS locks don’t 100% mean you cant change configurations with the laptop. I recently came across a P50 that let me change WiFi, power, dGPU and some other settings. I couldn’t mess with the boot order, but it still let me boot from a thumb drive to install an OS. System working good after 3 months online.

Types of ThinkPad BIOS thingies

• EEPROM – 1998 to 2012 – Jaaxxs net locations – leddit short
• SMM/UEFI/WTF? – 2013 to 2018 – badcaps – cr4sh
• Healing BIOS – 2019 to now – Fucked

Removing the BIOS password via EEPROM chip the Neanderthal way, desolder the bios chip & install a “clean” chip. Don’t be a fucking idiot and buy a random chip for Apple & expect it to work on Lenovo. Buy the same one for the make/model. DO NOT FUCKING SEND IT IN TO AN EXPERT TO DO IT. The whole point of this fucking guide is to save money, you will not FUCKING save money by paying to ship, paying them to ship & paying them to service the BIOS password by desoldering it. Unless you know an actual local shop (I HAVE ZERO RECOMMENDATIONS, FUCK OFF), you’ll most likely lose money that way.

Second is what I have, the KeyMaker X2, though only it seems the fellow is sellin the KMX1, it will ZAP the password if you follow their instructions. It has worked on the 3 ThinkPads I have tried it with. Its $100+ USD.

Third is shorting out the EEPROM chip, see the reddit post or look up youtube videos on how to do it for your laptop model. The EEPROM chips are all similar vs the pinout traces, but w/e. It is not guaranteed to work, but it’s at least something to do. At worst you’ll be able to install an operating system, & change setting, at best you actually removed the lock. I will not dwelve into how to do this shit because there’s like 100 different fucking ThinkPads that I would have to explain. The KMX1 is my recommended way to reset an EEPROM bios. However this is the DIY method, not buying a special tool way. YMMV

Laptop model meanings

700

IBM’s top of the range models, it’s mainline for corporate and big business fleet sales..

Price Guide

• Model – Link to eBay, sorted lowest to highest, shipping to USA including Worldwide sellers. Search will have modifiers for certain models to zero in on results.
  • Sometimes I will have a base search, covering all laptops for that model or MTM. So you can get a general feel of what these laptops go for, vs some sought after machines….
• MTM – Machine Type Model
• First four Digits – Base unit chassis, can be shared across other laptop models
• Last 3 Alphanumberic digits – IBM’s configuration from the factory, which has certain specs like CPU, GPU, LCD, RAM, 2nd drive, etc.

My original price guide recommendations don’t really apply due to FOMO and demand from collectors.

$50 to $120 is a good price for most old ThinkPads of this era, it depends what it has, but since I look at sold listings, that may vary…

• Low, or Mid – It can be in any condition depending on how many sold the less the more likely it’ll be ugly or needing parts…
• High – The price can vary thanks to it coming from a bidding war or just a seller asking a lot. There’s a chance it may not come with a power cord tho. Consider there’s a chance it may or may not come with a hard drive, which means it’ll need the proprietary connector for it, that may cost even more money or time finding one.
• EX+ – Some of these are just due to high demand, and can be just a scrap laptop or completely broken. There’s a few cases where its sold by a retromodder or shop and they’ll have everything ready to go. In some cases we can get these with the original box, accessories and software.
• #Sold – How many laptops sold within the past 3 months at the time of research. The higher the better, but sadly a lot of these machines will have less than 50 sold and they’re “expensive” thanks to that.

Some of the MTMs have a similarity, so I grouped them in some of the tables. In general, the higher the first digit, the more expensive it was or higher class the machine. So 9xxx IBM products are the top end, then 8xxx, 7xxx and so on. 55xx seems to be the designation for PS/55 machines, and the 5th alphanumeric model, usually meant the product line, hence 5545-T, 5535-S, 5523-S and so on. 2xxx machines can mean a few things, some point to economy models, however quite a number seem to be East Asian based machines and of those, there are plenty of ultra portables! however this isn’t consistent as there’s quite a bit of iSeries with the 2xxx numbers, or 1xxx. Some of this leads to the T/X/A/R machines as well, so we can kind of see a “linage” or successors of previous model lines. But this is my speculation only, we’d have to find someone from IBM who will give a damn to answer and doesn’t have to worry about any NDA’s they signed. Once Lenovo took over, the MTM numbers went all over the place, especially when it came to 4:3 and 16:10 variants of laptops, heck there are even machines that start at 0xxx. Eventually after 2013 this was shifted to a 20xx, and the 7 digit MTM became 10.

IBM Portables

5155 – I sold a non working POS for like $100 with the fucking bag in 2016.. should have kept this damn thing.
5140 – $300 for the fucking keyboards… jesus christ, the same price as these fucking things. holy shit
5535-M – None on eBay, or yahoo jp auctions. Good luck finding a PS/55!
P70 – Mobo and screen sold for $100 each. Internal cables? $40! jfc.
5545-T – Nothing here or on yahoo jp auctions.
P75 – Found some hinges for sale… lol didnt include them
5535-S – Nothing found… same with old 5535 search
L40sx – Didn’t write any notes, I’m not interested in this machine much.

All of these are bulky machines with the exception of the L40sx and 5535-S. They’ll probably need capacitors replaced among other thing Among Us.

1990 to 1993-ish PS/2 & PS/55 Notebooks

Due to the developing delay and eventual sales failure of the L40sx, IBM developed machines from Japan’s successful PS/55 5523-S.

Any – All of these are untested (and are 700 series machines) … and broken most likely. Also there’s a seller in germany fucking selling machines for like THIRTY bucks but isn’t offering shipping (eBay putting it between mid & hi price). AS IS ofc, but still they are in very nice condition for the ThinkPad shelf 🙂
N51 SX – Untested machine, “shipping not specified” is $160 from germany… damn lol
N51 SLC – No SLCs, SX had general search.
PS/55 note N51 sx – PS/2 Version avail, but not PS/55
CL57sx – EX+ is untested but turns on at least and comes with a charger. LCD looks good without vinegar syndrome. Collectors want this because it’s IBM’s first color LCD laptop!
PS/55 N57sx – CL57’s copy, tho it might be actually called N54sx.

These are the black laptops that don’t have trackpoints on them, but have the “bento box” design. Most are bragging rights, I think these are either IBM PC Compatible, PS/55 architecture (PS/2 but can use kanji characters) or can be MCA – Micro System Architecture. There’s more PS/2 and PS/55 machines, but I will place them in front of other series where they are more connected to.

IBM Tablets

2521 – None even available :/
700T – ????
T22sx – Japan’s 700T but had a keyboard & dock available
710T – Low price from V7
730T – AHHHH I DIDNT SEE THIS FUCKING AUCTION!!!! Fully working, jfc. im mad… dock sold for $60 ish Low prices are from V7
2435 – Portable tablet, clone of Panasonic CF-01
9103 – Enterprise tablet, similar to 530cs? Not much is known, komotch has a blog post about it. Yahoo auction ended but idk if it sold? Idk what shipping is to USA lol
TransNote – best of luck getting one below high price… EX+ is from V7 high, and V7 EX+ was like $1400 lol
SurePoint – These POS terminals are prob a dime a dozen at local auction sites.
7344 – There’s a naver blog post in Korean about it, and it states the 7592 is the american version.

Flagship

9552 – 700 & 720
MicroChannel Architecture ThinkPads

No suffix? – Mono Screen
C suffix? – Color TFT

Any – both are broken
700 – fucked up screen… but has an indicator light when turned on
C52 – 720 and 700 but no C52
720 – unable to recognize if mono or color version
9552-J – none, 720C PS/55 version

These are MCA architecture machines, meaning they are not compatible with ISA peripherals and expansion cards I believe. Most have exploding hinges, vinegar syndrome or other strange LCD problems. Oh! They require ESDI HDDs, not IDE, and they have a proprietary connector for that shit too. Grab one with an HDD if you can! These are powered by a trapezoidal 4 pin connector.

9545 – 750 & 755
The Goated ThinkPads

No suffix? – Mono Screen
750 – 33MHz 486SL processor by default
755 – 50MHz 486 DX2 processor by default, 75MHz DX4 optional
C – Color TFT
P – Pen tablet convertible with a peculiar swiveling hinge design, mono screen
Cs – Color (D)STN, slower refresh rate & worse viewing angles but cheaper
E – Enhanced, upgraded CPU, 100MHz DX4, or 75MHz Pentium
X – Upgraded E, 75MHz Pentium, larger HDDs, SVGA LCD option
V – Includes E upgrades & the lid cover is removable, for overhead projectors
D – 5.25″ CD Drive with Video card playback acceleration, thicker chassis
Prob other things too but… I spent too much time on this 🙂

Any – You can probably get a working unit for low prices. But working units that are auctioned seem to end before the “high” price. Quite a good amount of sellers doing BIN. quite a bit of the 755CX model, which is like the last and “ultimate” one to get.
750 – one system no lcd, the other doesn’t really say much of the screen, but doesn’t a picture of it.
755C – only low and mid are sold, EX+ is speculation. One system has vinegar syndrome, another might.
755Cs – came with the dock… fucking chunky as fuck and in very great condition.
755CE – from that germain seller, on-wing, speculation on shipping being 160…
755CSE – As is machine, could be mid price for it. Untested, but these are hard to come by.
755CD – THE OG. two units untested in low-mid price, and another one came with a bag, turns on and i think an external floppy drive.
755CDV – Unit is working and in excellent fucking conditiion.
755CX – one low price not working, the other is fully working. Mid price has no drive and fucking vinegar syndrome, but slightly
370C – EX+ is from UK, comes with the docking station, the key, and loaded up with windows 95 AND DOS, AND has games!!!! Holy shit. Other than that, avail units are priced at mid and high, the latter from Japan.

I Had a 755CE that never worked… but I wish it would, it’s keyboard felt amazing! I’d argue these are teh best ones to get for that “Classic” 700 ThinkPad. Unless you want to mesa around with the MCA and brittle plastics of the older machines. 370C is basically a 355 but was a “Special release” machine.

2630 – 701 Butterfly Keyboard

Special – Folding keyboard design, only available on this laptop, ever!
485 CPU – 50MHz DX2 base, 75MHz DX4 optional
C – VGA color TFT display
Cs – DSTN color display

Any – I sold my 701C and broken-ish 701Cs in 2016 to buy a car and i got like barely $250… the prices now??? FUCK 💢 FUCK 💢 FUCK 💢 FUCK 💢 😡
701C – You can ask anything for these things, jesus fucking christ. BIN and 1 bid auctions past high. Even the high price is a fucking 31 bid auction starting at $50 from the UK. FUCKING FUCK man i wish i never sold my system. Also lowest price is 1st result as BIN (i paid like $100? for an untested system found in storage back in 2014?)
701Cs – Bruh… a CD and Floppy recovery software sold for $835!!!!! lmafo, the state that we are in. mid price is the only sold in USA, low is an auction from italy, high is from denmark and EX+ is from UK.
701 AMD – AMD 5×86 133MHz processor upgrade done by Hantz + Panter via Germany back in the day… didn’t find any

• Plenty of resources out there for these, some links
  • https://www.701c.org/
  • Laptop Retrospective youtube video – Project Monarch Documentary
  • My video of a 701C beating a W700ds at booting Windows
  • My Imgur link 🙂

9546 & 9547 – 760 & 765
“Tilt Up Keyboard” ThinkPads

Not so accurate suffixes incoming
9546 – Bigger 12.” screens? mWave audio on these
9547 – 10.4″ screens only? ESS audio
C – Color TFT screen, but all systems came this way?
D – 5.25 4x speed CD-ROM, MPEG-1 & 2 HHR decoder, Midi port
L – ESS audio, cheaper than mWave.
E – Enhanced model, faster CPUs, (120MHz default, 133 optional)
X – 166MHz Pentium MMX, CD drive capable, 12.1″ LCD by default?
765 – 13.3″ Screen, some other upgrades over the X

Any 76x – 9 in “vintage computing” 18 in “laptops”, Whats crazy is that the latter is much more higher in price when it comes to auctions. Probably bc bidders aren’t looking in vintage computing category vs the laptops one. Annoying that we have to do more than one search if we are collecting (and me doing this price research). Quite a bit of these have vinegar syndrome and a cracked LCD bezel, broken off slightly or completely missing.
760C – Machine is untested, BIN but in excellent condition with it’s plastics.
760CD – None available, but holy shit the parts are expensive, like $80+. A fucking CD drive is going for like $105, three already sold lol. People are selling bad battery packs for like $35 (gonna be funny if there’s no UN3940 label on the package).
760E – eastcoast-recycling knows whats up, sold it EX+ style. the Low price someone FUCKING gutted anything easily removable from it… not sure if they got it like that or they parted out. mid price has vinegar syndrome, BIN.
760ED – Only the High have a hard drive. mid def doesn’t, low might… all BIN listings
760XD – high price is the only one workng, it has ISS label on bottom & was from a government surplus back in the day…
760L – None sold or avail… a charger sold for under $60!
760LD – No units available, RAM daughtercard sold for $35 ish
760EL – 4 units sold in germany w/o US shipping… but two units sold for $190. Prob the “easiest” one to get out of all the 760/5 series, but you’ll get STN or TFT displays, so check that LCD Bezel. there’s even 5 avail units. Only one auction, and it went for $125 before shipping. Most of these are in great exterior condition, except one where the sides have broken completely off, I don’t see vinegar syndrome nor do I see the dreaded finish peeling, chipping or stickyness, except maybe one with the latter.
760XL – only two systems with known drives. 2 from that german seller and 2 untested. avail units are gutted or overpriced (and so are these in a way)
Any 765 – Nothing at all except for common parts with 760 machines.

The specs are all over the place on these things. I really dont know each and every thing, consult the TWBOOK pdf to see more. Smeone on the TP Forums said the mWave machines cannot work with windows 98… due to no drivers, funny how the ESS was cheaper and is supported. Also this is the last of the “small” 700 series and Bento box design with a small palmrest.

9458 & 59 – 770 Behemouth

9548 – smaller screen on 770, others, idk what the difference is
9549 – DVD on 770, others idk
–xxx – Suffix in bold has the 13.7″ 5:4 screen, at least it says so on TWbook
770 – 200, 233MHz Pentium I MMX, 2MB video memory, 32MB standard
E – 266MHz PII, 4MB video memory, 14.1″ screen as starded
D – DVD as standard (with DEVA card installed)
X – 300MHz PII, 64MB standard, 8MB vRAM optional
Z – 366MHz PII, 128MB standard
3 RAM slots on all? – Two are avail thru the door, one requires mobo removal

Any system –Time for me to sell the ThinkPad wall (770’s and T4x)… only one system sold under $100, and a lot of 3 systems too but all as is.
770 – two units without drives, rest have them… fucking things cost like $50+ for the damn caddy.
770E – holy shit, ONE fucking photo from this seller in the UK, but it comes with a drive.
770ED – nothing sold, no laptop available either. a video card for sale tho.
770X – mid price is an avail unit, and you can buy a battery for more than that from austrailia… which i dont think it’ll ship over the air due to new rules about shipping batteries. at least being honest with putting UN3080 label on it
770Z – NO FUCKING HARDRIVES ON EITHER OF THEM

If it doesn’t have a hard drive, you may not be able to enjoy this system/ Those drives and caddies should be sold comlete, they go from like $40 to $70 last time I checked. It has a proprietary IBM HDD cable/connector, so don’t just buy a bare caddy or HDD! If not you may have a chance of finding a 2nd disk adapter (11J8836) that will work on this system or 760. Also there’s two different cases for these, one that is square like all other machines, and another that has a “wedge” base and lid at the front.

PowerPC ThinkPads

Model Differences – ???
Tadpole N40 was a rugged laptop completely different from IBM’s 800 line.
800 – PReP stands for something…
EWS – It’s a really cool laptop?, similar to the 5535-Z/Y systems
820 – cheaper, base system, I think the 821, 822, and 823 are upgraded 820 systems…
850 – the big one, this one has the optional webcam, the “first” laptop to come with one? The PalmTop PC110 had a expansion slot and the Vaio PictureBook came with one later, but standard.
RS/6000 860 – “not a thinkpad” , but it’s basically an 851 upgraded.

RS/6000 N40 – Nada 🙁
820 – untested, but missing CD drive at least. type 6040-966, I think it has a (D)STN panel, because there’s two LCD sliders instead of one for TFT. It looks like a mix of the 750 and 760. Also I just lost the bid on the mid price one… oh well. 🙁
850 – BRUHHHHH the listing disappeared… like fucking sold on april 9th and its July 8th. Holy shit I screenshotted it bc ebay would give page error and when I research specifically the 850, boom its gone! Near mint, with boxes and everything it seems, 1 bid auction at 5K, holy fuck!

These have build quality similar to the 750/55, the keyboard opens like a hood just like them so you can see the internals. These were super expensive, as such, they don’t come up often. Awhile back I saw one sold for like 2000 and then it was being resold for a lot less… buyer bought more than he can chew, it required a lot of work to get going again.

2645 – Thin N Lite 600 Series

600 – 300MHz PII, 2MB vRAM, 64MB RAM, 3-4GB HDD
600E – 300, 366, or 400MHz PII, 2.5MB vRAM, 6.4GB HDD
600X – 450, 500, or 650MHz PIII, 4MB vRAM

Any – Of all the units sold, there was 32 in the laptops category, and 8 vintage computers categories, one in other laptop parts, but another one doesn’t show up in the category i selected. 8 units from that german seller. might not have an HDD cover, but at least u can pug in a IDE drive w/o any connector issues.
600 – Eh… this one isn’t particually special but w/e
600E – kek cmin2004 sold 2 systems at the same EX+ price.
600X – Yeah all high prices are like the same. From what I observed, none of these have an upgraded CPU card, I think the highest goes up to 850MHz. I believe there are 700 and 750MHz cards as well.

Entry Model Systems

Early Budget, 300 & 350

None – Mono screen
C – Color screen, TFT? maybe STN
5523-S is the ThinkPad Precursor,

5523-S – No systems but the PS/2 versions
300 – untested
300C – I didn’t know there was a 300C…. Maybe it’s an overseas model?
350 Any – screen issues on some of these machines, one system had ugly broken plastics. MTM is on the rear, near the I/O i think, it’s not on the bottom, only the first 4 TYPE numbers
350 – untested machine, 425 has lines on screen. also i put “-350C” and no results showed up, so its basically the general search, don’t feel like double linking the same exact thing. really weird, but maybe it has to do with item specifics, thanks to that issue happening with the PS/Note 425
PS/Note 425 – mislisted as a 350 but has a matching MTM 2618, jacked LCD with lines on it
350C – I mean…. what the fuck am i gonna do, either $43 or $50 on low price, but there’s 3 listings sold so, i wanna document that. low has that orange/red blotch on screen but turns on, mid is not tested.
PS/note x82 – Not sure what model this is, doesnt show an MTM or other shit… the 7 digit is on the I/O and sadly we didnt get a picture. on the label, it doesn’t say what model it is, on both machinces, just PS/Note only.

Best of luck getting a working system, and one which plastics are not busted. I have no experience with these machines, Other than losing a PS/Note 425C… It’s in someone’s attic in University Heights. The OG 300 was known for terrible build quality as it was outsourced to Zenith Data Systems and which was more Zenith than IBM, tho it is iconic as it is almost 100% true to Sapper’s design of the 300 and has those unique U shaped keycaps not seen til the T430s.

2619 & 2620 – 355, 360 Systems

C – Color screen TFT
Cs – Color screen (D)STN
E – Enhanced
P – Pen convertible

355 Any – 8MB DRAM card is $16. mid unit has HDD with a supv or HDD password… BUT that means it comes with the drive/caddy soo fuck yeah. high price is from storage unit, seller couldn’t power up with charger (sus?), nah prob impatient.
355 – avail unit turns on with nothing to it and one has that ink spots. also someone from japan is selling old mono LCDs, $130 each :O
355C – hdd lock, nice ext condition
360CSE – EX+ is a meh listing, but it has a Wella hair products sticker on the lid, and it’s in hella vintage glow turqoise color. mid is untested, there’s a $500+ unit from morroco that has a case crack and a fucking taped up AC adapter plug.
360PE – fucking expensive, cant test, no charger, no hard drive, jesus fuck but it was a BIN OBO…

355 systems are essentially a 750 but without a docking station port and only has one PCMCIA port. 360 is… the same? fucking 360 came out before the 355 LMAO though there were more models made later and discontinued later.

5523 – Japan Economy Series

I dont know if there is a PS/55 Note N33SX, but there is a PS/2 one. Could be a mistype from long ago. YEAH THere’s a PS/2 Note here, but it’s FUCKIGN the PS/55 clone and I didn’t want to put ONE fucking model elsewhere. Yes these are the successors to the PS/55 5523-S. Heck the N23sx is probably just the 2nd model, should i put the precurusor here? Also idk where to put the S33V, so it goes here, it has a 10.4″ color screen, and despite having similar MTM’s near the 200 range, it’s not ultraportable like them.

2610 – Japan 340 Series

34x All – All sold from that german seller on-wing in germamy! My god… this is amazing, i wish I was in the EU. also was this a german only TP? NVM found an avail unit (mid price) and its from ohio!
340 – doesnt turn on (vs the others which do turn on)
340CSE – Found out “-DS2” is an MTM number
345Cs –One avail unit for like $1100… nah, but it is very nice condition! Maybe the LCD is meh but w/e thats expected for it to be an original screen
345C – Only sold unit is from germany :O

9.4″ LCD on some of these… wait what the fuck, the 2610-JD 340CSE has an IBM 486SLC2 50MHz. Also it can run DOS/V but has support for windows 3.1… hmmm

365 – Entry Companion to 755 Systems

365 Any – all but one don’t have vinegar syndrome on the LCD, most of these are not tested, and if they are, most don’t have an HDD which you’ll need the best of luck to get a caddy for one of these.. ugh.
365C – None available, just non-OEM chargers
365Cs – Same as above
365CD – NO CD drive or fuckign hard drive wtf. they even took the ram wtf, fucking :vintage laptop vault: There was no “365CD” but I had to look at the general search and photos of each plainly titled “365 or Type 2625” and checked the MTM or bezel to see if it was a 365CD
365CSD – Nothing 🙁

365E – low price is an entire fucking LCD assembly. Also someone selling a CD drive for $24, not bad considering most ask $100 for em.
365ED – High price is a working system with OS, mid is missing the fucking HDD (and probably goddamn caddy)
365X – Eh… only mid EX+ are true prices, low and high are my estimations. also EX+ is just… a normal unit, nothing fancy other than it turns on with an OS (battery and cmos isn’t said to be working/replaced)
365XD – Found -H73 MTM… 😀 also none of these other than the EX+ is shown with a OS, actually the other 4 don’t have a charger to test it with. wait i lied, one mid unit does boot and needs a CCFL replacement, it is a bit reddish. Wait another system sold, high price “fixed” from $180 to $260, it has an operating system. fuck these are pricey

This is a trimmed down version of the 755, it is also the last time these machines are so small, as they grow in side to be 3 spindle and more CD-ROM focused. I think mostly they don’t have dock support on some and one less PCMCIA port instead of two.

310 & 315 “LaCrosse” ThinkPad

31x All – No 315 systems sold/avail. Mid price from Germany seller, and hi price is an avail unit in working order un-refurbed. Also someone is asking $660 for one. Nah skip. Also I’m getting quite a bit 755 units in the search, because in the item specifics, it says “IBM ThinkPad 755CD – 310” So i’m assuming someone used a previously sold listing as a template and someone did that… possibly from a sold lot listing or idk lol
315ED – lmao, NOTHING is here, not even other items.

380D – The “All In One” Laptop

385 – retail version of 380, different preload of software
380, no suffix – Floppy drive, no CD-ROM
D – Both CD-ROM and Floppy drive!
Z – This is an upgrade of the XD system

380/5 All – 22 in “vintage computers & mainframe” while 17 in Laptop category… FUCKING fuck. Also asking $500+ is a fucking joke, holy shit.
380D – low and mid untested, high is working BIN.
380ED – six units with OSes at least, past mid price recommendation. Doesn’t matter as these can fit IDE/PATA without a proprietary HDD connector 🙂
380XD – four units with drives, not much to say other than no vinegar syndrome in these.
380Z – The ultimate 380, if it sounds like a Z car, its legit 🙂
385XD – Eh high price might be higher, but quite a bit are at mid prices. fuck off asking $350 and it has a meh LCD.

All in one? Yes as in, 3 Spindle computer; One Hard drive, One Floppy Drive, One CD-ROM drive. This is kind of null now, but for awhile 3 spindle computers was a standard, and it took awhile for laptops to catch up. IBM didn’t make the first “AIO” laptop, I think Gateway had done it (did I write it down or screen shot the model/month/year? no…)

390 – Three spindle multimedia machine

390 any – Broken fucking hinges, holy shit. I just thought it was a few of them, nah, a lot of them.
390 – It’s immaculate, but in fucking britain, untested.
390X – one system with vinegar syndrome.

This is a precursor to the iSeries 1720/21 systems, s they have an MTM of 2627, actually they are pretty much identical, save the added windows key and those 4 color keys on the FN row. Anyways, like the iSeries, I see these in very bad condition sometimes, snapping hinges. I don’t think these have proprietary HDD connectors, but they might, if anything it’s similar to Dell’s connector they had back in the day.

UltraPortable – 200 & 500

220, 230, RIOS, & Mini Laptops

220, 230 – Nada 🙁
PC110 – high price is avail unit. as is unit has vinegar syndrome and is untested, the other two systems work.
235 – Nothing available… Going off a price someone on the forums is asking and what I paid a few years back
z50 – No units sold, just avail units.

z50 is the coolest with its NEC MIPS processor, has an optional extended battery which can use like 8 AA batteries. The 220 doesn’t have a trackpoint, but rather a trackball, 230Cs has a trackpoint. PC110 and 235 run off digital camera batteries, and I was able to buy a new pair with a charger in 2020! Turns out on my 235 it doesn’t charge one of the batteries. Palmtp and z50 aren’t ThinkPads… but they have the spirit of them! Whats up with the PalmTop having a 2431 MTM and the 220 having a 2432? Well on Basterfield’s website about the PC110, it talks abouth codename Monolith, the prototype developed in 1991. guess what the PCB on the PC110 says? Monolith. Spooky!

2609 – 240, an Ultraportable finally brought overseas

i1124 = 240X in specs
240X – Nissan Silvia

240 Any – Mid unit boots to bios with no drive, it was an auctionf from the UK. Low price was a BIN untested, great price!
i1124 – Only an i1161 showed up in the search.

The 240 is probably the “easiest” pre-X series to buy, if not the 600 would be next up, or the pricey S30 models as well. You may have better chances at a yahooJP auction or using buygee on other Japan auction sites.

Early Models, 500 to 530

BJ – Integrated Bubble Jet printer, clone of Canon NoteJet laptop line line
Cs – Color (D)STN panel
D – CD-ROM model?

500 – Mid price is sold… i fucking forgot what I paid, but maybe $60/ if not $80 or so, local sale. also didnt know these had a Pheonix bios in them, not the typical IBM one.
55x All – Found mine on craigslist
510Cs – Low price has a lot of accesories, bag, printer BUT has no drive and the ribbon cable is partially cut… (can be fixed?) anyways, the EX+ is a stand alone unit, working (idk if restored) with windows 3.1, didnt know they had an IBM blue lighting CPU

I beleive the 500 was available in USA, but I’m not sure about the rest. They have MTMs similar to the 235

535 Unobtanium

K, M – Unknown upgrades or differences, Japan exclusive
E – Enhanced 535?
X – Upgraded 535E?
I am unsure on specks of these, are not in TWbook.pdf, unsure where I can find em.

535 Any – Low price is a parts unit missin the frame… but has keyboard, mobo and LCD… weird w/e.
535E – Mid price is sold in the UK, including shipping

560 & 570 – USA Ultraportables

560 Any – These still had DSTN panels, so just see if it has two sliders,tho at these being so uncommong you may not need to be picky.
560E – All units boot, EX+ caomes with a fucking cool external panasonic CD drive
mid price is unit with SSD upgrade with 5 bids in UK and so is high, both booting to widnwos
560X – low unit is untested, mid is from the UK working BIN and high is an auction with 49 bids!
560Z – untested BIN, eh can be mid price i guess.
570 Any – high price is on-wing’s laptops, 3 of them sold there, EX+ is a guess from avail machines. low price seems to be the going rate for an untested machine. $15 IBM charger from a T42 is all u need for most of these machines to turn on… w/e UltraBase FRU 05K5840 goes for NOS $55
570 – based mid and high from avail listings, expect them to be untested, but don’t necessaryily pay high price for a laptop with a broken screen…
570E – high price based on avail listing, there are no other units for sale.

I have no real opinion on these, I think the 560Z can have an upgradable CPU, or is it the 570? I’m not sure, but it might have a PII card, not soldered in.

iSeries…

Man… I hate these things! However there;s a few that are cool, the ones that are clones of other thinkpads are. Obscure = rare =/= charge more than actual rare items.

IBM WorkPad PDA’s (PalmPilot)

Eh… nothing sold. But Had to include them in my no stone unturned.