Cluttermagnet Posted November 20, 2014 Author Share Posted November 20, 2014 Look here: http://support.lenov...uments/ht036045 Right you are, and I do have that blue button on my unit. Well, it's all academic until I get a swapout unit with an intact keyboard. As this is covered by a 90 day parts/ labor guarantee, I'd rather not mess with replacing anything in there just yet. But I will learn. Desktops are ever so much easier to work on than laptops. Ugh! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 20, 2014 Author Share Posted November 20, 2014 Dang! I'm almost tempted to open up the box I just sealed about an hour ago. Put it on the scale and got a weight of 9.5lb. on it. Now to check the three shipping options and see who's going to be most reasonable. Ooooh- I like unlocking things, the idea, anyway- not that I have unlocked all that much over the years. I have watched in amusement as I read accounts about locked and unlocked cell phones, etc. Never have dealt with that personally. I have my first cell phone, a klunky old Motorola WX-345 that I have been carrying around now for all of one or two years. Yep, my very first. As I have oft mentioned, Clutter is a sloooowwww adopter... Anyway I will definitely look into that Middleton BIOS, Aryeh. That sounds interesting. Fortunately the BIOS came preset to look at removable media for something bootable, so It found my Mint 17 DVD right away and dutifully loaded it. Worked great on Ethernet, and I bet it also would do wireless without a hitch. I will find out about that soon enough... That's some nice code. I'll be very interested to try that when I get my new unit back. Or maybe I'll yield to temptation and cut the tape just to find out what it can tell me. BTW I'm not even sure how I would do that under Linux. 'hardinfo' gives some info, but not the level of detail one sometimes wants... and probably not from a live DVD session anyway. Yep, I'll download the manual as soon as I can get to it. That should help a lot! Hello, Download a copy of the ThinkPad R61 Hardware Maintenance Manual when you have a chance, it contains comprehensive explanation of how to service the unit as well as part numbers. Here's a little .CMD script you can run from within Windows to get some of the various model and version numbers for the unit: @ECHO OFF ECHO return the motherboard brand and model wmic.exe baseboard get product ECHO . ECHO return the BIOS version information, serial and version. wmic.exe bios get name,serialnumber,version ECHO . ECHO return the system serial number, product name and manufacturer. Wmic.exe csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber To get into the BIOS, you can either press the ThinkVantage button (I believe it is a blue button above the main keyboard on the R61 series) or the F1 key at boot up. The "Middleton BIOS" is very unofficial and I doubt a refurbisher would install it as it unlocks some things that are, well, unsupported. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 On Linux, you can run (as root), dmidecode | less which lists the machine's DMI (Bios) table in a readable format. It basically lists a description of the system components with serial numbers, BIOS info, motherboard info, ram attached, cpu socket, etc. For instance here is my output: http://ix.io/fgu More info: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/check-bios-version-linux/ BTW that's pretty cool Aryeh, I never knew that! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 Aryeh- FYI my curiosity overwhelmed me and I cut the tape and reopened the shipping box. BTW the way they pack these is very clever, and it's easy to get the laptop in and out of the reusable shipping insert. It's basically a cleverly folded piece of cardboard that captures the laptop in a plastic film sling. Open it, the plastic relaxes to release the unit. Fold it up and it's locked in place. Neat! So anyway I entered your command prompts and got my answers. I tried to do a screen grab but for some reason PrtScn would not operate for me. I'm very rusty with Windows, not much activity these past 7 years... So here is what it told me: Product: 8935A47 Name: Ver 1.00PARTTBL Serial Number: L3C5013 Version: LENOVO - 2070 Identifying Number: L3C5013 Name: 8935A47 Vendor: LENOVO My one comment so far, regarding the "Name", which is in response to the BIOS query, looks like this is an early BIOS version (?) I'm sending this out Fedex tomorrow and shipping time for surface is 4 days. Good enough. Need one with a decent keyboard. The screwed up space bar is just maddening... Hello, Download a copy of the ThinkPad R61 Hardware Maintenance Manual when you have a chance, it contains comprehensive explanation of how to service the unit as well as part numbers. Here's a little .CMD script you can run from within Windows to get some of the various model and version numbers for the unit: @ECHO OFF ECHO return the motherboard brand and model wmic.exe baseboard get product ECHO . ECHO return the BIOS version information, serial and version. wmic.exe bios get name,serialnumber,version ECHO . ECHO return the system serial number, product name and manufacturer. Wmic.exe csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber To get into the BIOS, you can either press the ThinkVantage button (I believe it is a blue button above the main keyboard on the R61 series) or the F1 key at boot up. The "Middleton BIOS" is very unofficial and I doubt a refurbisher would install it as it unlocks some things that are, well, unsupported. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 I can see pretty much the same info on a label on the underside of the unit. There is also a sticker that gives the MAC address. One additional useful piece of info is the apparent date of manufacture, which reads 07/09. I assume that is saying 2007, month 9 (September). That sounds about right from what I know of the R61 from online research. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 Way cool, Josh. I haven't put it back in the box yet. So maybe I boot to Mint 17 live DVD and see if it will return that info. Going to try that, bbl... On Linux, you can run (as root), dmidecode | less which lists the machine's DMI (Bios) table in a readable format. It basically lists a description of the system components with serial numbers, BIOS info, motherboard info, ram attached, cpu socket, etc. For instance here is my output: http://ix.io/fgu More info: http://www.cyberciti...-version-linux/ BTW that's pretty cool Aryeh, I never knew that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 (edited) So it is BIOS version 2.07... Edited November 21, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 (edited) BTW one of the jazzy Terminal commands I have learned gives me data on the hard drive health- and when I ran that on this Lenovo lappie, I found out the hard drive was a scant 18.x days old. That was a pleasant surprise. I just hope that the replacement unit also has a lightly used drive. Heck, I have old 3.5in drives that have 3.5 years on them... Edit: I found a good buy on a 60G SSD and ordered it. I think this box has a second HDD slot. Anyway... No, only one slot. I can pull the Win7 drive and use this SSD to run Linux on, without messing with the windows install and risking fouling it up... I'm probably going to do best with a flash card, however. There is a slot in the front for that. I think it would be a pain to try to swap hard drives very often. Edited November 21, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 Cool stuff Clutter. BTW: In Windows, the built-in Snipping tool can take screenshots: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-snipping-tool-capture-screen-shots Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 21, 2014 Author Share Posted November 21, 2014 Snipping. Never would have guessed, Fran. I'll check it out when I get the lappie back in a week or so. Thanks! Running on dialup here this morning. Just because I can. Leaving Comcast for a while. If I can get a good rate again, I will restart cable internet again. Gosh, dialup is slow! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 (edited) I could never go back to dialup! We had no electricity for more than 8 1/2 days in Oct. & Nov. 2011. At night I grabbed two netbooks and we headed to McDonalds for hot coffee, tv, and free wifi. Eventually I had to farm out one of the netbooks to a friend with electricity so she could charge it for me. Between the car charger and a spare 12 volt battery I have, I was able to keep the one netbook charged. Once you have a laptop, you may find it cheaper to stick with dialup at home and just take the laptop to hotspots to surf and download files you want/need.. Edited November 21, 2014 by zlim 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 I imagine my surfing habits will evolve at some point. I need to learn lots about wifi! Just don't know enough about it- and most important, how to lock down a computer against nefarious probing... My early efforts will probably involve fast food or coffee establishments where I run a live DVD session of Mint 17. As I get more adept, I may consider exposing an actual installed distro to such risks... Baby steps... Oh, dialup? It's absolutely maddening. Like watching paint dry. But when that's all you've got, you make do. As it is, I was thrilled last night when I actually got a computer working on Dialup. It can be such a hassle to remember ID and pwd info for the dialup. I was so rusty... I ran for about 2-1/2 hours and got a little light surfing done. Remembered to set up my amateur radio resource "DX Summit" because it serves a s a 'keep alive' for the ISP connection, refreshing at least every minute or more often. Maybe I will do a little more sniffing around my neighborhood and see if I can spot any open wifi connections. I might get lucky. Eventually Comcast may come to their senses and give me cable internet for 30 bucks a month. I'm patient. I can do without for a while. I think the laptop is going to be a help in allowing me to draw a line in the sand with my greedy, monopolistic local ISP. Perhaps one of these days I will get one of those fancy cell phones with the wifi account. I'm a low bandwidth user, really the kind they are looking for. But they, too, are greedy, and want to enslave their customers to contracts, so I'm not too upbeat on that possibility. Gee if only some viable wimax service were available, that might be an answer. Again, the key is that I'm relatively low BW. If I need to download Linux distros, I can do that at Betty's- or onto a laptop via wifi. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 I imagine my surfing habits will evolve at some point. I need to learn lots about wifi! Just don't know enough about it- and most important, how to lock down a computer against nefarious probing... It is simple. Set a wifi (the essid) password on the router, use an uncommon channel to avoid interference and set your access point to hidden so it doesn't show up when scanning for wifi signals. Setting it to hidden just means you will need to enter the name and the password on a new device setup. Once you set a network(logged into before), the device will remember the settings most of the time(may need to check a box in your network manager). Also, depending on what wifi type (a/b/g/n) your laptop or other device supports, it may be a bit slower than using ethernet. If you device supports 802.11n, you will get very fast speeds (n being the latest but older devices may use G which can only do 54mbps transfers). This all depends on your router and your devices wifi device. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 28, 2014 Author Share Posted November 28, 2014 About 4 day delivery back to CA via Fedex ground, now this: Your RMA (RMA Number: nnnnnnnn) was successfully delivered to the RMA warehouse on 11/26/2014. Once the RMA package is opened, we will notify you via email to inform you of the contents received. Please allow 3-5 business days (7-10 for laptops/notebooks/desktops/tablet PCs, due to the fact that they must be tested first to verify any defect) for your RMA to process. Due to item availability, some repair/replacement RMA may be delayed or refunded. Siiighhhhhh... Maybe before Christmas... Happy day after Thanksgiving, folks! We went out, had a traditional dinner, let someone else cook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted November 28, 2014 Share Posted November 28, 2014 That is kind of what I figured man Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 29, 2014 Author Share Posted November 29, 2014 Yep- Well, I have to be philosophical about it. The experience leaves me ahead, in that I get going with my first lappie, and that immediately leads on to acquiring some minimal expertise in matters wifi. It's all good, I guess... I'm getting sort of settled into dialup (ugh!) at home. Access to Betty's fast Comcast pipe is a daily thing. I'm buying a little USB dialup modem 'dongle' to run with the lappie at home. I'll plug in an Ethernet plug at Bettys- and the wifi hotspot thingie- well, we shall see... Oh, I have that little 60GB SSD so I'll just take Win 7 out and run it with Linux most of the time, I reckon. If I need Win7, I have that dual booting on Betty's G570 laptop. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted November 29, 2014 Share Posted November 29, 2014 About 4 day delivery back to CA via Fedex ground, now this: Siiighhhhhh... Maybe before Christmas... Happy day after Thanksgiving, folks! We went out, had a traditional dinner, let someone else cook. Should'a gone withe eBay keyboard replacement. LOL! Yep- Well, I have to be philosophical about it. The experience leaves me ahead, in that I get going with my first lappie, and that immediately leads on to acquiring some minimal expertise in matters wifi. It's all good, I guess... I'm getting sort of settled into dialup (ugh!) at home. Access to Betty's fast Comcast pipe is a daily thing. I'm buying a little USB dialup modem 'dongle' to run with the lappie at home. I'll plug in an Ethernet plug at Bettys- and the wifi hotspot thingie- well, we shall see... Oh, I have that little 60GB SSD so I'll just take Win 7 out and run it with Linux most of the time, I reckon. If I need Win7, I have that dual booting on Betty's G570 laptop. Good to look on the bright side. A learning experience is always worthwhile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted November 29, 2014 Share Posted November 29, 2014 Right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted December 5, 2014 Author Share Posted December 5, 2014 Well, the wait wasn't too bad. Another R61 laptop was on the front porch this evening. The keyboard 'seems' better. Space bar certainly is straight and level, and it responds to pressure anywhere along its length. The cabinet is more beat- top of it shows deep scratches. The first one looked a lot nicer. But here's the rub- every time it boots I get an error message Error 0210Stuck Key 40 Press F1 to setup Siiighhhh..... Yeah, you guys were right, just replace the keyboard (on my nickel). Instead I spent 21 dollars to send it back and got another 'bad' one. Actually, I can blow by it's little hysterical message by just hitting Escape, FWIW. And go on and do other things, like entering the Windows secret code or later booting into a live DVD session, which is where I am at the moment. LM17 Mate. I opened a notepad program and checked all keys I could check, and none failed to 'print' a character on the screen- but anyway the computer is nagging about one of the keys being stuck. I dunno... It's certainly usable... I haven't the heart to invest the time and another 21 dollars to try another 'pig in a poke' (by returning defective product). My 135 dollar lappie is getting more and more expensive by the day... I'll probably stand pat with what I've got- and maybe I can avoid having to replace the laptop depending on which key is actually 'stuck'. Can't determine which one, so far... Hey, I bet a new keyboard on Fleabay costs 21 dollars shipped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Found this solution Take a close look at the 'down arrow' (40) key. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 This says it is the F1 key: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-prior-T-series-ThinkPad/ERROR-0210-Stuck-Key-40-Press-lt-F1-gt-to-Setup/td-p/143545 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Hello, There's an interesting discussion about Wi-Fi upgrades for the R61 on reddit at http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/2o3k6u/whats_a_good_wireless_card_for_an_r61/. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted December 5, 2014 Author Share Posted December 5, 2014 The down arrow key is functional, Liz. Josh, F1 certainly is a possibility- in that I have no ready way of checking it. This silly lappie uses a dramatic hardware key for the F2 key to get you into BIOS- the 'ThinkVantage' key. No idea about F1 at this time. Maybe this is something that I will have to live with? Anyway, FWIW the first box I had here with the bad space key did not give me this key 40 nonsense. Ugh! I'll read the wifi article shortly, Aryeh- thanks! Now off to fire up the stove and heat up my place, bbl... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Well the link I gave basically says that you need to clean the key using compressed air or such Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 (edited) Hello, There's an interesting discussion about Wi-Fi upgrades for the R61 on reddit at http://www.reddit.co...rd_for_an_r61/. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky Thanks, Aryeh- That is a very useful article. So far, I have noticed that my wifi indicator is lit while running in Win7, not lit when running a live DVD session of Linux Mint 17. I assume it would also light if I had Mint installed. BTW I had purchased a modest 60G SSD to use with this lappie. Meanwhile, I got hold of another of many tower PCs I have here, and I needed a hard drive, so I popped it in the tower 'temporarily' and installed Mint 17 just to see how the tower did. More about the tower later, in another thread. It's another Dell... Boy, was I impressed at my first ever experience with a SSD. Sure boots up an OS very fast! So anyway my wifi will proceed slowly but eventually I will get to it. I need to look up the specs of the stock wifi for the R61. I could have sworn I remember seeing reference to wireless G? Not sure... Or maybe even Wireless N? Edited December 6, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 (edited) Well the link I gave basically says that you need to clean the key using compressed air or such Right, so I gathered. Well, I have her an old Freon tank a friend gave me years ago. He had it fitted with a pressure gage and a hose with a pistol grip sprayer on the end. I have used it for just this sort of thing in the past. Need to get that out and try this. I have a modest 12V battery jumper thingie with a compressor on it. I can also take the big tank over to a nearby town where the local BP still has free air, and pump it up. A charge lasts a while on that big tank. Beats those little spray cans... P.S. It's light green colored and about the size of those 20lb. propane tanks you see on barbecue grilles. Edited December 6, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 (edited) I can tell you guys that this Lenovo R61 is doing great with LM 17 Mate, as predicted. And I bet it works out of the box with wifi, too. For the low bucks, I think it is going to perform well for me, even with a lowly Celeron CPU in it. Running the Terminal command sudo udisks --dump | grep -A 24 Updates tells me the box has accumulated 40.2 days on the hard drive, with 348 power cycles. That looks pretty good for such old hardware. A few more hours than the drive in the first lappie, but at least in the same ballpark. The other one said 18.x days. BTW those of you who may remember Robin Williams lesser known "The World According to Garp", will recognize the phrase (paraphrasing) "...honey, it's perfect- it's been pre-disastered." Considering the warranty return and scratched case, I think my lappie qualifies. Yep, pre-disastered... Oh, a question for you guys- so far as running Linux on this lappie, how slow would it be to run a 32G USB flash drive through a USB2 port? Compared with a 5400rpm 2.5in internal drive? No USB3 on this box... Also, after I figure out which sort of flash cards the slot in the front of this thing accepts, would that be faster than a USB flash drive? I would think so... There were options, I can't yet tell what sort of card fits in that slot. Maybe SD? It's about 1 inch wide. There is also some big window in the side, looks big enough to fit an old audio cassette or so, I think it's called 'PC card' or something like that? Haven't yet figured out what that is and whether it might be of use to me. Edited December 6, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Oh, a question for you guys- so far as running Linux on this lappie, how slowwould it be to run a 32G USB flash drive through a USB2 port? Compared with a 5400rpm 2.5in internal drive? No USB3 on this box... I came across an article some time ago that stated that using a USB 3 stick would give faster results than a USB 2 stick in a USB 2 port. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4523/usb-30-flash-drive-roundup/6 As to card slots, Connections & Expansion Expansion Bays1 x Ultrabay Slim Slots2 x memory ( 1 free )1 x CardBus ( 1 free ) Interfaces3 x USB 2.0 - 4 pin USB Type A1 x display / video - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15)1 x modem - phone line - RJ-111 x network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T - RJ-451 x microphone - input - mini-phone 3.5 mm1 x headphones - output - mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm1 x docking / port replicator - 240 pin docking1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) - 4 pin FireWire Memory Card Reader4 in 1 ( SD Card, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture http://www.cnet.com/uk/products/lenovo-thinkpad-r61/specs/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Modern 5400 rpm drives can do about 500 Mbit/s whereas USB2 can only do 480 Mbit/s Personally I would never use a 5400 drive if possible as the 7200 are so cheap now that there really isn't a difference besides the fact that 7200 can do double the speed (1000 Mbit/s I believe) What you really need is a SSD card as the good ones can do 540 MB/s read/write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Apparently with a modded bios you can get SATA 3 speed with a ssd on that machine. http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/R-and-L-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/R61-upgrading-with-SSD-Sata-3Gb-s/td-p/245799 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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