Thinkpads Forum

I've been looking at pictures of 15.4" Z series and 15.4" T61 motherboards and they look pretty similar.

The Z-Series has a unique feature: a tri-USB board in the back right corner, connected via cable to the motherboard. T61 appears to use the same size connector, so I wonder what would happen if the Z's USB board was plugged into a T61. Would T61's BIOS recognize the board and USB, and with some cutting gain an additional, usable USB port?

Another question: T500 and W500 have a smaller connector for the correspondent modem. This is a long shot but can a Z series usb board cable be modded to use a T500 connector, and work?

I ask these because I've been thinking about a Z series Frankenpad using a T500 or T61 board. The titanium lid is attractive.

Many thanks!

I haven't heard of anyone who tried to build a Frankenpad Z (somehow it sounds cool ), so the next best thing is to do a Google search for the schematics of both the Z61 and the T61. I believe the answer can be found there.

I had gotten a 14" Z60 with a T400 mobo and I can confirm it won't work unless hard modding is involved.

Haven't really seen much of the 15" type, the hard drive position was my limiting factor on the frankenpad.

They both use a 20-pin connector, which might just look the same.
However, T61 uses only 10 wires on the left and 2 on the right side.
Z60m/Z61 uses all 20 wires and in a different order.
So the answer is NO for the tri-USB.