T40 motherboard?

[solidpro]

Hi Everyone

I've got a T40 I'm trying to restore. It turns on but nothing happens. Disconnected absolutely everything and used an external display - it's a zombie.

So I'm thinking about swapping in a known good T40 motherboard. 2 questions:

I've a bunch of T41-T43 motherboards - are they at all interchangable to the T40 chassis and other parts?

Does anyone have a T40 motherboard (not ATI)?

Thanks

[axur-delmeria]

The T43 is the most different amongst them, as it uses the Intel 915 chipset with PCI Express and DDR2 RAM (the rest have the Intel 855PM chipset with DDR1 RAM); in particular, its PCMCIA+Expresscard cage is incompatible with the T40-T42.

Regarding GPUs:

T40-T41 have Radeon 7500 or 9000
T42 has Radeon 7500, 9000, or 9600
T43 has either Intel GMA 900 or Radeon X300

There are the T40p, T41p, T42p, and T43p, which have ATI FireGL GPUs.

Related to the T40 family is the R50 series, which were discovered to have motherboards that were interchangeable with the T40 series. AFAIK the first Frankenpads were R50 series boards transplanted into T40 series chassis.

Of these, the R50e has Intel Extreme Graphics 2, same with some variants of the R51.
The R51e is an odd duck, being the only one with the Radeon Xpress 200M chipset. The R52 has similar GPU options as the T43.

[solidpro]

Ahhh. I've got a tonne of R50 machines which are seemingly worthless, so I can make my T40 alive again with an R50 motherboard?

Which would be the best R50 to put in (for reliability and power?)

Thanks!

[dr_st]

Reliability and power on a 20 year old system?
R50 worthless compared to a T40?

Dude, it's all the same - just put together something that works.

[solidpro]

It's just my opinion but a T40 chassis is a worthy thinkpad. An R50, not so much.

[Gonzaleitor]

I would go the ATI way but with the long heatsink that can cool the GPU. I have it in my ATI 7500 T42 and works like a charm! Maybe you can scavenge one from a dead T4xp or T43.

[TPFanatic]

I personally always favor R50 over T40 series, the R50 has stronger cooling and more ergonomic palmrest in my opinion.

[solidpro]

I switched an R50e into a T40 today. It was kinda weird but amazingly it worked.

I'm sure plenty have discussed but the obvious difference is that there is a big hole where the PS/2 port was and the dock connector doesn't exist on an R50e. Which also means the door is missing.

Oh, and the R50e doesn't have a trackpad or second set of mouse buttons. So they're dead on the T40.

So it's a bit messier than I'd hoped but overall it brought a non-working, brand new T40 back to life. Now I know the differences, I'll see if I can be bothered to switch in an R50 instead, which probably resolves 2 of those issues.