Thinkpads Forum

[Pending] T61p/T61 FrankenPad (Intel Graphics) *Penryn board



T61pT61 FrankNpad

This will be a custom built to order system and is based on a T61p 6457-y74 model fitted with a rare T61 board *Penryn* with Intel Graphics. Basically you'll get the stability and low power requirements of the integrated Intel graphics along with all the high-end options that are rarely ever seen on an intel based system. Except for some rare special ordered systems, nearly every Intel based system has Merom cpu and is extremely low end, so this is the ultimate upgrade for one of these, nicely outfitted as follows.

T9300 core2 duo CPU, 2.5ghz, 6mb L2 cache
4GB ram
160GBhdd with Vista Business installed (or windows seven if you provide COA)
Intel Pro 4965AG
DVD multiburner
WSXGA+ 15.4 LCD (1680x1050) with Tight Hinges!!! *rare*
bluetooth
90w genuine AC adapter
9cell genuine battery (I'll find you a green one but cycle count and charge capacity will vary)
*optional new generic 9cell*
Cosmetics of plastics will vary from excellent to like new. Lid top cover may have some faint signs of sticker residue.

The T9300 cpu will be cooled by the T61p HSF assembly that's a popular upgrade for T60/T60p and t61 models and a fresh application of Arctic Silver #5 will assure a cool running system.

Base price for this build will be $400 plus $20 for domestic shipping or $65 for International.


This will be a custom build, so is open to options if there is something specific you want added.

edit: added bluetooth to list of features

I can wholeheartedly recommend Tuus and personally vouch for the quality of this Frankenpad. He was kind enough to build one for me, kept me updated constantly about its progress and i was absolutely thrilled when i received it!

Good luck with the sale!

If I didn't own a T61 already, this would tempt the hell out of me.

Wow - what a great spec'd T61 FrankenPad

Best of luck with the sale -

Dear Tuus

Have sent you email (not PM)

Rgds
Ska

FrankNpad is sold, and I was just finished closing a deal for another motherboard so I could offer a sequel, and it sold before I could post it...

FrankNpad Sold!!!

Bride of FrankNpad Sold!!!


Perhaps a trillogy?

im just wondering what is the "Tight Hinges!!! " ??

TuuS wrote:FrankNpad

Bride of FrankNpad

Perhaps a trillogy?

Are their 'kids' Irish? FrankNPaddies?

Perhaps I can build some FrankNpaddies out of Xseries? lol



ps. Tight hinges simply means they aren't worn out. Something that is very rare in a T61 series after a year or more of use.

If you run with the Toho version of the Frankenstein chronology, you've got two Gargantuas to come.

kewl, and it looks like there will be at least one more coming. Got another board on the way.

by the way, I'm typing this on the first to ship. It's going out to a lucky forum member early next week with an advanced docking station. The next will be travelling half way around the world to his new home. Actually these are numbers 2 and 3, techincially gibradford got 1 before I made the post.

These are definitely a sweet setup.

TuuS wrote:
These are definitely a sweet setup.

They are indeed T61/T61p perfection IMO

When I ordered my first T61 in January 2008, I had to wait for the Penryn boards to be made. They tried to give me a free "upgrade" to T7800 instead of the T9300 I was ordering... and although that was a slightly faster chip, it's not as good as the T9300 so I wasn't going for that, so then they talked me into taking the nVidia graphics... which of course failed

I do love these systems if it has one of the reliable nVidia chips, but the Intel graphics are really nice and actually perform amazingly well when powered behind a T9300 and a decent amount of ram. This is definitely a great setup and each of these is like one of my children, I hate to see them go.

My next project is going to be a Alien FrankenWare. I have an amazing Alienware Area 51 notebook with the dredded nVidia graphics that I'm converting to Intel. I'd love to keep this one, but I have way to many computers. I have some friends interested in it, but if it doesn't sell first, I'll probably post it here.

[censored], that's a nice Thinkpad!

Building another of these!

This may be the last as it's getting difficult to source the parts.

TuuS wrote:Building another of these!

This may be the last as it's getting difficult to source the parts.

Ladies,

Grab this one if you get a chance. I grabbed the first one, and Tuus is a dream to deal with. Wonderfully fun machine to use!

Thanks again Tuus!!

I want that t61... is it still available?

nomad420 wrote:I want that t61... is it still available?

Welcome to the forum, and there is indeed one still available. I returned your PM and I can have it ready for you in a week or less.

I would also like to purchase. If still available, please advise how you would like to receive payment.

Hi, I currently only have parts sourced to build one more and I believe the previous member is buying it, but let me see if I can make you one too. Please stand by.

Thanks TuuS! Look forward to your reply.

Regards,

Scott

thanks, Tuus... i already like how you do business... i am def. getting the next incarnation of the FrankenPad, by the way... and really happy I went to bed late last night and called dibs on it just in time, but good luck on him getting yet another in the works for you, shalliday... nothing but positive feedback on this guy and I can already vouch for his patience in answering lots of amateurish questions from a noob.

Damon

Looks like I may have one more of these coming. I've sincerely enjoyed building every one, it's the ideal widescreen T61 to many, a combination that just wasn't offered "out of box", and each comes complete with a birth certificate.

This will likely be the last, as the cost of the parts and the work involved don't leave any room for profit, but it's been a blast building them and seeing the long list of happy Frank N. Pad (frankie) owners makes it all worthwhile.

ps. @Damon (nomad420), sorry i didn't reply sooner but just wanted to say I was honored to build yours for you and I'm certain he has a good home down in North Carolina where he's going to be doing audio work for your band. Our transaction was smooth and your payment prompt. I'd recommend anyone to do business with you.

@Scott (shalliday), We've spent countless hours discussing upgrading all of your systems and I've provided you a VERY long list of parts and systems, all of our dealings were smooth and fair to all parties.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who commented in this thread. TuuS

TuuS, this sounds like a dream system for many of us. If I didn't already have three T60-family machines (see my sig), I'd be very tempted. I really suggest you build these as a regular thing, not just once or twice, because I imagine a steady stream of buyers.

To anyone considering dealing with TuuS: He's a great guy, with great products and great "customer service." I'm posting now from a motherboard I bought from TuuS.

Looks like the latest in this FrankNpad line has found a home

This may indeed be the last, but I'll leave this topic open in case I'm able to source more parts and perhaps offer yet another.

Thanks to everyone who owns one of these and to all who commented in this thread, it's been a blast.

TuuS,

Days, my friend. Days I have spent schooling myself in the extreme subtleties of ThinkPadism, and still a newborn to this wonderful underworld I never knew existed. I can't possibly recount my journey to you in full, but it went something like this.

A field station in a Bolivian cloud forest electrocuted my 7-year-strong Toshiba Satellite A105 S4084 this past March. Its corpse was violated by men posing as techs at a Toshiba retail and repair outlet elsewhere in the country, who d*cked me around for weeks with talk of parts that never came, promising imaginary phone calls, etc. A much more trusted individual would later show me how their disassembly of the machine (conducted without my knowledge and against my explicit instructions) was what actually broke the mobo beyond repair. Prior to their agregious mishandling, it would have been salvageable. While I sell my dearly departed for parts on craigslist, I have begun searching for another companion.

A long-time acolyte of the church of budget rugged gadgets, I decided to poke around for the umpteenth time for a rugged netbook, the seemingly-ideal traveling machine for my annual adventures in neotropical fungi. I saw that the x130e finally came out, but being an "ultraportable" (or whatever word Lenovo uses to girlishly avoid uttering 'netbook') it simply couldn't cut it as my primary machine. Then I stumbled upon a humble press release dating from 09 (http://www.lenovo.com/news/us/en/2009/0 ... uting.html) citing the ruggedness that was/is common to much more of the IBM lineup than this "studentproof" miniature. The same article draws unabashed attention to the T400 for being the first ThinkPad to boast an LED-backlit display, ostensibly improving daylight visibility. Solid brightness, rugged(ish), sourceable on ebay for roughly $300-500 depending on the configuration. I had found my dream machine, or so I thought.

Hours of combing ebay and craigslist, perverting crazily booleanized search queries into crazier booleanized search queries. I wanted the best possible proc speed, the big 6MB cache, the ATI gpu, the LED backlit display, and at least one OEM extended battery with 80-90% of its original capacity, all in one package. (RAM was no concern. I'll spend $46 at crucial for 8GB instead of the several hundred-dollar markup many eBayers think is called for when selling a system with 8GB.) That proved tough. The more time I spent giving myself an internet education in the ThinkPad line (two days and counting) the more I honed my preferences while simultaneously abandoning old ones, like an internet shopaholic snake shedding layers of skin. I didn't think twice about a dock until realizing that the secondary IPS display I plan to buy for photo editing will be wasted on a VGA connection. No onboard DVI or DisplayPort support on the T400, but a dock would do it so long as I had the dedicated gpu (if I'm not mistaken). Apparently some T500s have a DisplayPort despite Lenovo's datasheets making absolutely no mention of one. The 410 and 510 line has a DisplayPort but they tend to be pricier, plus none of the procs seemed to have 6MB caches (if I'm not mistaken). This afternoon, at random, I was bitten by the FlexView bug. ThinkPads with IPS panels??? Righteous! Now to scrap all the previous 1.5 days' research and focus on the T6x(p) line, which seems like it can compete with almost every T400/T500 feature including (unofficial) support for 8GB (if I'm not mistaken). More bunk luck from ebay, mostly on account of people giving embarrassingly inadequate specs in their listings, asking $350 for something they don't have the common decency to photograph or describe in full, properly-punctuated, NON-CAPS-LOCKED, grown-up sentences. That's when the word 'FrankenPad' started coming up more regularly in search results. I knew I'd seen it before, possibly even visited relevant threads, but ignored or overlooked it until now.

My sincere hope, sir TuuS, is that I may forward you this exceedingly specific blueprint I've been revising over the past few grueling days (etched completely in pencil and open to critique), for you to craft me a FrankenPad to call my own. I pray that you won't lay down your tools just yet, doctor, not until my Amazonian Mushroom FrankenPad can take its first breaths. Here's what I have in mind:

T60(p)/T61(p) Motherboard (whichever will support 8GB of RAM and, ideally, a T9xxx proc)
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T9xxx (6M Cache, 2.xx GHz, 800 MHz FSB) (still can't quite determine if there is a combination of T6x hardware out there that will permit the use of procs with 1066 MHz FSBs)
8GB RAM
15" 1600x1200 BOE-Hydis HV150UX1-102 UXGA FlexView IPS Display (FRU 13N7194 - 133,3 DPI - 200 nits - 500:1 - 40ms)
Still undecided on HD type. I don't know enough to have an informed opinion on the boons/banes of SSD. I suspect it's at least part marketing hype. Open to suggestions.
9-Cell 41++ Extended Battery (40Y6797)
Dual Layer DVD±RW
AGN Wireless
2504 Advanced Dock (for DVI support on aforementioned secondary IPS display).

I admit that this wishlist may be rife with impossibilities and contradictions. I'm reviewing other dream machine threads as we speak to try and get up to speed (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=68248, http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=74102, http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=74413).

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Yours in Spores,

-myxomop

myxomop wrote:TuuS,

~snipit~

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Yours in Spores,

-myxomop

I'd be glad to discuss you specific needs in a frankNpad. I usually don't offer the 15" models preconfigured because of difficulty sourcing pristine quality screens and other parts. I have been blessed with a source for the 15.4" screens and other parts so was able to build these systems with all the high end parts for less then most people could build one themselves.

There are many complex issues regarding the combination you want, which I'll discuss with you in private as to not clutter this thread.

ps. Regarding the original post here... Good news, I've sourced the parts to build another Frankie, so all I need is a home for him and work will be underway.

All the parts are waiting for a good home, so who wants the last in this series of T61/T61p frankies?

I'm also going to offer the last one with an SSD option including dual hard drives

Mr. Frank N. Pad is still looking for a home and waiting to be born. Since these boards are so scarce, This one will finish up the line as it's beginning to cost more to build then I've been getting for them.

Basically this is the high-end system that Lenovo never offered, build from a high-end T61p converted to Intel graphics.


I'd also like to introduce Frankie Jr, who will be Merom based and perfect for those on a tight budget. Full details to follow, but it looks like little frankie will be almost $100 cheaper in base configuration. I'll post the specs/prices when time permits.

TuuS wrote:Mr. Frank N. Pad is still looking for a home and waiting to be born. Since these boards are so scarce, This one will finish up the line as it's beginning to cost more to build then I've been getting for them.

Basically this is the high-end system that Lenovo never offered, build from a high-end T61p converted to Intel graphics.


I'd also like to introduce Frankie Jr, who will be Merom based and perfect for those on a tight budget. Full details to follow, but it looks like little frankie will be almost $100 cheaper in base configuration. I'll post the specs/prices when time permits.

Is there still any for sale please?
Brett