T60 Upgrading Advice

[Scribbs]

Hey I’m new here, so apologies if I’m a little out of my depth here or don’t see to know much of what I’m talking about. To make a long story short, I found an old IBM Thinkpad T60 at my work place, I asked my boss if I could keep it and gave me the go ahead. I was wanting to know, if possible, what hardware upgrades would be possible to make this laptop the most powerful it could theoretically be? I want to upgrade it, but I’m not entirely sure where to start, especially given all of the modded motherboards I’ve seen talked about on here previously. I mostly want to give it the ability to run 64-bit OS systems like windows 11 or some of the Linux distros, but wanted some advice for the rest of what I would possibly need in order to do something like this. Thanks in advance!

[dr_st]

Welcome to the forum.

To understand what upgrades may be worthwhile, first we'd need to know the exact hardware of the machine. A good place to start is the MTM (model type number) which should be on the sticker at the bottom. It would normally start with 195* or 200* or 26*, or 63* or 874*.

There is also the serial number (starts with 99 or L3 for these models), which can be useful if the model type was -CTO (configured to order).

[dcfbf]

Regardless of MTM, you can upgrade the T60 up to a core 2 duo T7600, 3GB of RAM, however big SSD you want (I recommend somewhere around 120GB), and wifi 7. (If you want wifi 7, you need to be on windows 10 or newer or Linux.) (If you want to be able to run Windows 7, you can only go up to wifi 5.

This will allow you to run 64-bit operating systems (I recommend staying away from Windows 11) relatively well for such an old machine. Any other upgrades though will depend on your MTM like what dr_st is asking you for.

[Scribbs]

The MTM is 1953-Dn9U with the serial number being L3-AY520. Frankly, I wasn’t planning on running Windows since Windows 11 is just getting worst by the minute as an OS, so I figured learning how to use a Linux distribution would be best for this kind of project but I wasn’t sure which distro to use yet. Hope this helps!

[RealBlackStuff]

Please have a look here: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=124261

[dr_st]

From the MTM system (link above):
T2300E(1.66GHz), 512MB RAM, 60GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1024x768 LCD, Intel 950, CDRW/DVD, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

It's a pretty low-end system (unless something was upgraded by the previous owner). Also, being a 14.1" XGA LCD - not interesting as a basis for a 15" IPS Frankenpad.

So I would start with dcfbf's advice:

Regardless of MTM, you can upgrade the T60 up to a core 2 duo T7600, 3GB of RAM, however big SSD you want (I recommend somewhere around 120GB), and wifi 7.

And would add my 2 cents: depending on what you intend to do with it - you may want a bigger SSD than 120GB. Also a T7400 CPU is not much slower than a T7600, and can sometimes be found significantly cheaper than the higher-end T7600 (although I haven't checked recently, this may not be true anymore, considering how old these CPUs are).

None of this is going to make this system worthy as a daily driver in the modern world, but it can be a sweet retro-laptop.

[Scribbs]

I figured it wasn’t going to be, like gaming pc levels of powerful, hence why I chose to ask about how one would make a laptop like this it’s most powerful in theory. Given that this would be my first time doing something like this, are there any guides you guys could link to how I would go about this as well? Also, thanks for all the feedback on potential upgrades for this!

[dcfbf]

The hardware maintenance manual or HMM for short is a great place to start.
It shows you how to disassemble every component of the laptop.
You can find the T60's HMM at the top of the page in "HMM-Manuals"
You will want this one: https://thinkpads.com/support/hmm/hmm_p ... 844_04.pdf
Also, make sure to disconnect the battery before any disassembly.

For Linux distros, I recommend Linux Mint, specifically with xfce, because it's relatively lightweight, easy to navigate, and easy to find help for through the community.

[Glaurung-quena]

Other than the obvious upgrades: get a USB 3.0 PC card. You'll very much appreciate the huge increase in backup and file copy speeds over the built in USB 2.0.

CPU upgrades: note that you're limited to Socket M CPUs. For 64 bit, there are really only three choices:
the 2.33ghz t7600 - (expensive), the 2.17ghz t7400 (also expensive), or the 2ghz t7200 (cheap).
Also note that in my experience your laptop's fan will run noticeably louder with the t7600 than with the t7200. I've never tested the t7400.

Wifi upgrade: note you will need to remove the BIOS whitelist to use a card not blessed by Lenovo.

Something that used to be very cheap and easy to find but has become unobtanium is a SATA drive adapter for the optical drive slot (for installing a second hard drive). I used to use it to enable dual booting between an old XP disk I kept for sentimental reasons, and my daily driver windows 7 install (yes, I was using a T60 for my daily driver up until 2019). Because IBM used a proprietary connector for their IDE optical drives, you can't just get a generic adapter. They used to cost less than $20, now if you can find one for sale at all, it's like $200.

[TPFanatic]

Theres adapters you can use to adapt 2230 or 2242 nvme ssds into the expresscard or wlan slots for more storage if you really want. but for simplicitys sake i suggest just get the biggest sata drive.

[Glaurung-quena]

Theres adapters you can use to adapt 2230 or 2242 nvme ssds into the expresscard or wlan slots for more storage if you really want. but for simplicitys sake i suggest just get the biggest sata drive.

Yeah, those second drive adapters made a lot more sense when a terabyte of SSD storage was vastly more expensive than a terabyte of hard drive storage. I got one specifically for dual booting between an antique XP install and my current install. Then when I stopped using the T60 for my daily driver, I foolishly got rid of it without realizing just how impossible it would be to replace.

[Scribbs]

And just to confirm, this laptop only accepts DDR2 RAM correct? And when you say WiFi 7, do you mean a WiFi card that is compatible with WiFi 7 networks? All I get when I search that term up is networks, so I just wanted to ask for some clarification, and thank you all for the support on this!

[dr_st]

And just to confirm, this laptop only accepts DDR2 RAM correct? And when you say WiFi 7, do you mean a WiFi card that is compatible with WiFi 7 networks?

Both are correct.

[Scribbs]

I nearly forgot to ask this, but since I’m rerunning through my list to put together the general cost to upgrade the laptop for (so that I can easily budget this), what ssd would the T60 take? I know NVME would probably require a special adaptor to be inserted given that SATA and NVME have a different number of contact pins, if I remember correctly. Even then I would worry about NVME causing some form of bottleneck. I figured I’d ask anyway if NVME was the better option, and if not what would be the best choice of SATA SSD for a computer like this. Thanks!

[dcfbf]

IMO SATA is the better option. It is plug and play, and you don't need any adapter or software.

The price will depend on if you are buying used or new, the capacity that you want and where you are.

Here is my list of capacities and prices I've paid in USD: (I only buy used sorry)

Used:
100-128gb: $10-15
200-256gb: $15-20
480-512gb: $20-25

[Glaurung-quena]

I nearly forgot to ask this, but since I’m rerunning through my list to put together the general cost to upgrade the laptop for (so that I can easily budget this), what ssd would the T60 take? I know NVME would probably require a special adaptor to be inserted given that SATA and NVME have a different number of contact pins, if I remember correctly. Even then I would worry about NVME causing some form of bottleneck. I figured I’d ask anyway if NVME was the better option, and if not what would be the best choice of SATA SSD for a computer like this. Thanks!

A T60 is limited to SATA I. That's a huge bottleneck compared to modern SATA drives, (sata III is 4 times faster). And NVME drives are several times faster than SATA III. Which means that buying anything other than a SATA drive is a waste of money.

What you want is a drive that will always be able to completely saturate the T60's limited interface. Just about any SATA drive made in the past 10 years will do that fine. If you want to be sure you'll never be bottlenecked by the drive rather than the interface, look at benchmarks. SATA I tops out at 150 megabytes per second, so you want a drive that at its worst (with random writes) is faster than that.

I generally just get a used Samsung drive that meets my capacity needs, and don't worry about which model of EVO it is.

[axur-delmeria]

Besides, the T60 can't boot from NVMe SSDs and there isn't even a slot for it on the system board.

[dcfbf]

Besides, the T60 can't boot from NVMe SSDs and there isn't even a slot for it on the system board.

There is an expresscard slot that you can put an expresscard to nvme adapter into.
You can use some software like Clover to allow for NVME booting.
It's very impractical and not great for first timers though.

[axur-delmeria]

There is an expresscard slot that you can put an expresscard to nvme adapter into.
You can use some software like Clover to allow for NVME booting.
It's very impractical and not great for first timers though.

Oh it's impractical, alright. You lose a USB port and an Expresscard slot for an NVMe SSD that's barely faster than a SATA one.

[TPFanatic]

Jsyk I tried out Clover and I was never successful to convince an os to actually install to or boot from an mpcie device. I have used the ability for extra storage and file transfers.