Installed Fedora 14 on IBM Thinkpad T24

Just thought I'd share. Only 1 small issue which was easily solved.

I booted from a CD which I had burned from an iso file of Fedora 14 “live” which I had downloaded from the fedora distribution site.

After the IBM flash screen appears, use F12 to get a menu of bootable devices. Pick the CD. After Fedora gives you the blue screen, press the escape key. This will interrupt the bootloader (grub). Grub gives you a list of bootable versions on the CD. Instead of the default – which is the first one – you want “Fedora (Basic Video)”. If you allow the default to load the T23 ultimate loops and does not load. Beyond that there is nothing to it.

Other details in case you care. My hard drive with Win XP Pro had failed. I turns out that removing the hard drive involves merely one screw. The screw holds a piece of trim that holds the drive in place. An internet search for “T23 User Manual” gets you the repair manual. The drive plugs into the connector and is held in place by the trim..There are umpteen laptop drives available on ebay – new and used. Since the serial ATA drive was introduced, traditional ATA drives are called PATA (parallel ATA). The form factor is 2.5 inch. Scan ebay for “2.5 PATA” and about 1,000 listings appear. I got a nice 60 gig to replace my 40 gig for $35 delivered.

Since it is so easy to switch drives, one could easily have multiple drives and move back and forth from Win XP to Fedora to whatever, with about 2 minute time to switch drives. Almost as easy as putting a CD platter into the CD drive. When you switch drives, you need to open the cover, since the cover restrains the trim which holds the drive.