remove SATA2PATA Bridge in T43

[pointfielder]

I have a T43p and it is kind of frustrating not being able
to upgrade the PATA HDD beyond 100GB as I need 7200rpm.

Is there a way to get rid of the SATA2PATA bridge?

Alternatively, is there enough interest to approach Lenovo for this?
I wouldn't mind paying Lenovo a small fee to do it.

[aaa]

No, as it involves several components and circuits on the motherboard.

If Lenovo did it, they would have to redesign the motherboard, and basically give you a new one. Think of how much replacement motherboards costed when these were new (almost as much, or possibly more than, the whole laptop's cost). So a small fee will not be enough.


Anyways, the really big 5400rpm drives (like 250gb) are also very fast.

[Harryc]

I agree with aaa. You're not going to notice much speed improvement between a 100GB 7.2k HD and a 250GB 5.4k HD.

[richk]

The only time you would notice much difference is at startup. (not resume) that process loads many small files and the rotational delay makes a difference.

[misfit]

This is becoming a lot more relevant now that IDE / PATA HDDs are getting rare and good SSDs are only coming out in SATA format. The 'old faithful' T43 is still going strong but I'd love to have a SATA interface in it. I notice that someone's done a similar mod with an X41 and posted, I'm off to read that. However, if anyone's got an old T43 mobo (or is just richer than I) and is wiling to experiment I'd love to hear how it went.

[RealBlackStuff]

You'll also want to read this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=67599 from Teamaster's post downwards.
You'll need Google Translator or similar, as the link is in Chinese.
Some more info:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91489

[misfit]

You'll also want to read this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=67599 from Teamaster's post downwards.
You'll need Google Translator or similar, as the link is in Chinese.
Some more info:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91489

Thanks heaps RBS, that's given me a folder of new bookmarks to go back over at a later date. I'd love to get a SATA HDD / SSD running in my T43 and it's not like I'm short of ThinkPads. I just picked up a couple of T42s the other day.

[dandreye]

Hi All,

Just SATA modded my T43 at last, here's the report (no longer sure which thread is best to use these days):
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 55#p792555