Reviving an IBM Thinkpad 770

[ajaj895]

Alright, so I recently found a IBM Thinkpad 770 in my parent's closet and I decided I was going to try to bring it back to life. I found a charger for it, and attempted to turn it on, to my surprise, it actually turned on with two beeps. The mobo battery was dead so it asked me to import the time (error code 161, 163, or 173). After imputing the time, it restarts and beeps once, and then takes me to a screen that says O > I (Off>On?) and it does not do anything else. The machine definitely sees 97,000 kb of data but I don't know if it's good or not. Any suggestions on getting it to work? Does it need a mobo battery to run?

 

[Solandri]

Wow does that take me back (my first laptop was a Thinkpad 750). According to this thread, it's a message asking if you want to turn the computer off (so you can replace the CMOS battery) or if you want to turn it on (because you've replaced the CMOS battery).

https/forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=377571

This may be a fun project, but I doubt you'll find anything useful to do with the laptop after getting it working. Likely your phone is more powerful (and has more RAM and storage and a higher resolution display).