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Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

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TPFanatic
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Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#1 Post by TPFanatic » Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:13 pm

edit: postimg links broke, rehosted on Imgur. Links since the pictures are massive.
https://i.imgur.com/QchtosI.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tgjIrv0.jpg

Image
Image
Image



Voila. Finally did the X200 trackpoint buttons mod, replaced my palmrest, and used some sharpies under the badges. I need just a new front bezel and my T500 will be perfect!
Last edited by TPFanatic on Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

axur-delmeria
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#2 Post by axur-delmeria » Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:42 pm

Did you transplant the Trackpoint buttons and some keys from a T4x keyboard?
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#3 Post by TPFanatic » Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:55 am

axur-delmeria wrote:
Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:42 pm
Did you transplant the Trackpoint buttons and some keys from a T4x keyboard?
FN, browser, and Caps Lock keys are from a T4x Chicony. The trackpoint keys, power, and volume are from X200.

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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#4 Post by RealBlackStuff » Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:59 am

Cute!
You could have made a fortune if you had sold that idea to Lenovo!
They could have saved TONS of money by just buying a few Sharpies and resurrecting the 16:10 T500 with a newer motherboard!
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#5 Post by thinkpadgeek91 » Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:54 pm

I would buy one!
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#6 Post by wujstefan » Thu Oct 26, 2017 7:02 am

Not to mention the extra paint on "PAD" is just great :D

I need to check if I still have some chicony T4x KB yet :P that looks awesome really!
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#7 Post by TPFanatic » Thu Oct 26, 2017 5:42 pm

wujstefan wrote:
Thu Oct 26, 2017 7:02 am
Not to mention the extra paint on "PAD" is just great :D

I need to check if I still have some chicony T4x KB yet :P that looks awesome really!
I used Chicony caps because my T500 keyboard is by Chicony so they are compatible, but if you have an NMB or ALPS you will need keycaps from one of corresponding manufacturer.

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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#8 Post by MikalE » Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:04 pm

The new German language keyboard I received from Germany has very 'clicky' keys. I did not note the part number unfortunately. It was from a seller in Germany on eBay.

Anything would have been better than the POS it shipped with.
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#9 Post by Thinkpad4by3 » Fri Oct 27, 2017 6:28 am

MikalE wrote:The new German language keyboard I received from Germany has very 'clicky' keys. I did not note the part number unfortunately. It was from a seller in Germany on eBay.

Anything would have been better than the POS it shipped with.
As long as we can get the eBay link, the picture of the sticker with the P/N can be found.
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The efficiency of two screens equally sized with equal numbers if pixels are equal. The time spent by a 4:3 user complaining about 16:9 is proportional to the inefficiency working with a 16:9 display, therefore the amount of useful work extracted is equal.

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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#10 Post by MustardOrMayo » Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:18 am

I happened to have came across this post by accident, but this is amazing!

I remember not being able to find the T25 on Lenovo's Singapore online store when it first came out (before someone on Instagram informed me that they ended up getting it in some time after it was available in the US), and having the idea of buying a brand new T480p and modifying that with TP 25 parts from sellers on eBay. Yes, I know the TP 25 is based on the regular T480. Anyways, I ended up not executing that idea in real life due to unrelated circumstances.
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#11 Post by dr_st » Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:33 am

MustardOrMayo wrote:
Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:18 am
I remember not being able to find the T25 on Lenovo's Singapore online store when it first came out (before someone on Instagram informed me that they ended up getting it in some time after it was available in the US)
It's currently available on the Singapore site. The Singaporeans get the best deal, because the price shown there includes tax, onsite warranty and the WWAN (which is not included in the US model). The US dollar crashed in the past couple of months; before that the Singaporean price when converted to US dollars was even more attractive.
MustardOrMayo wrote:
Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:18 am
Yes, I know the TP 25 is based on the regular T480.
T470.
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#12 Post by Saucey » Sun Feb 04, 2018 2:06 pm

Great mod, looks very nice!
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#13 Post by MustardOrMayo » Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:13 am

dr_st wrote:
Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:33 am
It's currently available on the Singapore site. The Singaporeans get the best deal, because the price shown there includes tax, onsite warranty and the WWAN (which is not included in the US model). The US dollar crashed in the past couple of months; before that the Singaporean price when converted to US dollars was even more attractive.
Here in Singapore, it's pretty much a thing to just have the tax (here called GST, "Goods and Service Tax") included in the price, as it's a city-state, and we also have nice Internet connections (which also counts for public Wi-FI). I did try and save up for a TP25, but ended up blowing it on a new cellphone when my previous one stopped working. Even then, the WWAN would have been a nice addition, considering the only PC I have now is a Samsung Q1 Ultra (of which I added WWAN myself) and it's... slow, to say the least.
dr_st wrote:
Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:33 am
MustardOrMayo wrote:
Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:18 am
Yes, I know the TP 25 is based on the regular T480.
T470.
Sorry, I brainfarted while typing that.
Wander wrote:I only have turkey left but I'll let you pick... Mustard Or Mayo? Mustard Or Mayo? Mustard Or Mayo?
X250 FHD+T | R52 15" x2 (1 for parts) | R51 15" | T43 14.1" | 760ED & EL (TFT) (both SG) (both unbootable/parts) | 760ED (USA) (semi-functioning) | 760EL (DSTN, USA)

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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#14 Post by dr_st » Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:36 am

MustardOrMayo wrote:
Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:13 am
Here in Singapore, it's pretty much a thing to just have the tax (here called GST, "Goods and Service Tax") included in the price
It's a thing in every sane country. The US is the only one (or one of the only ones) that's crazy enough not to do it. This is what causes stupid crap like the penny still being in existence, and a few other effects that are not obvious until you spend a couple of weeks in that looney bin. :mrgreen: [/rant]
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#15 Post by MustardOrMayo » Fri Feb 16, 2018 11:30 am

dr_st wrote:
Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:36 am
It's a thing in every sane country. The US is the only one (or one of the only ones) that's crazy enough not to do it. This is what causes stupid crap like the penny still being in existence, and a few other effects that are not obvious until you spend a couple of weeks in that looney bin. :mrgreen: [/rant]
Ah. I thought the penny only existed in the US due to psychological pricing ($x.99).

Even though a lot of the entertainment media I view is set in the US, or a fictional world modelled after the US, I feel glad I did not grow up there, otherwise, my brain would be internally set to read out the date in month/day/year, and other measurements in Imperial units, and drive on the right side of the road (if I could drive). It's a bit of a pain when I see Imperial units being mentioned in TV shows without Metric conversions at least displayed on screen, but hey, the Samsung phone calculator app with its built-in unit conversion takes some of the pain out of that. I need to post this before I go too far off-topic.

Oh yeah, and another upside of not living in the US is having Samsung phones without the extra branding on the back.
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X250 FHD+T | R52 15" x2 (1 for parts) | R51 15" | T43 14.1" | 760ED & EL (TFT) (both SG) (both unbootable/parts) | 760ED (USA) (semi-functioning) | 760EL (DSTN, USA)

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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#16 Post by dr_st » Sat Feb 17, 2018 3:31 am

There are certain advantages to imperial units, surprising as it may sound. Even to temperatures in Fahrenheit, and even the ridiculous use of 12-hour clock in official time tables (because that's how people speak after all). The only thing that has absolutely not reason to exist is the month-day-year system. That's just sheer dumbness with no redeeming qualities.

Even when writing to Americans, I absolutely refuse to use that garbage. To avoid confusing their poor miswired brains, I would rather spell the month as DD-MMM-YYYY (today is 17-Feb-2018). :wink:

As far as driving on the right side on the road, you may be surprised that it's actually not just a US thing, but in fact is more prevalent than the opposite. According to the Wikipedia article - 163 countries use right-side traffic, versus 76 that use left-side traffic. By area or road length, right-side traffic is even more popular.
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Re: Poor Man's Retro Thinkpad

#17 Post by shawross » Sat Feb 17, 2018 7:18 pm

Most of the lefthand drive countries are British colonies except Thailand. If countries are strong in Cricket then they probably drive on the left.

Britain previously had a strong car industry especially after World War 2 when their engineers focused on cars rather than planes.
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