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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

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Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#311

Post by acquacow »

wazoox wrote: post #136

I have a ~2009 MacBook. It has a swappable battery (replaced once, dead again), and it was overall easily upgradable : it received a 4GB RAM stick to replace its original 2GB (unfortunately it can't manage more than 3.5GB), an SSD to replace its hard drive, and a new DVD drive as its superdrive failed. However its core2 Duo is really too slow for the modern web (either running MacOS or Linux), it takes almost a full…

You should be able to do a 2gig + 4gig stick combo. That's what I have in my 2008 Macbook pro, it runs 6GB just fine.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#312

Post by cge »

Tade0 wrote: post #233
M95D wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me say from the start that I only saw Framework laptops in pictures and I still have my old Lenovo X60 Tablet. I hate Framework laptops' design. They went to the extreme of repairability but only as a marketing tool, while the products are still e-waste trash. I looked at Framework 13 laptop as a replacement for my X60 Tablet. Let me do a comparison between them: - FW13 battery swap needs dissasembly. Can't do it…

- FW13 has no video output, except as a USB adapter - FW13 has no audio outputs, except as USB sound card That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards. Other things X60T has, but FW13 doesn't: - Fingerprint reader https://frame.work/pl/en/products/fingerprint-reader-kit?v=F... - SD card slot https://frame.work/pl/en/products/sd-expansion-card

> - FW13 has no audio outputs, except as USB sound card >That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards.

Also, unless something has changed or I am misinterpreting what they are saying, the fw13 does have an audio output that is not an expansion card.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#313

Post by bluGill »

pmontra wrote: post #264
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framework’s offerings are interesting, but after having gotten used to the solid rigidity of M-series MacBooks and X1 series Thinkpads, the level of flex in the Framework 13 is a major issue for me. It’s difficult to justify for the price, plus PCBs and repeated flex stress don’t mix nicely. I think it’s time for either Framework or a third party partner to sell a new chassis that’s compatible with the FW13’s mainboa…

My ZBook from 2014 is apparently made of sturdy plastic but the keyboard is built on a metal base and it fits in metal hooks on the chassis. It does not flex at all. The problem with this machine is that sooner or later I'll run out of reasonably priced keyboards (they wear and the mechanisms under the most used keys break), maybe no more support for the graphic card neither from Nvidia nor from the open source drive…

I suspect you could get a local machinist to make you a metal base, then find mechanical key switches and the other parts and thus make a new replacement keyboard to your specs. Keyboards are not very complex so some effort can get you a new one to fit.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#314

Post by randerson »

My old ThinkPad X220 is the laptop I miss the most. My employer at the time replaced laptops after 4 years and sent the old ones to be destroyed for compliance reasons. I begged them to just destroy the SSD and let me keep the laptop, but "company policy..." In a sensible world I would still have that machine.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#315

Post by jmclnx »

nticompass wrote: post #302

In September of 2012, I bought a T430 from Lenovo. I loved that thing! Covered it with stickers, even upgraded it as the years went on. Eventually, it had a Core i7-3820QM with 16GB RAM, 1080p screen (with an adapter), SSDs (plural, I put one in the UltraBay)... I installed Coreboot with Tianocore, upgraded the WiFi card... I even modded in the keyboard from a T420. In June of 2022, 10 years later, I bought an X270 o…

>I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish

A cleaning and re-paste will bring it back. If on windows maybe time for a windows re-install.

Typed on a T430 via BSD that was just re-pasted and cleaned, not sluggish anymore :) If you are interested *BSD, I can confirm both NetBSD and OpenBSD works great on the T430 I have.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#316

Post by herbst »

notpushkin wrote: post #278
herbst wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a T420. A few years ago I switched to a slightly used T480, keyboard was a huge downgrade and the whole series can get really stupid USBC issues. After half a year or so it didn't dock anymore and I got an X1, basically the same laptop glad I found it without touch and the 'bright screen' because the screen is barely good enough, keyboard is the same and USBc already started to get finicky. Meanwhile my T420 s…

I also have a T420, though not using it regularly nowadays. It would be really nice to get proper USB-C there – using one cable to plug in monitor and Ethernet and charge is really nice. I’ve wanted to get a T480 for a while now (mainly to do a T25 frankenpad [1] – seems like a nice project), but if it really has those issues with the USB-C ports, I think I’ll pass :-( [1]: https://www.xyte.ch/mods/t25-frankenpad/

If you'd go that far for fancy laptop soldering a new usbc slot every few years might be non issue for you :)

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#317

Post by inversetelecine »

acquacow wrote: post #304

I just finished completely rebuilding a 2008 and 2010 macbook pro. The older ones are quite serviceable. This round, the speaker surrounds had cracked causing buzzing audio or no audio. I managed to ebay brand new speaker replacements and got them installed. I cleaned everything and re-pasted the CPU/GPU while I was in there as well. They are on El Capitan and High Sierra, but can be patched to be upgraded to Mojave…

Did similar. A 2008 white macbook and a late 2008 unibody macbook (non-pro). It was a fun project.

The white plastic macbook is in decent shape too with just standard light scratching on the body. It was sold for parts only but worked just fine. Needed a battery replacement, and I found some old magsafe "L" chargers for cheap. Maxed out the RAM at 4GB (Supports 6GB (4G+2G) but 1pc of 4GB DDR2 are expensive).

The 2008 unibody macbook needed the lower body replaced (bad keyboard main issue) but the rest of it works fine. The original battery still worked and held some charge, but I got a 3rd party one anyway along with the magsafe "L" charger. Maxed out RAM at a usable 8GB DDR3. This was also sold dirt cheap "for parts".

Both ran MX Linux for awhile until I needed the SATA SSDs. They now sit with their old mechanical hdds and the last supported OSX versions on them. Maybe one day I'll get around to selling them.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#318

Post by DeathArrow »

randerson wrote: post #314

My old ThinkPad X220 is the laptop I miss the most. My employer at the time replaced laptops after 4 years and sent the old ones to be destroyed for compliance reasons. I begged them to just destroy the SSD and let me keep the laptop, but "company policy..." In a sensible world I would still have that machine.

You can buy one for a song.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#319

Post by jmclnx »

johnisgood wrote: post #169

I have an IBM T42, but I have the supervisor password set that I have long forgotten. I know about ways to clear the password (if they indeed work) but I have not gotten around it. If anyone knows a solution that does work, feel free to share. It is in a mint condition, not a single scratch, and I don't want to throw it out for sure. I have an old OpenBSD on it, it is perfect for some light C coding using mg. :)

From my corrupted memory, but I think what you need to do is unplug, pull out the battery, open it up and remove the cmos battery. There should be instructions on the WEB for that. At work, people alawys returned their Thinkpads with that PW set, so I know there is a fix.

But if the password is a harddisk password, you are SOL :( You will need to get a new HD.

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