T61 mother board replacable with R61 version?

[mvm]

Hello,

My dear old T61 widescreen dropped on a table rim. froze and won't boot since. No beeps, not even with Ram removed. According to the experts on this forum the main board is likely history.

The only other T61 I have saved for parts won't show video, not on LCD and not on an external monitor. Happened after i transplanted the LCD screen to the T61 that recently fell. So probably this main board is useless too.

I do have a number of R61 widescreen systems. Is a mother board from a R61 compatible with a T61? Or, what would happen if I boot the T61 harddisk off a R61? Almost certainly a lot of driver problems but would it remotely work? That is, fixable SW problems and no continuous BSOD's? Hard question to answer I guess.

Perhaps someone here has a T61 mobo lying a around from after 08/08?

Thanks a lot in advance for any insights.

[TPFanatic]

Try running the T61 drive in the R61 I'd say. If it's windows Vista or newer or Linux it'll probably work fine

As for swapping motherboards,
If these are 15.4" units the boards are not swappable.
but the 14.1" Wide units are swappable I understand and even share the same lid assembly.

[mvm]

Thanks for your reply.

The T61 runs win7 Enterprise 32 bit and has a 15.4 inch display size. Not swappable then?

I also have a T400 14.1 LCD but that one runs a 64 bit win7. Anything swappable here?

[TPFanatic]

T400 has nothing compatible with T61 15.4" except the keyboard. R61 15.4" can swap keyboard and RAM but that doesn't help you here sadly.

I move Windows 7 drives around between Thinkpads all the time and most times there is no problem.

I'd suggest cloning the T61 drive to another drive and trying to boot that in one of the other computers, if it just works then you at least will be up and running again in a substitute machine.

[solidpro]

Wait... a 14.1" Wide R61 is motherboard swappable with a 14.1" Wide T61?

[TPFanatic]

The 14.1" wide R61 is identical to the 14.1" Wide T61 except the base case is thicker with a taller heatsink and Ultrabay. And when new they were a little cheaper than T61 for the same configuration making them the better deals.

[mvm]

Thanks again TPFanatic. I'll take the suggestion to clone the T61 disk and try the copy in a R61. Maybe it will work.

I think I remember the disks must be of equal size in order to clone, which will be a problem but perhaps there is new software out there that doesn't have this requirement. I'll research a bit and report back if the disk swap has worked or not. If it does it may be of use to others since the parts for these Thinkpads are getting more rare all the time.

[axur-delmeria]

Thanks again TPFanatic. I'll take the suggestion to clone the T61 disk and try the copy in a R61. Maybe it will work.

I think I remember the disks must be of equal size in order to clone, which will be a problem but perhaps there is new software out there that doesn't have this requirement. I'll research a bit and report back if the disk swap has worked or not. If it does it may be of use to others since the parts for these Thinkpads are getting more rare all the time.

Macrium Reflect Free allows cloning to smaller drives, as long as the used space on the original drive is less that the capacity of the new drive.

[mvm]

Well, I managed to find an equal disk, WD Scorpio where the original disk was a WD Scorpio Black - 500 GB. However, Macrium Reflect errored out on "corrupted" MFT's on both disks and wouldn't proceed with anything. Reverted to AOMEI backup Free and that one did the job well. including the boot config. Was a bit of a pain to get it in, maybe the shock-absorbing rubbers are a little too thick but managed in the end.

Moved the DIMMs, doubling the RAM to 4 GB. Moved my old KB, but lower bezel with fingerprint reader and touchpad wouldn't fit so used the R61 one. Moved the battery and it's charging.

Turned it on. BIOS posted, changed the ATA setup to AHCI and saved. Booted right into my original installation. It began updating drivers and stuff, couldn't find the built-in modem and SoundMAx setup didn't work. And the mouse section is troubled - one-finger scrolling with the touchpad is gone. UNav setup says it can't find the Synaptics device. I'll check the Lenovo legacy pages for a fitting driver, I see they still have some.

Otherwise the Thinkvantage stuff still works, OSD, Fn key etc. Can't say I'm discontent so far. This machine is a bit of a fatass compared to the original T61 but at least it works - so far anyway. It also feels a bit slower, think it was a T7100 CPU that passed by in setup mode.

[TPFanatic]

The r61 likely has an alps TouchPad, it's less nice than the Synaptics used in the t series.

At the top of this forum there's a link to drivers, https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... index.html., maybe this will be of some help. All the best.

[mvm]

Hello again,

Yes it is an Alps touchpad and definitely less nice than Synaptics. Lots of uncontrolled movement all of a sudden, and near the configured rim of the pad it doesn't take input where it does on the opposite rim. Like the touchpad is mirrored somehow. But that I can live with, for now at least. Perhaps I can transplant the Synaptics touchpad to the R61 lower bezel.... if they have the exact same dimensions.

I said before that OSD works, well that is partially true. Thinklight displays OSD, so does volume and a couple other things but not display illumination. Used to happen sometimes on the T61 too but then it was about relaunching TPONSCR.exe but that won't work now.

Someting else that irritates me is the almost continuous blinking of the wireless LAN card. This one is Atheros based. I know from the elder days that there was a problem with the Atheros implementation of wifi, something with pre-amble values that didn't work well with Cisco wireless (I'm a network engineer). I suspect it's beaconing and probing/negotiating with the Cisco AP here all the time. The T61 wifi card was an Intel 83-something, and it just got out on the network when I did something to make it to. It was a lot more quiet than this one with its constant blinking.

I'd like to put in the old Intel card but I noticed it has 3 wires on the top side, the Atheros one has 2 and maybe one on the bottom. If I want to use the T61 card, which wire goes where?

I also noticed the fan going continuously, like it feels there is a need for cooling while the PC is rather cool already, prolly because of the fan going all the time. It sort of makes it a noisy box now. The T61 fan kicked in when the temp rose while this one doesn't seem to wait for that.

There was this section at Lenovo's legacy driver page about Intel CPU stepstone technology and Intel chipset updates. However, they also pertain to the T61 so in theory those drivers already are incorporated within the transplanted T61-based OS. Or do I need to run the chipset and stepstone updates just the same to tie the R61 hardware to the T61 software?

Sorry to bother, but there is a lot more Thinkpad experience on this forum than I will ever have. Thanks in advance.

[TPFanatic]

The TouchPad seems glued into the palmrest, I haven't managed to swap one myself but if I manage to I'll post about it.

I recommend HWmonitor for viewing CPU Temps to verify if the machine is overheated, you'd likely need to repaste it if that's what's going on.

Other program is TPFancontrol, which also displays CPU temp, and has a programmable fan curve so you can set the fan not to run excessively or however you like, if the CPU Temps are actually normal.

I believe earlier bios versions ran fans more excessively and latest versions don't, if there's a bios update available you can try that, but I'm not certain.

The blinking wireless on Atheros cards, I don't have personal experience toggling, but I did toggle blinking on an Intel card by adjusting the registry (ironically to make it blink). Maybe thee is a similar hack for the Atheros. It'd have to be researched on the internet. Otherwise I imagine that you can swap the cards.
- gray wire is antenna 1
- black wire is antenna 2
- white wire (if applicable) is antenna 3

[mvm]

Thanks, I'll give it a try, esp the BIOS update. The machine is from 08/03, type 8933-CTO. The last update for my config is from 20 Apr 2010. It should be possible to put the patch utility on USB boot media since burning a CD for a 256 KB program seems a bit overdone.

I'll post back about any results, also the NIC swap, but prolly not before the weekend.

Regards,

[mvm]

Well, the BIOS update was quite disappointing in the sense that it didn't happen. First Rufus didn't recognize the ISO and another USB-DVD program acted alike. So I eventually burned a CD and booted from it. Then the update program couldn't be found.... the ISO is not quite in order, that's a quality issue I didn't expect from IBM/Lenovo. No BIOS update so far. Too bad, the current version is 2.12 of 20 feb 2008... this BIOS has never been updated so far. The ISO promised v 2.29 so quite a leap up, that is if the ISO was usable.

There is also the Update Utility for v2.29 which runs under Windows. You can backup the current BIOS. But where is the updated BIOS file? I'm clearly missing something here. But what? Is it that the extracted BIOS gets patched perhaps.... I'm not sure how this works but some caution is advisable, one bad call and I'm stuck with an unusable main board and back to where I was. Well, minus one good motherboard that is...

[TPFanatic]

From some excerpts from the readme, I believe you have to navigate to the folder that the Windows Utility extracts the files to, then run the utility from there. For R61 15.4", this folder and executable will be "C:\DRIVERS\FLASH\7kuj28us\WINUPTP.EXE".

Interestingly this software doesn't work under 64 bit Windows, I didn't know that before, but since you have 32 bit this should work fine.

Software Name BIOS Update Utility

Support models ThinkPad R61
- 14.1 inch widescreen models without IEEE 1394
Machine types and models:
7732-13x,15x,18x,19x,1Ax,4Px,4Qx,4Ux,N6x,N7x,X9x
7733-11x,18x,1Ax,1Gx,1Hx,1Jx,1Kx,1Lx,2Ux,2Xx,2Yx,N1x,N7x,
N8x,N9x,P3x
7734-13x
7735-11x,13x,14x,1Gx,1Hx,2Ux
7736-1Xx
7737-1Xx
7738-11x,1Ax,1Gx,1Jx,1Kx,1Lx,23x,P3x,P4x

- 15.4 inch widescreen models
Machine types:
8914
8918-42x,43x,44x,45x,46x,49x,4Ax,4Bx,4Cx,4Mx,4Nx,4Px,4Qx,
4Tx,4Ux,4Vx,4Wx,4Xx,4Yx,4Zx,52x,53x,54x,55x,56x,57x,
58x,59x,5Ax,5Bx,5Cx,5Dx,5Ex,5Fx,5Gx,5Hx,5Jx,5Kx,5Lx,
5Mx,5Nx,5Px,5Qx,5Rx,5Sx,5Tx,5Ux,5Vx,5Wx,5Xx,ABx,ACx,
B8x,B9x,BAx,BFx,BGx,BHx,BJx,BKx,BMx,BNx,BPx,BQx,BRx,
BSx,BTx,BUx,BVx,BWx,BXx,CXx,DEx,DFx
8919, 8920, 8927, 8928, 8929

ThinkPad R61i
- 15.4 inch widescreen models
Machine types:
8918-ADx,AEx,AFx,AGx,AHx,AJx,AKx,ALx,AMx,ANx,APx,AQx,ARx,
ASx,ATx,CGx,CHx,CJx,CKx,CLx,CMx,CNx,CPx,DAx,DBx,DCx,
DDx,DMx,DNx,DPx

Operating Systems Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit
Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit (*1)
Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit
Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit (*1)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000

Refer to marketing materials to find out what computer models
support which Operating Systems.

Version 2.29-1.08


*1: If Windows Vista 64-bit has been installed on your system, use the BIOS
Update CD for the BIOS update.

On Windows Vista and 7 64-bit, the BIOS itself is supported, however, this
package for BIOS update does not work.

Manual Update

1. Firmly connect the AC adapter to the target computer.
2. Start Windows 7 32-bit, Vista 32-bit, XP, 2000 and logon with administrative
privileges on the target computer.
3. Double-click 7kuj28us.exe to extract it to your hard drive.
The default location is C:\DRIVERS\FLASH\7kuj28us.
4. For Windows 7 and Vista, click Start, select All Programs, select Accessories,
then click Run...
For Windows XP, click Start, then click Run...
5. Specify WINUPTP.EXE with the full path name where you saved the package,
then click OK.
Example: C:\DRIVERS\FLASH\7kuj28us\WINUPTP.EXE
6. Follow the instructions on the screen.
7. Select 'Update ThinkPad BIOS' and follow the instructions on the screen.
8. After the update has been completed, the program shows a message 'Flash
Update has been successfully completed...'. Follow the instructions on the
screen to restart the computer.

[mvm]

Yea, I read the Readme too. But when I run WINUPTP.EXE it errors out with the message that the BIOS file cannot be found. Hence I thought that one should perhaps backup the existing BIOS file first, using WinPhlash.exe in the same extraction folder, to a location where WINUPTP.EXE can find it (presumably in the utility's extraction folder), where it's able to patch the backupped BIOS. The same files that are in the Utility extraction folder also are present on the bootable CD. But since that isn't mentioned anywhere I became uncertain about how to proceed. I'll study the BIOS update principles a bit more and see if that sheds any light.

I looked at your suggestion about TPfancontrol. I read the readme and it's for T4x machines, quite old anyway. Perhaps it will work for newer Thinkpads too but a certain risk is there - !!!! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK !!!! it says. True that, one mistake (or bug) and your CPU and MB turn to scarred ashes. I also tried the Lenovo Fan Control driver, but that works on the BIOS level only. I think I therefore prefer the BIOS update, but obviously that one must be able to function.

As always, no one said it would be easy, esp not when it should be.

[TPFanatic]

Tp Fan Control was developed in the Era of T42 in response to that laptop's noisy fans, for users to control the fan to slower and quieter speeds. The program works fine on many newer thinkpads. Many users can attest. I used Tp Fan Control on my T500 to control the fan to be faster, ironically, as Lenovo programmed the T500's fan to be normally slower and quieter, the opposite of the T42 situation.

Maybe try an older bios release for the R61. At the bottom of this page there's a few going back to 2.25: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/soluti ... widescreen

[mvm]

Thanks for the link. I tried 2.25 to make a bootable USB drive with but Rufus also didn't recognize that version so I didn't bother baking a bootable CD, just to throw out afterwards.

But perhaps there is something with the BIOS version on this machine and that this would be the reason why it isn't recognized. From your link:

If the BIOS version begins with 7K this BIOS is supported on this system. If the BIOS version begins with 7L, click here for the BIOS supported on your system.

My BIOS version as displayed by msinfo32: LENOVO 7OETB2WW (2.12 ), 20.02.2008

7O? Maybe that's the reason BIOS won't update. However, now the question arises where a BIOS update fitting this machine can be found. All I can see is either K, L or M. But not N let alone O. These Thinkpads just never cease to amaze you.

Regarding the TP Fan Control, ok, I'll finish the installation. BIOS update is not gonna happen for a while anyway and this fan is driving me nuts in real time. Thanks again.

[TPFanatic]

Last ditch effort, perhaps if you can get Lenovo System Update software utility working, it might find a more appropriate BIOS update to pull down.

[mvm]

Ok, I'll try that.

Running TP Fan Control now on the smart profile with default .ini config and it says 55 C and 0 RPM. But I still hear the whizzing sound. It turns out to be the disk... that's not good is it. I remember it was kind of hard to get in, but a default Ata drive in a default diskbay. Or is it ... bay differences between T61 and R61 or different rubbers perhaps. Oops..

[TPFanatic]

Don't worry, they both use the same hard drive caddy and rubbers.

Some hard drives are noisier than others. Have you thought about acquiring an SSD? They really speed up any computer.

[mvm]

Ahh ok, fine no more worries then. Double checked and WDC WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0 is a 2.5" drive so it should fit. But I doubt if i can get it out again without destroying something, so tight as it sits.

On the other hand its noise is not managable by software so would fluid soap on the rubbers work? It would have to work its way all the way down for that to help so prolly not the best idea.

I think I remember the disk buzzed under the cloning also, wondered for a bit if it was worn out maybe. But didn't give it any more thought at the time. But it also didn't fit well so hopefully the casing of both the machine and the disk is still good, esp the disk. I never heard the exact same disk in the T61.

And yes, SSD looks cool but I'll wait a bit more on the hardware outcomes for now.

[RealBlackStuff]

T61/R61 use 9.5mm high drives and that WD500 is also 9.5mm.
Your HDD is about 10 years old by now, really time to replace it with a (quiet) SSD.
Using liquid soap or similar is not a good idea.
Maybe you did not properly put the rubber sliders on?

[mvm]

Hi RBS, nice to meet you. Seen your name in many a thread on here.

It's true that the HDD is older, but it has only been in use a fraction of that time. It came from a school PC that was decommissioned, like many of my spare ThinkPads and parts. They would otherwise have been shredded while in perfectly good condition. I saved a few from oblivion, hence I have stuff to work with when something breaks down.

Well, I don't know in how many ways one could put on the sliding rubbers, but they didn't seem to fit very well. Perhaps the rubbers were from another Sata disk and a bit too thick, not sure but they looked pretty normal at the time. No clue why it's sitting so tight. But you don't think this causes the noise the disk makes? It's not that I had to hammer it in or something. The rubbers may be the problem here. But if this noise is not caused by its fit then I will leave it alone til I have a replacement drive.

I won't use anything fluid on it, but it has to come out at some point I'm afraid, if only to be replaced by a SSD. Somehow, but probably with force. Let's hope the frame won't crack.

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK there are different HDD/SSD rubber rails available, (from T60/R60/X60 onward):
- 7mm (usually red)
- 9.5mm (hard black or softer grey)
- 9.5mm adapted for 7mm (soft black)
- 12mm (hard or soft black rubber)
The hard ones are usually knock-offs.
There could be others as well.
To remove a drive, you should be able to just pull it out using the black strip that is attached to the HDD-caddy.

[mvm]

I just put in the Intel 4965AG - ahh what a relief. Gone is the endless beaconing and probing, an oasis of tranquility has descended upon me. Hail the gods of Intel!

By the way the wires don't fit on every contact point of the wireless card. The black wire is on the contact that previously had white. But it works, signal strength is optimal.