I’ve been slowly restoring this IBM ThinkPad A31p to its former glory. I’ve also been doing a few upgrades along the way: (P4 2.4Ghz, mSATA to IDE adapter, Wireless-N card, etc.)
One of the few, final cosmetic touch ups left was to replace the worn out Pentium badge. I managed to source a reproduction badge that looks accurate, so I thought I’d share the before and after.
Before
After
I think it turned out pretty well!
EDIT: compressed the images a bit.
ajkula66 would be proud.
I never used an A31p; I didn’t get into ThinkPads until the T41 was new.
My oldest current machine is a T43p running OpenBSD. It’s nice to boot up sometimes and run cwm and surf.
I love the notched corner, it was a cool design statement back then.
Did you get the sticker from Vath?
This is my very first ThinkPad ever. I always drooled over these early 00s models at the local electronics shop, but I was just a poor highschooler then.
It’s currently a very overpowered Win98 machine, while I get some late 90s gaming out of my system. Then I might blast to another part of my past, and install Linux-Mandrake on it for a while.
I got the badge from some Hong Kong seller on ebay, who has an excellent and spot on selection of old PC stickers.
Oh cool, you picked a very unique first ThinkPad then. One of my favorite message board posts of all time was a decade ago, ajkula66 reminiscing over the heyday of the A31p:
https://www.forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=110218
I’m sure you have read it and if not, it’s a good time.
Enjoy your laptop!
So, I knew I wanted an A31. But it was ajkula66’s forum posts that really convinced me to look for an A31p. It definitely took some time watching auctions like a hawk to find one, let alone one in decent condition.