T60 Motherboard Swap

[EasyMac308]

I've been reading a lot about the various Frankenpads out there, and I'm considering throwing my hat into the ring. The motherboard selection is what throws me.

My current personal rig is a 4:3 T60 (1951-43U, give or take). I painstakingly parted this thing together on a shoestring, and it shows (it's pretty rough...). Being broke is the name of the game, though, so it is what it is.

I currently use this machine in a dual boot configuration, Ubuntu Lucid on HDD0 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard x64 on HDD1. I use the Windows Server environment for running a VM lab environment with Hyper-V. It runs great until I get more than two VMs going, and by the time I hit four I'm hurting.

My current bottleneck is, of course, the RAM. Therefore, I'm looking at doing the T61 upgrade. Like I said, I'm broke, so everything has to be as cheap as possible.

Can one of the experts tell me which part number (or numbers) I should be searching for? I want to keep everything else, including the CPU; I just need the board. I'm willing to lose the PCMCIA slots if necessary and I don't mind busting out the Dremel or doing some soldering to make it work. For the right price, I'll strongly consider a board that needs work or has a fault I can overlook (broken USB port? Onboard LAN not working? I'd even consider something that won't charge the battery).

tl;dr: Need recommendations for a cheap T61 4:3 board for a T60 swap.

[ajkula66]

Good luck with that...

Boards from 4:3 T61s are selling at premium prices, since they are the ones that FrankenPad IPS units are based on...

[EasyMac308]

Ugh. I have access to a stripped T61 with a good motherboard, but it's a widescreen... Wish they would have used the same motherboard across the line. I'm not sure how interested I am in finding an LCD and the miscellaneous other parts it's missing. Guess I'll have to put my scrounger hat on.