Hacking legacy tablet PC

I recently obtained a 13-years-old ThinkPad X41t (X41 Tablet). This is meant to serve as GNU/Hurd testing system of our community. I chose this model for the following considerations: 32-bit processor, Intel integrated video, availability of usable Atheros WLAN, AC97 adapter, optional dock with optical drive and legacy interfaces, and PS/2-based TrackPoint system.

In addition to serving as GNU/Hurd testing machine, I plan to turn it into a note-taking and digital-painting device first. I accordingly have made certain modifications:

Upgrade RAM to 1.5 GiB (512 MiB on-board and 1 GiB DDR2 SO-DIMM card. Maximum supported RAM is 2 GiB)
Replacing the original Intel WLAN card with an Atheros one (which is approved by IBM/Lenovo firmware)
Replacing the 1.8-inch IDE harddisk with a CF card (with appropriate converter). This will trigger the rather annoying harddisk "white-list".

I have also ordered its dock and digitizer pen. I set up Debian i386 with light-weight desktop environment (e.g. MATE or Xfce). With the CF card as the solid-state storage, the system runs rather smoothly. It uses no more than 500 MiB of RAM so I have 1 GiB for other software.

I also observed something strange (but interesting and positive) with the modified solid-storage. It's not possible to install Losedows anymore. Someone else tried to install Losedows XP, and got a "Disk error" after reboot. When he tried to install Losedows 7, the installer didn't recognize the CF card at all. However, any GNU/Linux distribution works excellently. I don't know whether this is owing to the compatibility issues introduced by the SATA-to-IDE converter chip (X41, T43 and R52 come with ICH6M southbridge with native SATA, but IBM/Lenovo decided to convert it to IDE using a third-party chip). But it's just funny.