My 20 year old ThinkPad T42 finally booted up after sitting in a closet for 5 years

I pulled my old ThinkPad T42 out of storage last weekend just to see if it would turn on. Hooked up the power brick and hit the button, and it actually booted to Windows XP in under 2 minutes. The battery life is totally shot now only lasts about 10 minutes unplugged but the keyboard still feels amazing to type on. I learned that those old IBM laptops were built like tanks compared to my modern plastic one that flexes when I pick it up. I found some old photos on the hard drive from my trip to Denver in 2009 which was a nice surprise. Has anyone else revived a laptop from that era and found something cool on it?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancyg141d ago

Saw a forum post where someone found their old AIM buddy list on a revived laptop. That's a level of nostalgia I'm not sure I'm ready for.

faith_shah881d ago

I'm not sure I'm ready for" is exactly right lol. I found my old buddy list from like 2004 on an old hard drive once and it was wild. All those screen names, the inside jokes we had, the group chats about nothing. It felt like opening a time capsule, but also kinda sad cause most of those people I haven't talked to in years. Just scrolling through the names brought back a bunch of memories I'd totally forgot about.

ray_williams19h ago

Pretty wild seeing those old buddy lists pop up again like that, @nancyg14. I did the same thing a few years back with my old Dell Latitude from 2006. Found an old AIM chat log from my freshman year of college where me and my buddies were planning a road trip to a music festival. There was a whole conversation about who was bringing the cooler and what snacks to pack. Ended up forwarding that log to one of the guys in the group - we still text sometimes about how we almost missed the exit driving there cause the directions were wrong. That kinda stuff hits different than old photos sometimes cause it's the actual conversations you had.