oeuvre wrote:

Has anyone else here built a Frankenpad? Here's one of mine I did awhile ago https://imgur.com/a/6vc7g

Not yet, but I just fixed my T60 fan making terrible noise using the msb0b fan lubrication method. 🤣

Oh wow, that's a great Frankenpad.

My newest laptop is still an X61, which I love, expect the battery is almost dead and I really need something newer than a Core2 in order to play with virtualisation in some cases. Perhaps an X230 with X220 keyboard.. Pondering some of the T series also.

I've various other old Thinkpads, and once had a 701CS (butterfly)

My old 600X was made up of parts from 3 damaged ones I found, but that doesn't really count as a frankenpad. If I find the right LCD for the right price I'd do it. 1024 x 768 is the worst part of daily driving the T60.

1400x1050 is what you want

I still have an A20m that I've owned since new. I found that I don't like using laptops very much, so I never replaced it with anything newer.
It was originally a Celeron 550MHz 64MB. It has the 15" 1024x768 screen, I guess most of them were 14".
For most of it's active life I ran it with Win2k and 256MB RAM.
In more recent years I upgraded the motherboard and CPU and also maxed out the RAM to 512MB.

Unfortunately the Celeron board doesn't support full P3s properly due to SpeedStep. It was swapped for the board from a P3 version and has a P3-900MHz CPU. The particular motherboard is an older one that wasn't supposed to support that CPU stepping, and IBM never sold it that way, but it turns out that an updated BIOS added support for it.

Nowadays I only use it for occasional special needs and so I'm probably going to put XP on it again. I had previously tried that and didn't like it, but some things don't work on Win2k so XP is necessary.

Both of these boards (both the Celeron and the current P3 board) had ATI Rage Mobility M1 graphics chips on them. Pretty useless for 3D, but at the time it seemed cool that they were capable of it on some level.
I remember that back in the day I used to be able to run 3DMark2000 successfully. Later on, I discovered I couldn't run 3DMark anymore. I don't remember the exact error but I was convinced I needed an older driver - but IBM had apparently removed them from their site.

I have a couple batteries. One of them is a 4hr battery that lasts around an hour, the other is my original 2hr battery which lasts maybe 15mins. The fact that this laptop still has any battery life at all is one advantage it has over my P1 laptops. Otherwise I consider the P1 machines more utilitarian due to their heavier construction.

Now that it's only useful to me for portable applications, I don't feel like the Thinkpad A20m (a "desktop replacement" model) is very well suited. If I ever saw an X-series cheap, I might be tempted to get one.

shamino wrote:

I still have an A20m that I've owned since new. I found that I don't like using laptops very much, so I never replaced it with anything newer.

Hey, cool. I recently was given a gift of a A21m (14" XGA screen, P3-800). It should run Win98 SE or Win2K well. I am thinking about Win98 SE, as I learned that there is a chance the Crystal SoundFusion will be able to emulate SBPro in pure DOS.

get a 40GB or so HD for it, dual boot 98SE + 2000

Thought about this. Honestly, probably the stock 20GB HDD would be enough for dual-boot, given my modest plans for this machine.

I hate their coating and how bad it ages. I love the old Toshibas 😀

The entry level series (R50e for example) were made of plastic without any coating. But yes, this is indeed an issue as all the other models suffer from a coating that deteriorates rather quickly when in use. I also prefer plain plastic surfaces but admittedly they feel premium and have a very distinct look when new.

Thinkpads are great for collecting and retro use hands down but the modern ones are disappointment after disappointment and last year I said to hell with it and went Dell and that is with the proper mxm and socketed machines not the bga shit. One of the big problems with modern thinkpads is that they are not really thinkpads but apple like ultrabooks made to look like thinkpads with outdated hardware and worse build quality. They also lack a lot of comfort that was afforded with older models such as the keyboards (omg) and for a while the trackpads as well.

nforce4max wrote:

Thinkpads are great for collecting and retro use hands down but the modern ones are disappointment after disappointment and last year I said to hell with it and went Dell and that is with the proper mxm and socketed machines not the bga shit. One of the big problems with modern thinkpads is that they are not really thinkpads but apple like ultrabooks made to look like thinkpads with outdated hardware and worse build quality. They also lack a lot of comfort that was afforded with older models such as the keyboards (omg) and for a while the trackpads as well.

Agreed, I've got a G575 and it has the build quality of tissue paper. Currently on its second case which is starting to fall apart whereas my circa 1999 X20 is still solid as a rock. And the G575's optical drive keeps vanishing (completely, not seen even by the BIOS) more often than not. And as for the performance, well, the X20 can (and has) out dragged the G575 on occasion. How the hell a dual core 1GHz machine can be slower than a 600MHz single core over a decade its senior is beyond me.

gca wrote:

Agreed, I've got a G575 ...

To be fair, that is not a ThinkPad; rather it's a bottom-tier model from Lenovo's "Essential" line of consumer-focused machines. Don't let that TP-inspired model number fool you!

elod wrote:

I hate their coating and how bad it ages. I love the old Toshibas 😀

blurks wrote:

The entry level series (R50e for example) were made of plastic without any coating. But yes, this is indeed an issue as all the other models suffer from a coating that deteriorates rather quickly when in use. I also prefer plain plastic surfaces but admittedly they feel premium and have a very distinct look when new.

Did this start on later models? I've never seen an issue like that on the P3 era machines.

I do have a couple physical criticisms of my A20m though. One is that the "middle" mouse button (the long one underneath the primary buttons) started sagging on the right side very early in life. Later models didn't use such a large button anymore, and maybe that was why.
The other is the hinge. IBM used to advertise that you could open this laptop with one hand. They designed the latch to make this possible. But it's all for naught because the hinge is too stiff to open without prying 2 handed. I thought it would soften up with age, but it's still stiff to this day.
I "gently" dropped the laptop to it's side once. I was already sitting on the floor and it just tilted off the side of my lap, so the impact seemed very minor. But it was enough to slightly bend the hinge apparently. It has been imperceptibly tweaked ever since, sometimes needing a sideways nudge to latch closed properly. Seems like it was too easy for the hinge to get bent this way, yet it was made overly stiff when it comes to opening the thing.
I'm glad it didn't get loose and floppy though. I'll take too stiff over that.

Something I came to really like about this series of Thinkpads (model 2628) was the readily available service manual and the good supply of replacement and upgrade parts on eBay. I think the same was true of other series in the P3 time period at least.

blurks wrote:

The entry level series (R50e for example) were made of plastic without any coating. But yes, this is indeed an issue as all the other models suffer from a coating that deteriorates rather quickly when in use. I also prefer plain plastic surfaces but admittedly they feel premium and have a very distinct look when new.

You nailed it. It's funny how the same rubberized coating that makes the high-end models look and feel premium when new, also makes them look (and feel, as it gets sticky) like crap after some years. Well, you are not expected to use a laptop forever. My T60 is 11 years old and only in the last few years did I notice that the coating of the lid has deteriorated into crap. And I know that it's still not the worst it can get. All the while, the R series and ancient A series still feel almost like new with the plain hard plastic lids...

nforce4max wrote:

One of the big problems with modern thinkpads is that they are not really thinkpads but apple like ultrabooks made to look like thinkpads with outdated hardware and worse build quality. They also lack a lot of comfort that was afforded with older models such as the keyboards (omg) and for a while the trackpads as well.

The stuff in bold is provably false, and I say this as a user of many generations of Thinkpads. The 6-row keyboard is the only true downside with no upsides.

Have an IBM PalmTop PC110 here - technically not a "Thinkpad', its one of my favourite retro computers. I've owned it for a few months and have done the 40Mhz overclock, found a 16MB memory module for it (20MB in total), and running everything off a 2GB CF card. It uses standard camcorder batteries. Chopped out the leaking NiMH backup battery too.

I found it on Gumtree (Australian online classifieds site), an old ad, seller was happy to see it go to a good home as he appreciated such an odd computer would!

JB

SW-SSG wrote:

gca wrote:

Agreed, I've got a G575 ...

To be fair, that is not a ThinkPad; rather it's a bottom-tier model from Lenovo's "Essential" line of consumer-focused machines. Don't let that TP-inspired model number fool you!

Oops, well that is what I get for posting before checking to ensure that it actually is a Thinkpad.

Note to self, if unsure Google then post, not the other way around unless I really do want to make myself look like an idiot.

This doesn't change my view of the G575 though.

Magic eraser works wonder on those grimy yucky coatings on older models. Don't oeuvredo it though.

I love thinkpads as much as anyone else here. Or... At least some of Vogon users. My daily driver is an Thinkpad R61.

When I got it, the lcd panel was broken, and I had to fix the plug on the charger cable. It was quite easy to fix, and did not cost an arm or a leg.