Thinkpads Forum

A while back I was drawn into laptop modification. My target was a TP240, an 8-year old machine with fairly small profile. My intention was to stuff USB hub, memory card reader, ethernet, bluetooth into this 10.4" laptop by using the only USB port. Here are some photos:
http://www.ele.uri.edu/~sclan/xjv/
(Total six photo albums from the top)

What can I say, I LOVE it!

James

PS: Tell Coach Feit-Melnick I said hello. She was my younger daughter's college coach.

Amazing work, I salute you! This should make your 240x the best there is Congrats on the great job.

Words are too cheap, all I can say is

I really enjoyed looking trought all the pics.

I'm really impressed.

So impressed im looking at buying an old thinkpad, to do something similar.

Thanks for doing all the pics to dokument that work.

Nice job. You make me regret giving up my 240X now.

Any pix of the final product? Photos seem to top middle of last year.

Ditto on asking about new pics - kudos to you on giving it a go!

Wow...excellent job!!!!

Thanks for all the comments. I was very confident and determined that I could finish this job until I had two major unexpected issues:

1. I couldn't find a spot on the motherboard area to place my 9-pin cable connector for on-board USB to USB hub connection.

2. After adding the ethernet adapter, Bluetooth, card reader onto the USB hub, some strange stuff started showing due to lack of current supply from USB controller. Sometimes the Bluetooth headphone would suddenly lose its signal while I was using the card reader to read/write the SD card. Sometimes the ethernet card wouldn't show up in the device manager. I figured I have to get extra power from the on-board PS/2 port to make everything work. That was just a little too much for me since it's tricky to find good solder spots of the PS/2 port. I guess I have to place the wires from the back of the motherboard and carefully route across the board all the way in order to reach drive caddy. However it's really difficult(not impossible) to place wire all the way from PS/2 to hard drive caddy(where the USB hub power input port is).

I am in my last year of graduate program now so I don't think I will be able to work on this project until after I graduate. I still believe no doubt that this laptop will be something really standout once the mod gets done. Oh well, right now the more important thing for me is to get things done everyday including study/thesis/two part-time jobs.

Again, thanks for all the comments. At least I am not feeling like I spent all this time and effort for nothing.

Awesome job. Very thoughtful.

Does adding the USB 2.0 hub give you 2.0 speeds? Is the old port now 2.0? Or can't this happen?

I know a lot of A31 fans would love a mod to add USB 2.0 to their machines. Me included.

underclocker wrote:Awesome job. Very thoughtful.

Does adding the USB 2.0 hub give you 2.0 speeds? Is the old port now 2.0? Or can't this happen?

I know a lot of A31 fans would love a mod to add USB 2.0 to their machines. Me included.

I believe the answer is no. Connecting USB2.0 hub to USB1.1 port gives you USB1.1 speed and since there is no layer2(ethernet sorta speaking) control chip on the hub I believe the throughput between each USB2.0 port on the hub will down-grade to USB1.1 speed.

My opinion: It's impossible to add USB2.0 to the machine through the on-board USB1.1 port(s)..

Hi Teetee,
since the 240x has only one usb. How were you going or did you connect the 4 port usb hub?

Did you cut(disable) the on board usb port or did you just solder on the pin(split). Is it even possible to split?

Congrats ma friend! That is awesome. The best.

NautTboy wrote:Hi Teetee,
since the 240x has only one usb. How were you going or did you connect the 4 port usb hub?

Did you cut(disable) the on board usb port or did you just solder on the pin(split). Is it even possible to split?

What I planned to do was to connect the usb hub to the only usb port on 240/240x from inside, and then re-route the wires to the 240/240x usb port by using one of the four usb ports on the hub. That way I gain three more usable usb ports without sacrificing the built-in usb port on 240/240x.

1. Cut the 4 connections between the mainboard usb contacts and the built-in usb port.
2. There are one "usb-in" and four "usb-out" ports on the usb hub, connect the mainboard usb contracts with the "usb-in" port on the hub.
3. connect one of the four "usb-out" ports on the hub to the built-in usb port on 240/240x to make it work through usb hub.
4. connect the rest of the three "usb-out" ports to whatever you want, in my case I connected them to bluetooth, memory card reader, and ethernet adapter.
5. Try to fit all of them(the adapters, the wiring, the connectors) with hard drive in the hard drive compartment.

I didn't finish it due to several reasons I mentioned above last year.
It's probably more doable now since there are some smaller-sized adapters(ex. bluetooth, usb hub, memory card reader) on the market than what I had two years back. However I have no motivation to pick up what I left now.

teetee