Looks identical to my T41, apart from the fingerprint reader which I don't have. I wonder if it has the same slight design fault as my model. If you pick it up wrong the case flexes and the motherboard flexes with it which can cause the BGA joint on the GPU to fail (found that out the hard way). Apart from that I have absolutely no complaints about these things, easy to work on and solid reliable workhorses.

Hey, I just realized that Pinball game is called “Space Coder”
Ironic this is the laptop NASA took into Space.

"Space Cadet", a Heinlein book IIRC.

Errius wrote on 2024-05-23, 00:45:

"Space Cadet", a Heinlein book IIRC.

Yeah, Quantium physics.

I still have the T43, I used for work in my storage somewhere ... 😀 It was cool as it had a dedicated graphics card. Remember playing Colin McRae Rally 2 on it back in the day ...

[Edit] I think that was the one, I succesfully baked back in the day, to get the GPU working again ...

gca wrote on 2024-05-22, 23:25:

Looks identical to my T41, apart from the fingerprint reader which I don't have. I wonder if it has the same slight design fault as my model. If you pick it up wrong the case flexes and the motherboard flexes with it which can cause the BGA joint on the GPU to fail (found that out the hard way). Apart from that I have absolutely no complaints about these things, easy to work on and solid reliable workhorses.

It's a 15" model so larger than your T41, which only came in 14.1" flavor.
The 14.1" T43s looked exactly the same as a T41, but had some minor differences, like DDR2 RAM, PCI-Express and an ExpressCard slot in addition to CardBus, rather than 2xCardBus.

All T4x series suffered in some form from the BGA desoldering. Flexing due to picking it up from the corner definitely exacerbated it, but it could happen even without it, especially on early T40/T41 units.
On later T42 and T43 models this symptom is less frequent when it comes to the GPU, but the T43 have developed a similar problem in the southbridge.
The flexing issues was the main plague of the T4x, and one of the takeaways lead to the introduction of the internal rollcage in T60 series.

Yeah actually, I think I had a 14-inch thinkpad at work so it might have been a T41 or T42
It ran Win-2000
But I later purchased a Thinkpad 21p for myself which came with an ATI graphics chip.

Welcome to the Thinkpad gang! I have a 770E (with the MPEG2 decoder), 600x, T23, A22p (with the massive dock), A30p, A31p, R52 (UXGA-modded), T400, X201 and an L390 Yoga.

The L390 is the worst of them all due to the extremely overpowered CPU which runs way too hot in the tiny shell. Lenovo isn't as good as IBM once was, when it comes to quality. It will probably be my last modern Thinkpad.

schmatzler wrote on 2024-05-23, 13:21:

Welcome to the Thinkpad gang! I have a 770E (with the MPEG2 decoder), 600x, T23, A22p (with the massive dock), A30p, A31p, R52 (UXGA-modded), T400, X201 and an L390 Yoga.

The L390 is the worst of them all due to the extremely overpowered CPU which runs way too hot in the tiny shell. Lenovo isn't as good as IBM once was, when it comes to quality. It will probably be my last modern Thinkpad.

Yeah, I have a few Thinkpads. Mainly 755 and 380’s. And some modern Thinkpads like this one. I was never a fan of the screens but I do like the main body. They are easy to upgrade and repair.

I've recently purchased a Thinkpad X200. Maxed the RAM to 8GB and got a SSD. Installed MX Linux on it and also purchased a new 9 cell battery.
What I find interesting is that I spend more time on it, instead of much more recent machines that I have laying around. I guess it's the wonderful keyboard and the form factor.

Yes, these keyboards are Very comfortable for typing.

The CMOS battery is Dead and the Hard drive is working very SLOW.
So I am just going to rebuild this laptop with New Battery, New hard drive and More RAM.

Should be okay for playing games.

I have one of these. Probably max spec:ed. It is very similar to my two 42p but they run different dedicated graphics chips. This is one of the last laptops with windows 98 graphics driver i think so it is quite versetile.

dr_st wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:33:

The 14.1" T43s looked exactly the same as a T41, but had some minor differences, like DDR2 RAM, PCI-Express and an ExpressCard slot in addition to CardBus, rather than 2xCardBus.

ExpressCard and CardBus makes that very handy as a transitional-tech machine. I've got old PCMCIA flash cards and an E-SATA ExpressCard. Having those in a single device would make it a lot easier to get data from my contemporary equipment into my older laptops.

deltapi wrote on 2024-05-24, 14:57:

ExpressCard and CardBus makes that very handy as a transitional-tech machine. I've got old PCMCIA flash cards and an E-SATA ExpressCard. Having those in a single device would make it a lot easier to get data from my contemporary equipment into my older laptops.

Indeed. That thing alone makes in my eyes the T43 significantly more modern than the T42. There is also the ability to perform the SATA mod, which opens up the path for modern SATA drives, without the need to use the cumbersome SATA-to-IDE adapter and obsolete IDE drives.

I use a TP-link WiFi Extender connected to this Thinkpad Ethernet port to access my Home Retro-NAS
This is how I back up old computers Software and Download and install NEW Software onto these old computers.
Works Great.

Phewww …….replacing this CMOS battery was a pain. So many screws and they are different sizes.
They should make it easy to repair laptops because these will be used in Space too.

Yeah I've been into these, but they are ok imo. At least if the plastic holds together..

But imagine sorting the screws in space. 😂