ThinkPad 600X 2645-4EU with SSD
Hello!
It's a 600X 2645-4EU. BIOS is BIOS ITET55WW, 11/30/99
I bought it used in 2003. I've been using it from time to time. A few days ago I've purchased an Transcend SSD TS128GSSD25-M.
I've installed Windows XP SP3 Pro without any problems, it works perfect (and goes hibernating really fast with 576Mb of RAM).
The problems came with Win98SE / DOS.
First of all, fdisk fails to do anything: for example it can erase previous partitions, but after exit it shows me error about writing on hdd. Also, fdisk fails to create new partition: it just get stuck at 0% when checking the surface (I waited for about 30 minutes).
So, I created FAT32 partition using WinXP installer: created a 16Gb partition there, then have chosen 'use FAT', and after it started to copy files, I've interrupted installer and booted up Win98 system disk. Then I can go to disk c:, and even execute 'dir' - everything looks fine, at least reading from SSD works. Then I start Win98 setup (setup.exe). It first executes scandisk. Scandisk runs ok, shows no errors. But then win98 installer shows an error: 'ATTENTION: A serious disk error has occurred while writing to drive C. Retry (r)?'. And stucks.
I've tried to do the following, just to make sure. I executed 'echo 123 >test.txt' and got an error 'General write error: disk C, A (Abort), R (Retry), F (Fail)?'. I choosed 'A' and then executed 'dir'. I saw than, that 'test.txt' was created, but is 0 bytes length. When I try to 'copy test.txt con' I got no errors, but '0 files copied'.
I'd like to mention, that I got no problems, when used previous hdd Seagate 160Gb - both DOS and Win98SE worked ok. (Yes, that 160Gb worked ok in this ThinkPad
)
Please help me with solution to this problem or may be there are some other ways (non-official, tweaks or something else). It's neccessary for me to install and use DOS/Win98.
I've tried this SSD on another computer (normal desktop, m/b is Acorp VIA85P), and everything worked ok there. I normally booted up a Win98 system disk, normally used 'fdisk' to delete old and create new partitions, 'format' the drive for system. All write operations work ok.
So it seems to me, that the problem is in the ThinkPad BIOS.
BUT. In any way, WinXP works ok even on ThinkPad's BIOS. May be there is some workaround for dos/win98?
Many thanks in advance.
Best regards, Serge.
No, everything is supported ok about FAT32. I've used a 32Gb partition on my old 160Gb-HDD for Win98. Yes, I thought, that maybe there could be some troubles due to such large SSD (128Gb), so I tried another one, that was only 32Gb. But it acted just the same way: read operations work ok, but writes to SSD fail.
I'll ask Transcend support about this SSD's CHS (thank you for mentioning it!). But it seems strange to me, that read operations work, but write ones - don't. I just want to say, that if there were some incompatibilities between SSD's CHS and BIOS's CHS logic - then all operations should be faulty, not just write ones.
By the way, is there any Lenovo support in Russia? I tried to find any emails or webforms, but got no result... 
Maybe 'oficial' Lenovo support could help?
MPrefix, thank you
At last, a few days ago I've successfully booted up a Win98! I think, the matter was as MPrefix said 'SSD's CHS (cylinder / head / sector) numbers may be such that they can't be properly reconciled by the 600's BIOS'. As it seems to be - ThinkPad's BIOS has no problems about reading first sectors from Transcend's SSDs, but all others cause difficulties. So, I found a software solution.
Currently, I'm happily using both Win98SE (and pure DOS when neccessary) and WinXP. The first one is at 30Gb partition, and the second one - at remaining 90Gb. Everything works fine
