Penryn support, and other issues.

[Jake.T]

Hello all,

I am wondering about turning my thinkpad into a frankenpad with a T9300 and other things as I have moved onto a different notebook now. Now as I have seen the middleton BIOS looks really good and even enables SATA 2 suport. So that sounds good to me, plus they are cheap and easy to replace. Thanks, Lenovo! But has anyone been burned by this? I.E fried compnents or anything like that? They do run cooler so that seems like not an issue but these things seem to hapen out of the blue... However I also am asking about the GPU, when all of these GPU's failing was an issue I wasn't really focused on it as it tainted my brand new steaming T61! But is it some of the units that are defective or all of them? I ask this as knock on wood I have had Three devices (PS3, MacBook Pro with an 8600GT M and this thnkpad) and none of them have failed. How these devices have been heavily used in all of the time I have owned them or passed them on to others and nothing at all. Does this mean they will fail eventually or seem to be good?
Also I am missing a mouse button (left click under the touchpad). Is this easy to replace, it came off 6 months ago after becoming havily wobbly. Or do I need a new palmrest array? Mine is in otherwise great condition and I would prefer not to replace it...

Thanks in advance and this is a great forum! Frankenpads look amazing from all of the time and effort people put into these amazing machines.... Even years on.

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK nobody has messed up any T61 with Middleton's BIOS.
There have been many posts about the nVidia GPU, read up on them on the forum please.
We don't want to start yet another thread about the same old ...
Your T61 is NOT suited for a FrankenPad (which requires a 15" T60/p shell and a 14.1" non-widescreen T61 motherboard).
You can buy separate touchpad/mouse button parts, check e.g. eBay for "IBM T61 touchpad".
Remove the palmrest, then remove a few screws around the touchpad, swap parts, fasten again. 5-10 minutes work.

[Jake.T]

Well that has answered that thank you very much.

[TuuS]

Jake, I have the touchpad and buttons available in excellent condition for $5 plus shipping if you're interested.

[Jake.T]

I will have to take a look at what my plans for the machine are now but that is great. Thank you. I will send you a PM if I do need one. Also where do you get the parts from, TuuS? Do you just buy a lot of donor machines to strip for parts?