New limited special on NOS frankenpad kits. T601F or T60/61 Frankenpad
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:49 am
I've been selling these kits including all the parts necessary to build one of the most loved Thinkpads with a combination of parts never offered by lenovo in this following topic...
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=107330
For Christmas 2015 I've offered the kits with a free upgrade to a brand new NOS motherboard which previously sold for much more than the entire kit and they are still available for $199 on the link above, but the following is a limited offer available to a few forum members on a first come/first served basis.
These are a special NOS-NOS-NOS-NOS kit, with not only the extremely rare NOS motherboard fru: 44c3924 with GPU chips mostly from 2010 in original sealed IBM boxes, but also an NOS penryn cpu chip, T8100 in sealed Lenovo box, and brand new NOS T61p cooling fan which includes thermal paste pre-applied* , and a new NOS LED clear plate for T61p with ALL led light icons present... wifi, bluetooth and WWAN.
*recommended to replace the lenovo paste with Arctic Silver #5 or other high quality thermal paste, but the factory paste will suffice
All four brand new NOS parts included in the kit for only $239 (plus shipping) while the supply lasts.
What is NOS? it stands for New old-stock. These are parts that are no longer available from IBM or Lenovo and the only hope of finding the parts NEW is if you can find one that's been on the shelf. In the case of these motherboards there hasn't been any brand new ones available in years. Even the ones used by Lenovo in warranty repairs were used and it was extremely rare for the used-refurbished boards to get a new GPU chip installed, but IBM took the problem much more serious and provided some of their corporate customers with these new boards prophylactically to assure brand loyalty and the first to appear a couple years ago I located when a corporation retired their fleet of t61 laptops and the remaining unused boards went into liquidation with them. Prior to that date these boards were almost an urban myth, no one had ever seen one and the only one I had ever seen was found installed in a corporate laptop, but now we have them new in sealed boxes.
The T8100 cpu chips are in Lenovo boxes, perhaps one of the most efficient chips ever made, certainly for this series laptop. The makers of the popular app ThrottleStop selected this CPU chip to develop their software because it's so cool and efficient and loves to be overclocked. Using dual IDA mode with the middleton bios and throttlestop installed these chips will run at 110% of clock speed and still run cooler than most chips at factory speed, and if you want faster cpu chips I might have some other options available and I currently have one T9300 NOS cpu chip, also in original lenovo box for an additional $50 ($69 without purchase of kit). I'm working on getting some more cpu options but other than NOS I only source them from complete working laptops that have been heavily tested and the sale over Christmas holidays has depleted my stock.
The T61p fan is my fan of choice for the frankenpad. Some have used T500 fans, but they require a lot of modification to install and have a smaller heatsink and are designed to cool the much less powerful ATI graphics, the T61p fan I believe is best, and these are brand new fan that include the factory applied thermal poste for both the cpu and gpu chips (recommended to replace with Arctic Silver #5).
LED Clear plate. Instead of having your laptops clearplate sticker identify it as a T60, it can now identify as a T61p and also has the icons for all options, WiFi, BT, and WWAN. The laptop usually has the icons blacked out if not equipped, but there is no harm in having the extra icons even if not equipped in your laptop. They will only light up if the required hardware is installed, but since you have the icons you will now be able to see the led lights when the options are enabled.
The kit will also include the rest of the required parts, pcmcia/express card or smart card assembly, and cpu support plate.
I don't have many of these special kits which is why I'm listing them separate
I'm also going to offer an economy barebones kit with a Intel motherboard (refurbished), 2.0ghz cpu, pcmcia/smartcard assembly, and cpu support plate. This barebones kit will use your t60 fan which will do a good job cooling the Intel graphics gpu and the t60 harness that will fit with some minor rerouting, for only $149 plus shipping. The full featured Intel kits are also available in the original topic linked above.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=107330
For Christmas 2015 I've offered the kits with a free upgrade to a brand new NOS motherboard which previously sold for much more than the entire kit and they are still available for $199 on the link above, but the following is a limited offer available to a few forum members on a first come/first served basis.
These are a special NOS-NOS-NOS-NOS kit, with not only the extremely rare NOS motherboard fru: 44c3924 with GPU chips mostly from 2010 in original sealed IBM boxes, but also an NOS penryn cpu chip, T8100 in sealed Lenovo box, and brand new NOS T61p cooling fan which includes thermal paste pre-applied* , and a new NOS LED clear plate for T61p with ALL led light icons present... wifi, bluetooth and WWAN.
*recommended to replace the lenovo paste with Arctic Silver #5 or other high quality thermal paste, but the factory paste will suffice
All four brand new NOS parts included in the kit for only $239 (plus shipping) while the supply lasts.
What is NOS? it stands for New old-stock. These are parts that are no longer available from IBM or Lenovo and the only hope of finding the parts NEW is if you can find one that's been on the shelf. In the case of these motherboards there hasn't been any brand new ones available in years. Even the ones used by Lenovo in warranty repairs were used and it was extremely rare for the used-refurbished boards to get a new GPU chip installed, but IBM took the problem much more serious and provided some of their corporate customers with these new boards prophylactically to assure brand loyalty and the first to appear a couple years ago I located when a corporation retired their fleet of t61 laptops and the remaining unused boards went into liquidation with them. Prior to that date these boards were almost an urban myth, no one had ever seen one and the only one I had ever seen was found installed in a corporate laptop, but now we have them new in sealed boxes.
The T8100 cpu chips are in Lenovo boxes, perhaps one of the most efficient chips ever made, certainly for this series laptop. The makers of the popular app ThrottleStop selected this CPU chip to develop their software because it's so cool and efficient and loves to be overclocked. Using dual IDA mode with the middleton bios and throttlestop installed these chips will run at 110% of clock speed and still run cooler than most chips at factory speed, and if you want faster cpu chips I might have some other options available and I currently have one T9300 NOS cpu chip, also in original lenovo box for an additional $50 ($69 without purchase of kit). I'm working on getting some more cpu options but other than NOS I only source them from complete working laptops that have been heavily tested and the sale over Christmas holidays has depleted my stock.
The T61p fan is my fan of choice for the frankenpad. Some have used T500 fans, but they require a lot of modification to install and have a smaller heatsink and are designed to cool the much less powerful ATI graphics, the T61p fan I believe is best, and these are brand new fan that include the factory applied thermal poste for both the cpu and gpu chips (recommended to replace with Arctic Silver #5).
LED Clear plate. Instead of having your laptops clearplate sticker identify it as a T60, it can now identify as a T61p and also has the icons for all options, WiFi, BT, and WWAN. The laptop usually has the icons blacked out if not equipped, but there is no harm in having the extra icons even if not equipped in your laptop. They will only light up if the required hardware is installed, but since you have the icons you will now be able to see the led lights when the options are enabled.
The kit will also include the rest of the required parts, pcmcia/express card or smart card assembly, and cpu support plate.
I don't have many of these special kits which is why I'm listing them separate
I'm also going to offer an economy barebones kit with a Intel motherboard (refurbished), 2.0ghz cpu, pcmcia/smartcard assembly, and cpu support plate. This barebones kit will use your t60 fan which will do a good job cooling the Intel graphics gpu and the t60 harness that will fit with some minor rerouting, for only $149 plus shipping. The full featured Intel kits are also available in the original topic linked above.