Thinkpads Forum

Hello to all,

I have recently locally purchased IBM Thinkpad 360CSE in pristine condition. Previous owner was unfortunately formatted HD...

I would like to restore original IBM look & feel for this machine.. Any suggestions from where to start? I believe it was used with DOS/Win3.1. Installing vanilla software is not an issue, but i would like to obtain IBM specific customization files.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

Wanted to give this one a nudge, to see if anyone has perhaps come across recovery media for the 360CSE in the 5 years following the original post?

I too have just purchased one of these, untested from eBay, as they had no charger. I took a chance, thinking it wouldn't be working, but it fired right up, and into a Chinese version of Windows 95!

Want to get it back to it's Windows 3.1 (presumably) roots.

Any help would be appreciated. Worst case scenario, I will install a fresh 3.1, then take another 3.1 IBM recovery image and write over my Windows install.

Thanks all

The internal floppy drives (especially with a very minor recap) are usually very reliable on these machines. I would download the widely available DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 disks, get yourself a pack of 20 2HD floppy disks and a USB floppy and make them yourself. It's really not that hard. You're unlikely to need any special drivers to get standard 3.11 running. You can make the disks on any Windows computer using winimage. Really easy. And you'll feel you've achieved something. cheers

Hi solidpro,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I grabbed the images for DOS and Windows 3.1 this morning, and set everything up successfully.

The message was more just to see if anyone had the original recovery media, as I am trying to keep my machines as period correct, and 'factory' as possible, with all the original bloatware they might have come with.

I will try to get back to the 760ED and 770ED tomorrow, which will require much more time and effort.

Thanks

Did you get anywhere with the original restore media for this one? My 360CSE is missing the hdd, so I will need to put a cf-card or something in it. Would be really neat to have the original setup for it. There is also something called reference diskette and diagnostic diskette, for bios settings and hw diagnostics?

The display on mine is not working, so that's another thing I need to fix, or try at least. It lights up, but no output. Works fine on external vga. Was told they often need recapping so that might be the problem.