I bought myself an old X220 with the dock. Will use daily for mostly office work and DOS gaming. Found plenty of GOG games online.

I'm a proud owner of the following Thinkpads.

X60s - restored during MCO with parts from Carousell and Shopee.
X220 - bought it from a forumer, no problems. Upgraded with 256GB MSATA and 500GB HDD. Bought the dock from Carousell.
T440P - also bought it from a forumer. Minor issues like crappy display and 2 dead USB ports.

Yesterday, while dismantling the T440P for a thorough cleaning, I accidentally broke the touchpad cable. It was fucking shitty without the trackpad. I went online to check for the price from eBay, Shopee, and Lazada. Just for a 6-7cm cable need RM 35 up! Craziness. Since I already burned some moolah on the FHD IPS display upgrade, I don't want to spend close to RM 50 for a small item.

This morning, I decided to drive down to Low Yat Plaza to find the cable. Damn Pakistani shops wanted RM 150! Bloodsuckers! After an hour of searching, I found a shop named DS selling laptop spare parts. They don't have the original cable except for a generic 12 pin flex cable. Only RM 10 per piece. I took the gamble and bought 2 pieces.

Upon reaching home and after 15 minutes of dismantling, I tried the new flex cable. It was much longer at 15cm and it is of the correct dimension. And voila, the trackpad is alive and working again. No more bloody external mouse. And all for RM 20 for 2 flex cables.

Many thanks to the fella at DS for suggesting the generic cable. Now, I love this laptop more than my 2012 Macbook Pro.

I have even added a 4G card inside using a generic antenna from Shopee. The signal was not strong enough but otherwise working fine. Too bad no more laptops with upgradable parts.

The width is 6mm and the length is 150mm. Not sure about the thickness but it fits inside the ZIF socket without any play. It has 12 pins.

The mod is for converting the rectangle power port to USB-C which is easy since I have all the parts. Will decide later.

FHD mod done.

Actually got it up and running since last week.

The display panel, AUO B140HAN1.3 ordered from Shopee. Waited about 10 days and delivered by Shopee Express.



Chrome at 1920x1080. Not too small and readable. So much clearer than the stock HD display panel.



Watching anime in FHD resolution.



I will repurpose the old panel as an external display later on.

Another issue with older Thinkpads is the LCD chassis is slightly warped and on some panel, there will be some backlight bleed. Loosening the LCD support screws and add some foam tape solved the problem.

What's next?

1. USB-C power port?
2. External 4G antenna?
3. For some reason, I cannot use any HDD in the DVD bay. Every adapter I bought won't even detect the HDD. 1 of the adapter can detect but if the laptop goes to sleep, the HDD disappears. Weirdness?

I'm in the process of restoring an old T540P.

Bought the T540P for cheap due to a faulty motherboard.

Also bought several replacement parts from AliExpress and Shopee.

The following parts are.

1. T540P bottom base, Shopee RM 80
2. T540P motherboard, AliExpress RM 200
3. Patriot 240GB SSD, LYN RM 150
4. WD 1TB HDD, LYN 100
5. DDR3L RAM 16GB, AliExpress RM 200
6. T540P base feet, Shopee RM 15
7. T540P DVD to HDD caddy, Shopee RM 30
8. T540P screws, Shopee RM 13
9. Sierra 4G modem, FOC taken from an old ThinkPad 8 tablet

I think that's about it. Will start the teardown and assembly next week when I'm free.

This post has been edited by acbc: Aug 7 2020, 08:11 PM

My ThinkPad collections. Updated 05/10/2020.

I started with the X60s a couple of years back. Back then, I wasn't interested in laptop collecting.

Last year, I bought my first usable ThinkPad, the X220. Wanted to use it as a Hackintosh but it was too much work and hassle compared to a real MacBook 2010/2011 which is dirt cheap now.

After that, I bought the T440P but unfortunately, it was a lemon where W10 kept complaining of the USB ports using too much power. Sold it cheaply later.

Less than a week later, I bought the T540P and again, it was a lemon. Ended up replacing the motherboard for RM 300 from AliExpress. Since then, it worked well and I upgraded to 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD and 1TB HDD. As it came with the Nvidia 730M GPU, gaming is alright on it.

No sooner later, the ThinkPad bug bit me and I started looking around for collectables.

I found the X61 Tablet while at Lot Yat Plaza. The shop was trying hard to dispose of it. Condition is like new. Not a single scratch on it. I replaced the HDD with 256GB SSD, threw out the old BDC and also outdated WiFi. Unfortunately, I cannot use any other WiFi card without flashing a whitelist BIOS. To do this, I will need a new battery too. Battery was very hard to find. 2 sellers on Lazada and Shopee cancelled the order because they were unable to fulfill the orders. Right now, I left it alone.

While scouring around Carousell, I found the R52 for cheap. I bought it. After that, I found the Port Replicator 2 BNIB. Bought that too. The R52 needed some TLC due to a cracked chassis. I bought some used 32GB SSD from Carousell too. Unfortunately, the R52 was using an old PATA connector so I went looking for the MSATA to PATA adaptor on Shopee. Both items arrived and worked well.

A few weeks later, I found the R60 for cheap with few missing screws and bad battery. I upgraded the storage to 60GB SSD from an earlier laptop upgrade and installed W7 Enterprise. RAM was upgraded to max 4GB. Performance is acceptable for daily use.

Just last week, I found an even rarer model of ThinkPad, the X32 with a working battery. The exterior needed some cleaning and sticker removal. I upgraded the storage to 32GB MSATA using the PATA adaptor and installed WXP Pro on it. Bloody fast and smooth despite only having 1.5GB RAM. I ordered some DDR PC2700 RAM from Shopee just for kicks. The stock WiFi card is useless ok modern WiFi routers and access points. Had to set up an old Wireless B access point for it to go online.

Next week, I will be acquiring another ThinkPad, the infamous X61. Again, from Carousell. Gonna need a new rack for keep them soon. Ordered a couple of IKEA Hejne racks online.

What's next? Perhaps a T60/61 or R61? Maybe. Gotta conserve cash for now. The laptops may be cheap but the spare parts aren't.

Once all done, I will use both the X220 and X61T or X61 as daily drivers. Nothing beats the 4:3 ratio display.

Pictures soon.

This post has been edited by acbc: Oct 6 2020, 08:00 PM

The X220, my daily driver.



The X61 Tablet. Upgrading still in progress. It will be my second daily driver.



The R52. Chassis was cracked and bent out of shape. Still a work in progress.



The R60. Heavy and reliable. I bumped the RAM to 4GB max and replaced the HDD with SSD. Since it was a SATA 1, I used an old Kingston 60GB SSD for it. Good enough even with W7.



The rarest of all, the X32. Already ordered some RAM. Storage was upgraded to 32GB MSATA using a PATA adaptor. Worked well.

Modded an internal WiFi dongle for my beloved X61 Tablet.

Took out the outdated WiFi board too. Useless for modern N WiFi anyway.

Added a MiniPCIe to USB adapter bought from Shopee for RM 8 at slot 2 (reserved for WWAN).







The new WiFi USB adapter is Comfast CF-811AC also bought from Shopee for RM 20.

Worked great. No dropouts.

Gonna do the same for my X61 and X60s later.

Total spent: RM 28 for this mod.

This post has been edited by acbc: Oct 16 2020, 06:21 PM

Watching old TV series in 4:3 aspect ratio damn satisfying.

Zorro from 1990.

Just 2 days ago, I bought 2 units of dead T61 laptops. The sellers both advertised them as parts.

Yesterday, I combined both into 1 working laptop. Best part? It has a 1440x900 resolution display and nVidia GPU. Not part for a bunch of parts. Too bad the plastic bezels were cracked beyond repair. Have to find replacements from eBay soon.

Bought a basic L440 for cheap. Upgraded to 16GB RAM, FHD IPS LCD, 1TB HDD with DVD caddy, 480GB SSD, 4G WWAN card, 3 USB 3.0 ExpressCard and 9C battery. All from Shopee and Lazada.

EM7345 taken from a broken ThinkPad 8 tablet.

Yes. Here ya go.

https://shopee.com.my/product/158225061/249...55-1608514355.9

Recently found some ThinkPad X301 without any RAM and HDD. I ordered the required parts and restored both to working order. Not bad for a 1-inch thick laptop with a DVD drive. Added a Dual-SD adapter to take in micro SD cards.

Performance-wise, still alright for basic tasks and watching FHD movies. The battery is kinda hard to find but not impossible.

Soon after I found the X220T with i7 for cheaps. Again, no RAM, HDD, and battery. Ordered all the required parts and it is not serving as my secondary laptop after the L440. I already have the X220 but will use it for something else later.

As for X200, it will be the print server after retiring the old ThinkCentre. If can find the X201 later, I might use it too.

While in the subject of old ThinkPads, the X61 was dismantled into pieces and I resprayed the top cover with a matte rubber coating. Currently still testing it before reassembling back and using it as a daily driver. Still good for 4:3 movies in SD or HD only.

Finally restored the X301 bought from a forumer here. Ran well and perfect.

Recently secured some old ThinkPads from the recyclers.

Got a T60p and T60 plus some screen and parts.

Today, I assembled both into working laptops. Both now comes with the higher res AFFS screen of 1400x1050. Woohoo. Such screens are hard to come by let alone found at the recyclers.

As both are Core Duo laptops, not much can run on it except XP and some really old games. GPU also the weakest, ATI X1300.

Total damage? RM 500 for 2 laptops plus parts. I even found 256GB SSD at the same place. Bought 4 pieces for 200 bucks.

I recently scored an old T420 and X230 for cheap.

The T420 is RM 100 but not working. Suspect motherboard problem.

The X230 missing entire screen assembly for RM 350. Got the old damaged screen assembly and spare 320GB HDD too.

To fix the T420, I went online and bought another working T420 for RM 400. This one has white spots on the LCD panel. From here, I swapped over everything from the RM 100 laptop to this new laptop. Now almost like new except for the sticky coating. Will respray it later. Unfortunately, no IPS for this model. TN panel sucks! I also swapped out the DVD drive for a 1TB HDD in a caddy.

To fix the X230, I ordered the entire screen assembly with camera, WiFi antennas and bezels from Shopee for RM 382 with free shipping. I cleaned out the bottom base and installed the new screen assembly. Now the laptop is like new with IPS panel. Currently looking for good deals in MSATA because this laptop has the slot. It is a non-WAN model so no extra antennas cluttering the motherboard.

Found the docks for both laptops for RM 80 both on Carousell. Best part? Both are USB 3.0 docks which are quite hard to find.

For storage, I scored 2 pieces of Hynix OEM M.2 SATA SSD for RM 200 on Carousell. Tested working and 100% health. Also, very low TBW indicating it may be taken out from a new laptop.

After everything done, I now have 2 laptops for daily usage. These will add into my other collections such as the X220 Tablet, X200 Tablet, X61 Tablet, X60s, T61, R60, T60p, T60, L440 and X200s.

I still have the the X32, R52 and T40 to restore. Parts ordered just need time to do it. Because these are older laptops, not much can run on it. U will need a lightweight 32 bit OS.

Some broken ones include the X61 and X201. No plans to fix those yet.

This post has been edited by acbc: Mar 31 2022, 09:39 AM

Today I scored a T440P complete unit minus the charger, RAM, and HDD for RM 20 from Carousell.

Back home, I added 8GB RAM and 32GB SSD for a test. Indeed, it started beeping 1-3-3-1 which is a sign of mainboard failure. I searched everywhere online for a solution and came across a post from 10 years ago indicating some of the peripherals may be drawing too much power from the mainboard (basically a short).

I disabled the trackpad, WiFI, and DVD by removing them. Still no dice. Finally, decided to disconnect the keyboard, and voila! The usual ThinkPad boot logo came up and the BIOS bitching date/time was not set properly.

Dang! Now I have a working T440P i5 with a good screen and mainboard. The body is full of stickers which I will remove later. Will be going online to look for a replacement keyboard. The laptop works fine with an external keyboard.

Happiest day ever...

This post has been edited by acbc: Apr 12 2022, 04:55 PM

Today, I came across a X61 with T8300 CPU. According to many ThinkPad sites, this particular model is quite rare and only sold to enterprise clients as BTO.

It also has 2 fans to cool down the CPU. I might get it to add into my collections.

I already have the X61 with L7100 CPU, basically a low spec model. The screen bezel is broken and hinges needed replacement. Maybe I should sacrifice this model to fix the other model? Worth trying since the parts are interchangeable.

This post has been edited by acbc: Apr 13 2022, 09:46 AM