X31 Questions

[EvilH]

Having no luck cheaply finding a battery or media slice for an X20 I found I am thinking of buying an X31 I found listed on craigslist here in Seattle. Some questions: Can I upgrade the Banias Pentium M in it to a Dothan? Is there a way to get an SXGA screen for it? I know that text and stuff will be super small but this doesnt bother me and I prefer it that way.

[The Spirit of X21]

Having no luck cheaply finding a battery or media slice for an X20 I found I am thinking of buying an X31 I found listed on craigslist here in Seattle. Some questions: Can I upgrade the Banias Pentium M in it to a Dothan? Is there a way to get an SXGA screen for it? I know that text and stuff will be super small but this doesnt bother me and I prefer it that way.

Sadly, the Pentium M in the X31 is soldered on to the motherboard and cannot be upgraded (unless you want to replace the motherboard with one with a faster processor.) In other sad news, you can't upgrade the screen to SXGA+ because only XGA screens were available for the X31.

[mazzinia]

About the LCD, I remember that one forum member was thinking of looking around to check if there are some compatible SXGA screens (this means a screen made for another brand, probably touch enabled since 12" with higher resolution are used normally in tablets).

He never posted anything more about the argument...

[EvilH]

Well no biggy. 1.4ghz is plenty for just web browsing, word processing and the occasional game of startcraft, command and conquer or heroes of might and magic. What does 1024 x 768 look like on a 12" screen. My T40 has 14" and it is ok but i don't like having to scroll sideways.

[mazzinia]

Well, to me the screen looks enough big for the resolution... I've recently used it to play soldier of fortune 2 in a lan session, too, and I've not felt I was losing details

[cwf]

Well no biggy. 1.4ghz is plenty for just web browsing, word processing and the occasional game of startcraft, command and conquer or heroes of might and magic. What does 1024 x 768 look like on a 12" screen. My T40 has 14" and it is ok but i don't like having to scroll sideways.

My X31 has a 1.7ghz chip and that's the fastest you can get. I play warcraft 3 on mine and it runs great at 1024x768 and also 1280x1024 on my external display.

[mazzinia]

Hi,

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 586#339586

according to the last answer, seems that there's for sure one screen that is compatible to convert to sxga

[mazzinia]

Thanks to pianowizard, this is the link to the forum discussion about a 12" sxga+ screen (X41) adapted on an X31:

http://www.51nb.com/viewnews-9538.html

The babelfish translation is following:

On August 23, 2007, specially 门网 网友 xiejixiang diligently under, officially installs on 12.1 inch SXGA+ screen on ThinkPad X31. Details as follows: This process too is complex therefore I briefly explained and the picture comes up for everybody looks The not too much time will need to go back the hospital tomorrow to give an injection, therefore everybody forgave 1. The principle is comes from the T4X revision plan, our so-called T4X revision screen line actually affects is revises GPIO the definition, the GPIO meaning is (general programming connection) we defines the T4X high score screen line is PC87392 PIN 1 PIN2 earth may Actually IBM designs X31 time already had considers this Therefore remained in screen on-line two jumped the line Concrete map-read 1. 2. Because GPIO needs BIOS and the H8 chip support, therefore must revise inside BIOS to the GPIO definition support, this difficulty is quite big From revised the Q screen time already started to study Therefore I separated T4X BIOS inside to demonstrate partial BIOS and the X31BIOS union, has anew produced new BIOS therefore the revision completed

What's evident is that the biggest difficulty is patching the X31 bios, a thing that apparently the OP in that forum has done (but it's hard to know how stable the result has been).

[pianowizard]

What's evident is that the biggest difficulty is patching the X31 bios, a thing that apparently the OP in that forum has done (but it's hard to know how stable the result has been).

Thanks for the translation. Apparently IBM purposely crippled the BIOS to prevent people from performing this upgrade.

I just got an X40 and would love to upgrade its XGA screen to SXGA+, but unfortunately the LCD assembly is so thin that I don't think that's possible. Is the X31's lid much thicker than the X40's?

[mazzinia]

I'm not sure since I've seen them near each other only around last november (when I was checking used pc shops), but I think it's ticker.

That's the impression I remember getting visually, and that mainly convinced me to go for an x31 (apart getting also a better price)

[qviri]

What's evident is that the biggest difficulty is patching the X31 bios, a thing that apparently the OP in that forum has done (but it's hard to know how stable the result has been).

Thanks for the translation. Apparently IBM purposely crippled the BIOS to prevent people from performing this upgrade.

Either that, or they just didn't want to waste money on implementing support for a screen resolution they never offered?

[mazzinia]

I don't think that the question was about implementing the resolution. We are still on the bios level... my feeling is that since the X4x screen used is a touch enabled one, the hardware piloting it is different or is programmed differently and in particular this is done thru that GPIO.
Thus the bios of an X31 needs to be modified (the GPIO needs to be configured)

[mazzinia]

ps

http://90332.51nb.com/viewthread-574920.html

Just found another thread from the guy who made the mod, with a lot of pictures detailing the operation.
It's quite instructive, and the screen is shown in operation

[Quattro]

not really sure what the procedure is, but it looks neat!