Thinkpads Forum

I've just a ThinkPad T40 die, of hardware issues, but the hard drive is still good. I'm considering buying a T60 without a HD, and using the one from my T40.

As a trial, I put the HD from the T40 into a ThinkPad R51. Everything looks good, but the wireless networking won't work. I've tried downloads from the Lenovo support site, but no luck so far.

I won't buy the T60, unless I can be assured of getting the wireless working without having to completely rebuild the HD from the T40. Assuming it's possible to do, does anyone have ideas about how to resolve this issue?

You can't use a PATA drive from T40 in a T60 which requires a SATA drive.

You just need an appropriate wireless driver for the drive to work in the R51, though.

What is the 7-character model number of that R51, located on the sticker on the bottom of the machine - likely something beginning with 18xx or 28xx...

Welcome to the forum.

The T40 uses an IDE/PATA hard drive and the T60 uses SATA. They won't interchange. No way.

Thanks for the replies.

The R51 is a 2888, but it sounds like the T40 to T60 HD swap is a non starter.

The R51 case is beat up, so I'm not really looking to use it, though maybe it'll do for the short term.

You might consider swapping the R51 motherboard into the T40 chassis.

I was wondering if that might work. I'll try it.