My first ever thinkpad is old enough to drive: IBM Thinkpad X60
I dug this IBM Thinkpad X60 out of a junk pile at work. It didn't have a charger, so I improvised a connection (second image) for it to draw power from a generic 19V supply. But it still didn't work. Apparently the network card was literally fried and stopped the whole laptop from working. I removed that, tried one from a netbook, which the thinkpad loved to complain about being "unauthorized"... Definitely didn't expect DRM hardware in 2006... But after I ditched network cards entirely, and added some DDR2 RAM, it worked!
Anyway, in the hard disk I found evidence that the laptop had gone from Greece to China and back multiple times, and that someone was still using it until 2021! And the bottom plate has the marking of the french version of windows XP. This laptop has had quite the life! I copied all the lore material from the HDD and then installed Puppy Linux, which you can see running on the first photo. It's really cool, but I still have to figure out how to get it to the internet and download programs.
Unfortunately, the keyboard doesn't work apart from some random keys, the mouse joystick thing, and the power button (which is indeed somewhat flaky too), hence the silly tiny white keyboard at the bottom. It also sometimes randomly exits to a black screen with a non blinking cursor so maybe the HDD is giving up? Not sure. Fixing everything would be cool, but not sure it's worth the money. I plan on using it with an RTL SDR outdoors since the battery works, but any slightly weird but very cool ideas are welcome. Also, I'd appreciate some ideas on how to make this more workable without the external keyboard. The built in one is the best I've ever typed on.
Anyway, that's it, my first ever Thinkpad, slightly disappointing that the keyboard is dead, but it was a really fun find! It looks like the laptop Ryoske Takahashi would use to develop his "fastest racer theory" on the go. The junk pile included laptops a decade newer than this, and those were actually dead beyond repair! Those engineers at IBM really went on to build a tank disguising as a laptop. Let me know your thoughts!