Thinkpads Forum

Hello people,
I have had a Thinkpad T60 (2007-C4U) and up until last year it worked fine except for a few mishaps solely due to my clumsiness.

It is “stock” except for in-warranty repairs (I had accident protection or something, or “ThinkPlus” with Depot repair) done by IBM technicians:
• I spilled someone’s Coca Cola on the keyboard so I had to clean it off
• A technician switched the hard drive to a 160GB Hitachi hard drive after I dropped the computer ( I think it was shutting down or something at the time so the accelerometer didn’t kick in)
• Bottom Case and LCD cover changed due to cracks from the above fall (and other falls which didn’t cause any damage to electronics) – these were minor and annoying so I give Lenovo applause (one by the power adapter and one on the lid by the top of the lid)
• Depot technician installed 2GB of RAM two years ago (DDR2-667 PC5300, as suggested from Crucial), making it 2.5GB total (I read that the motherboard can only address 3GB anyway)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit) that I installed after hard drive was replaced (because Windows XP is not supported anymore by Microsoft and the original hard drive was 80GB so I had unused space from the disk image)

(Stock is ATI Radeon X1300 (64MB), Intel CoreDuo T2500 @2GHz, 512MB RAM)

The warranty expired last year (July 18, 2010) and it seems my ATI Radeon x1300 burned out.

I cannot boot to Windows 7 unless I enable low resolution (even if the resolution still ends up being 1400x1050 after boot), though it boots to Windows XP fine (and can even play video in XP). It doesn’t pass the Windows 7 bootloader since it bluescreens with “NMI/ Memory Parity Error” if I don’t enable low resolution. There’s also visible graphics corruption on the Lenovo BIOS screen at times and if I load a Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD (the last LiveCD I have tried on it, since I know it worked before).

PCDoctor LiveCD from Lenovo’s website says it fails every videocard test. (see http://i53.tinypic.com/2qlzr4w.jpg for full size)


I have seen some threads on putting the T61 motherboard into the T60 chassis, but none on T60p in T60. I’ve been thinking of simply getting the same motherboard, but it doesn’t seem that good an idea when I can get something better like a Linux compatible FireGL (T60p with 200783U)? My LCD case cover is surprisingly similar to the T61, since it has been changed to the Lenovo logo, as opposed to the original IBM one.
The bottom half the case is labeled Type 1951 (which is a T60 model).

As far as things I found on the Internet, most of them were on this forum or on the Lenovo site:
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 96&start=0
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62733
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62465
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-65367
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=44049
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T60p
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=71904
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=97138
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjtKmBfO ... er&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWhr9dzm ... er&list=UL
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32310

I am wondering if there’s anything special I need to know if I buy the motherboard for the Linux-compatible T60p and try to swap it in. In the hardware maintenance manual it is pretty serious about procedures: “Never use a screw that you removed. Use a new one”.

Do I need to reapply thermal paste (arctic silver or other) on the CPU, GPU heat-sinks (or just the CPU and GPU, since you need to align the fan and heatsink assembly)? (According to the hardware maintenance manual: Before you attach the fan assembly to the computer, apply thermal grease, at an amount of 0.2 grams to [a]) I have done full system rebuild save for the processor for workstations but I haven’t touched anything on laptops (other than RAM/HDD) because there’s not much to upgrade.

It’s out of warranty now, so the cost for fixing the motherboard has to be weighed against just getting a cheap plastic PC from HP/Dell or a complete Windows 7 EE Thinkpad T400/T410/T420 that is used/refurbished/etc (granted W500 replaced the T61p). In fact, for ~800 on Newegg I could purchase a T420i http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... ageSize=20 .(How accurate is the 57% faster claim from http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... mer%20news and how much of that speed is from SSD?) I saw a few T60p and T400/T410 laptops for about $300-500 but they were on Ebay/Craigslist so I don’t feel it is safe for me in terms of how well kept they are. (I find it surprising that brand new Thinkpads are much less money now, in comparison to the $1800 I spent in 2006 which ended up to 2300 after 512MB memory, warranty and other additional fees.) I don’t need that much computing power since it will just be for MATLAB, light use of CATIA / ANSYS at times, and web-based tasks but I noticed the ATI Radeon X1300 didn’t seem to be able to handle 3D very well even when it worked. I modded a workstation last year for the graphics heavy stuff (new PSU, ATI Firepro V4800 with Quad core Athlon II X4, and 6GB DDR3-1333 PC10666).

I read that the new SL400/SL410/E series/L series Thinkpads don't have the same build quality also, so I didn't include them in my upgrade options (because I'm rather clumsy with electronics). They even say so on http://shop.lenovo.com/ilind/il/en/lear ... /thinkpad/ , since the T series is the only one with roll cage and accelerometer "impact protection".

Thanks in advance for any advice and insight you can provide.

More pictures of the case here:
palm rest:
http://i56.tinypic.com/zn8pj8.jpg
top:
http://i56.tinypic.com/24es5dc.jpg
bottom with Type 1951 label:
http://i51.tinypic.com/2vinl83.jpg

The rules for swapping systemboards between T60 models was discussed recently. The same rules apply to swapping boards between T60's and T60P's. Note the last comment about the new fan...that would apply if you put a T60P board in a T60 chassis.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... w=previous