IBM Thinkpad R31 System Board Issue and SSD
This is an IBM Thinkpad I picked up, and am going to refurbish. To that end, at the time I picked it up I also got a a 64GB mSATA SSD and an IDE enclosure to go with it. Available on Amazon here:
Aneew mSATA SSD to 44 Pin IDE Adapter with Case
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
SSD SATA mSATA 64GB Shark Internal Solid State Drive High Performance Hard Drive for Desktop Laptop SATA III 6Gb/s Includes SSD 16GB 32GB 60GB 64GB 120GB 128GB 240GB 250GB 480GB 500GB (64GB, MSATA)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
The laptop originally shipped with 256MB of RAM and I got a 60GB hard drive without a caddy to go with it. I got a caddy from eBay which also has the faceplate for a USB port and the audio ports. The SSD enclosure doesn't need the actual caddy part, as it is too thick to go into the hard drive well with it attached.
The Thinkpad has a Pentium III based Celeron running at 1.06GHz, and it originally shipped with Windows XP service pack 2. I installed service pack 3 on it and it runs fine. Well, it did run fine, until the system board went out. I'm getting 3 constant beeps so it may just need a CMOS battery or a mains battery. I have those now too, and I have a system board just in case.
The most interesting aspect of this is the mSATA enclosure. This cost me $30 total for the SSD and the enclosure when a 64GB fully manufactured SSD form Zheino or Kingspec are $50 and a unit from Transcend is $117. There is a board from Ableconn for $30 that has a frame for a caddy, but the one from Aneew is just as good and it's an enclosure.
There is a fixit video forthcoming. Thanks for watching.