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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

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Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#541

Post by wkat4242 »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…

Dells age really horribly though. Unlike ThinkPads (especially the IBM and early Lenovo days)

I used to love my T490s even. It was a really recent model but still not bad for me.

But now my work gave me a T14s and it's horrible. The keys have way less travel. The body is thinner but the screen is way thicker than the T490s's. I don't know what they're smoking but ThinkPads are dead as decent laptops.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#542

Post by wkat4242 »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #416
4k93n2 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

brilliant comment. dont forget theres also thinkpads like that W700ds that had secondary displays that extended out from the side haha

W700ds is such an oddity. I love it. One day in high school, my dad asked "what's the difference between RAID 1 and RAID 0?", which led to me sitting down next to him to spec this monster laptop out. A week later he purchased it. At ~10.9 lbs + 2.2 lbs for the charger, it was not terribly practical to travel with, so it ended up effectively as a desktop in the office. It now sits in my closet, and periodically I turn…

Yeah I had a P51 at work. The name was the only cool thing about it. It had a quadro card that was completely useless for my VR stuff (Lenovo refused to sell them with GeForce back then) and it was basically a brick for no good reason. Even the charger weighed a ton. I so hated travelling with that thing.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#543

Post by wkat4242 »

numpad0 wrote: post #454
huslage wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framework laptops aren't really repairable in the same way that old Thinkpads are. Maybe that's good, maybe not, but replacing an entire motherboard every 3 years isn't all that different from replacing an entire computer really.

Wait, are you saying they don't offer the full HMMs and FRU list like IBM/Lenovo did/does for ThinkPads????? IBM HMMs, or creatively named Hardware Maintenance Manuals, were written so that if all steps in the document were performed from start to end as written, the laptop would be a pile of FRUs or Field Replacement Units, so that those FRUs can be inspected, discarded, ordered, and replaced, and then the process c…

Field repair by enterprise IT support was also part of Lenovo's business model. For framework repairability is a thing but it's not as important I guess.

I had an HP that also had service manuals available.

Ps Lenovo basically has two brands; the business laptops like the T, P and X ThinkPads, and the consumer stuff including some of the budget ThinkPads (I think E series). The latter don't do service manuals, have really crappy keyboards.. Just B-brand crap. They're just a consumer laptop with some thinkpad trim. Be careful with that if you think of buying one.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#544

Post by wkat4242 »

GolfPopper wrote: post #119
CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…

My only objection to the 51nb FrankenPads is that to the best of my knowledge, they take out the ExpressPort. As a bit of a data-hoarder, I use my ExpressPort for an M2 drive, and don't particularly want to give that up.

The T480 motherboard they use as a base for the conversion does have NVMe support, just a weird one that's integrated in the SATA bay. There was a name for it, but I forget. Some kind of transitionary standard.

But you can get a converter for that. It did have half the PCIe channels of a regular M2 slot I think. It's been a while since I had one in my hands.

The T480 didn't come with an ExpressCard IIRC hence the lack of it.

You need an adapter like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=ssd+m.2+caddy+lenovo

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#545

Post by neilv »

Melatonic wrote: post #506
RavSS wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the T420/T520's keyboard in a T430/T530 with modifications to the firmware, some plastic around the keyboard part itself, and the ribbon cable (just pin isolation with tape). It lets you go with Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge. I have a T430 with the T420's keyboard and it lasted me 7 years of daily use before battery life became too big of an issue for me (even with a single DDR3L RAM module and a slice bat…

Any idea if you can get a quad core into the T420 itself ? I have a dual core i5 that is still doing decently (probably because they still sold i5 CPUs with hyper threading back then) but a quad core 35w CPU with HT would be a great pair with the dedicated Nvidia graphics.

Some person on Web says yes: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=133646#p864052

There's also the W520, which looks like a T520, but is set up for a larger PSU, and had quad-core and better GPUs as factory options. (I own a few each of T520 and W520, but don't like the huge power bricks of the W. So I'm using the T as daily driver, until I really need something in the W.)

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#546

Post by neilv »

askvictor wrote: post #537
neilv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know I wasn't just unlucky. Did you find any typical repairs for the lid section? (I haven't opened up my wiggly units yet, but I guess probably it got banged, and either screws were stripped out of their holes, or some internal plastic piece snapped.)

Sorry, no repair. Didn't really affect function though.

For anyone who was wondering, and finds this thread... Looks the fixes tend to involve opening up the lid assembly, and epoxying small new pieces of material across the two lid pieces.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#547

Post by johnisgood »

kayge wrote: post #392
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there at least one movie, where that was not a good thing?

Counterpoint: in Despicable Me the moon was shrunk and brought down to Earth with almost zero consequences... so maybe it would be just fine!

Haha, indisputable counterpoint! :D

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#548

Post by RavSS »

neilv wrote: post #472
RavSS wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the T420/T520's keyboard in a T430/T530 with modifications to the firmware, some plastic around the keyboard part itself, and the ribbon cable (just pin isolation with tape). It lets you go with Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge. I have a T430 with the T420's keyboard and it lasted me 7 years of daily use before battery life became too big of an issue for me (even with a single DDR3L RAM module and a slice bat…

Do you know an exceedingly credible source for the firmware modifications? (Last time I looked, it had the air of the XDA-style culture: "To root your phone, download this package from a `.ru` piracy site, run the `.exe` on your PC, then install and run the closed blobs on your phone, including rooting and replacing your bootloader with one, we know you will trust us." Though, in their defense, if they were organized…

That is the general nature of reverse engineering efforts, but this one has been documented enough that you don't need to blindly trust completely random executables or code from strange places.

You can manually recreate the process of building a patch for the embedded controller instead of just following instructions: https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec. Here's the presentation by the author himself at linux.conf.au (what used to be the biggest local Linux conference for those of us in Australia and NZ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzmm87oVQ6c. This is of course not supported by Lenovo.

Unlocking the BIOS is definitely more like what you described. It's the price to pay for freely playing around with processor power limits, getting AES-NI instruction set support, etc. I have not checked since 2019, so there might be a clearer way.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#549

Post by bigpeopleareold »

kombine wrote: post #137
theodric wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a P14s Gen 5 AMD, which afaik is just a T14 with some certifications, and it's flimsy. The whole chassis is plastic and quite flexible. It's also currently at a Lenovo service center because the battery lasted a whole month before failing and claiming to be "non-genuine." ThinkPads ain't what they were. My x230 is still going.

I wasn't aware of their build quality degradation. I've been using T14s Gen 3 for a year now and I thoroughly enjoy it, the chassis is magnesium and really sturdy. Something must have happened around Gen 5 time.

The worst for me was also my first one, T570. Two motherboard changes because of a flex-y body that put too much pressure on the hard drive connector. I had to use it for a few months because my main computer had to be fixed. I thought I can get more time out of it - nope. That flex-y body probably put too much pressure on something else and after many attempts (for some reason) of resetting the CMOS battery and using it a little, the thing would go right into a boot loop. I bought a new T480 (can use the battery from the T570! :D ) and this is soo much sturdier. Also have a T470p -- besides my screen issue, that thing is a really sturdy.

I have a P14s Gen 3 (so basically a T14s with the power-hungry GPU :D ) from work. I don't think the fit and finish is great, but it properly feels sturdy at least.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#550

Post by M95D »

karunamurti wrote: post #531
WillAdams wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person who uses devices w/ Wacom EMR digitizers by preference, the Thinkpad X###T line is one I _really_ wanted to like, but the difficulty of getting a reasonable OS on one, with handwriting recognition, with manageable performance/thermal characteristics pushed me to the point that I gave up and moved on to a Asus Vivotab Note 8, and then a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10 when it was offered. I keep telling myself I…

thinkpad soldered ram is a no for me

My X60t has 2 RAM slots.
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