Another FrankenPad is born! 2007-FBG with 8889-26G board

[kaamil1984]

Hi guys,

I want to confirm, that 8889-26G t61 14" 4:3 board "kind of" fits into 15" t60p body.

I found 14" 4:3 t61 with T9300 cpu on auction long time ago. I purchased it because I was thinking about Frankenpad before, but after it was delivered I was too lazy to mess up with 2 working laptops to just swap boards. I was working on t61 for few months (without FlexView - blah!, but T9300 is almost twice as fast than T2500 from my t60p). I was thinking about new ThinkPad t440p or t540p with i7.

However I saw t540 with that huge nonsense touchpad, diffrent keyboard layout, no volume buttons and... next day I disassembled my 2 fully functional laptops and made one Frankenpad, because I want real touchpad buttons, separate mute button and perfect keyboard layout used by IBM for 15 or more years. I don't like where Lenovo is going and... Ill try to avoid their "improvements" for one more year. If they do something dumb with next generation of T-series - I'm gonna buy Dell Precision (blah?).

So, I have now:

- removed/broken two little pieces of metal motherboard frame because board was not identical
- T9300 2.5GHz (2.7GHz with IDA)
- NVS 140M - no heat problems!
- 4GB RAM
- 15" FlexView with CCFL - no LED... normal FlexView is good enough for me
- Intel SSD 520 120GB internal bay (about 260MB read and write, before Middleton BIOS it was 130MB/s)
- WD Caviar Black 500GB ultrabay (about 90MB/s read, about 60MB/s write - weird)

I observed few things while modyfying and upgrading my laptop:

1. Ultrabay HDD port is slower than internal port. Even my WD Caviar Black works slower in Ultrabay. I double checked this - about 110MB/s read in internal bay, about 90MB/s read in Ultrabay. SSD in Ultrabay works slow too (90MB/s).

2. My WD Caviar Black always works in 3.0Gbit mode, no matter where I put it. My Intel SSD works in 1.5GBit mode in Ultrabay and 3.0GBit mode in internal bay. Weird.

3. Before I disassembled t61 I was using it for 2 months. It was running on suprisingly low temperatures. After I put motherboard with everything including cooler into my t60p - I have a bit higher temperatures. I applied paste properly - trust me! im an engineer Anyone else observed something like that after motherboard swap?

4. T60p has much better hinges (I mean hinge parts inside LCD). I was unable to break T60p hinges for 8 years of intensive use, and T61 hinges cracked for no reason, because there are magnesium or some other alloy parts, like in dell laptops (blah).

[axur-delmeria]

Ultrabay HDD port is slower than internal port. Even my WD Caviar Black works slower in Ultrabay. I double checked this - about 110MB/s read in internal bay, about 90MB/s read in Ultrabay. SSD in Ultrabay works slow too (90MB/s).

This is expected, since the T4x/T6x Ultrabay is an IDE/ATA port that maxes out at 133MB/s.

The Ultrabay SATA HDD caddy has an IDE-to-SATA bridge chip inside. This chip adds some overhead, as a result the maximum transfer speed is reduced.

Before I disassembled t61 I was using it for 2 months. It was running on suprisingly low temperatures. After I put motherboard with everything including cooler into my t60p - I have a bit higher temperatures. I applied paste properly - trust me! im an engineer Anyone else observed something like that after motherboard swap?

There have been some reports that the flashing Middleton BIOS results in higher system temperatures. I don't have any idea if this is truly the case.

It's also possible that there are subtle differences between the T61 and T60p chassis which can affect the airflow and cooling.

[Cooler-master]

Hello!
I have T61 with Middltone BIOS, in internal bay have SSD 60 GB OCZ Vertex 3. But the max speed is 170 mb/s.
How cay you do 260 mb/s?
And in Ultrabay is also 70mb/s, not 90 . WD Black 500gb/