Service Forum

[jmwtzl]

I have previously successfully unlocked a 380XD and 600E

I have recently acquired a very old but mint condition TP355c -type 2619-L55. The 355c was manufactured in 1994.

At boot up I get errors 161 and 163 (which I think is just a dead CMOS battery ) followed by a "Cylinder" icon and closed Padlock.

Does anybody know if the "cylinder" icon mean a password locked hard drive?

Also does the padlock mean a supervisory password is ALSO required to get into the BIOS? Or does it just refer to the hard drive?

Do "old" Thinkpads from 1994 still require reading the EEPROM to unlock or is there an easier trick?

Thanks

[victor]

Hi,

Cylinder is for the drive. Usually an old TP asks for the pass in this order:
-POP/SVP
-HDP

But its easy to test for SVP, remove the hard drive and check the BIOS setup.
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.

[jmwtzl]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the info.

I removed the hard drive and the TP355c booted into the BIOS EasyStart screen in order to reset the time and date.

The floppy drive also proved to be faulty - I could hear a constant whirling noise - but I replaced it with an old spare.

I used a DOS bootdisk and was able to load DOS and run some DOS programs from the floppy

Do you know if its possible to unlock a password locked hard drive?

I don't have any spare HDD's of that vintage - I presume its a different type/size compared to the usual IDE HDD's from the TP 600E's , T20's etc? Its also only 250MB!! However , I might be wrong as the HDD is encased in a caddy so I can't see what it looks like!!! I do have an old 2GB IDE HDD so maybe that will be OK?

Thanks

[victor]

Any drive up to 20G it's OK.
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.

[jmwtzl]

Thanks Victor.

The HDD is totally encased by the caddy.

Do you open the caddy by removing the 2 screws on either side of the long connector strip?

Thanks