Old IBM ThinkPad for recording

Doug Earnest · Post by **Doug Earnest** » 20 Aug 2008 11:44 am

I have a new computer on the way as this one is kind of sick. My question - would the old Think Pad be suitable to use for home recording if I took all the old programs off of it? It has 261,600KB RAM. If someone could let me know what else to look for I would appreciate it. I'm not a computer type person by any means but can take care of things with a little direction.
Thanks for any help!

Ellis Miller · Post by **Ellis Miller** » 20 Aug 2008 1:51 pm

Hi Doug,
I am going to start you out with some general information and hope that others will join in with more specifics.

First of all, it depends on what kind of recording you want to do and what kind of software. The new recording software is memory intensive as are WAVE files, and I wonder if your RAM will be sufficient. Also, when you are recording multiple audio tracks, you not only need lots of RAM but lots of hard drive storage as well. I am wondering if the Thinkpad will do it.

I would start by deciding which software I would use and check out the system requirements. That will give you the minimum.

You may want to post some information as to how involved you want your "studio" and projects to be. That will determine a lot about which equipment you will need.
Good luck

Doug Earnest · Post by **Doug Earnest** » 20 Aug 2008 4:15 pm

Thanks Ellis. I was in a bit of a hurry before....

Really all I want is something very basic, I'm not going to do any kind of involved projects. Just something to entertain myself with occasionally and maybe be able to capture some licks. I have not looked into software but it will have to be quite simple for me to have the patience to mess with it at all.....I still like knobs and real faders!!!

I have a couple of nice Mackie mixers and some good outboard effects, a Boss DR rhythm box, a good old Korg M1 keyboard, even some pretty good mics. In other words I have what I need to generate music, I just have no way to capture it other than my trusty old Tascam 4-track (which actually sounds pretty darn good!) What I had in mind was using the computer as the recording and mixing device. I doubt that anything I ever mess with would require more than 8 tracks.

I hate to throw away a computer that could possibly be put to use for something entertaining.

Again, thank you for your help!

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Aug 2008 2:20 am

As IBM hasn't made any PC's for several years (the PC business was sold to the Chinese and now marketed as "Lenovo" PC's) it may not have enough "horsepower" to really do any serious recording other than basic two track with the built in audio system. As mentioned you need lots of RAM and lots of hard disk space, along with the Software.

Depends on what model that Thinkpad is, it may be limited to the older Win98/ME Operating Systems, since XP has specific hardware requirements. If it's XP you have to evaluate the PC as many XP machines were sold with 128MB or 256MB of RAM and that's woefully inadequate to run much of anything and 512MB is a more realistic "minimum" and 1GB is better. A lot of the older systems only had 40 or 60GB hard drives and that won't leave much for multi-track recording.

Sorry to be so blunt with my evaluation.

Doug Earnest · Post by **Doug Earnest** » 21 Aug 2008 6:32 am

Thanks Jack! It's a Pentium 3 processor 900Mhz, 256MB memory and 20G hard drive. It looks like maybe Audacity would run on it for some limited work. Any thoughts?

Michael Maddex · Post by **Michael Maddex** » 21 Aug 2008 3:51 pm

Doug Earnest wrote:... Pentium 3 processor 900Mhz, 256MB memory and 20G hard drive. ... Any thoughts?

First off, does the Thinkpad have Audio Line In and Line Out ports? Notebooks are sometimes a little light in the I/O department. If not, the rest of this is probably irrelevant. I don't know anything about the MS Windows requirements, but those specs should be fine for using Audacity on a Linux distro. I did some recording two years ago using a box I built out of a heap of used parts around a Celeron 500 MHz CPU and 256 MB RAM with Audacity on Linux. The 20 GB HDD is pretty small for recording, but you could always free up some space by moving finished projects off to a thumb drive or external HDD or burn to CD if the notebook has a burner.

HTH.

Doug Earnest · Post by **Doug Earnest** » 21 Aug 2008 8:32 pm

I hadn't even thought enough to look for ports...good grief!!

But it does have some. Mic input, headphone out and another in the middle of them with what looks to possibly be another input or output -O is kinda the symbol for that one.
For free I guess it's worth messing with it a little bit.
Another forumite clued me in that the hard drives in laptops run at a slower RPM than what is really needed.
Thanks again!

Craig Stenseth · Post by **Craig Stenseth** » 25 Aug 2008 4:00 pm

A couple of options to consider would be sound cards (oops I mean "audio interfaces") that connect either via USB or the PCMCIA slots.