Thinkpads Forum

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and I've gotten interested in the idea of retrofitting a motherboard from a newer laptop into a T60 chassis. The reason for this would be for a modern, efficient CPU, upgradeable RAM/SSD, and a full set of ports including thunderbolt. And of course the cool factor that comes with having a T60 that functions like newer hardware. The board I've chosen is the T14 gen 1 since it's relatively cheap, meets my needs, and is within the width requirements of the T60 chassis (allegedly, we'll see for sure when it arrives). There are definitely some things I'm unsure of, so I'm hoping someone has some insight and can share some helpful info. Some problems to solve:

1.) Connecting a 4:3 screen (maybe UXGA LED if I can find one and within my price range... How much do these usually go for?). Converter I could use for this?
2.) Keyboard/trackpad adapter.
3.) Control of the bezel indicator lights through software. The T14 has a smartcard reader which I will be removing anyway, and I wonder if I can use the ribbon cable as data line to control the indicator leds or the thinklight. Does anyone have any info on the pinout of this or how this would work? Another option may be to use the internal USB A ribbon cable that connects the USB by the fan on the right side. Again, any info on how this may work would be appreciated.

Not sure if necessary for this project, but I have made custom PCB's in the past and have done a bit of reflow soldering. However my regular soldering could use some work. I'm pretty confident I can find a way to mount the motherboard inside the chassis, and thankfully with this approach I won't need to worry about a battery or charging system since I'm using that of the T14.

Please let me know of any helpful resources or advice you can share!

Welcome to the Forum.
Start with getting the schematics (and boardview if needed) for both your T60 and T14.

Hello there, welcome to the forum!

Interesting idea, and it's been thought of before... although, worth mentioning that due to the challenges you pretty much mentioned, few have bothered to actually try it. On top of numerous other reasons as well, such as the cost, limited parts availability and the other technical skills that are needed such as 3D printing spacers/cradles/adapters, precise measuring, making other custom solutions such as custom PCBs depending on how refined you want the final mod to be.

There's not many available sources for those problems you mentioned, that you can immediately buy. TPArt.net is a small shop hosted by an enthusiast named FranckDeng, he's on this forum as well, and he seems to have keyboard adapters that would help with a retromodding effort. The indicator lights would absolutely need to be a custom solution.

There's this post on Reddit of a user who crammed the Framework 13 core into an X41. Some of the details of his solutions are in the post, but it seems he just didn't worry about the indicators, and just used Type C to Type A adapters.

Thanks for the info! I'll do some more research on this.