Thinkpads Forum

Howdy Folks,

Been mostly lurking for about a year. Just bought an X61 second hand, and opened it up and it is missing the 2nd Mini-PCIe slot. Is this common? Please advise.

Jacoby Wilson
X61, X41, T40

Welcome to the forum -

All depends on which MB you have, they either have the WWAN Mini-PCIe slot soldered or not - check out the x60 HMM (from page 180 onwards) to confirm etc.

jacowilson wrote:... an X61 ... missing the 2nd Mini-PCIe slot. Is this common?

You have an X60 motherboard in that "X61"-labeled laptop. All X61 motherboards have the 2nd mini-PCIe slot, since that slot is also used for the optional turbo-memory which all X61 units can accept. However, the X60 units used the 2nd slot exclusively for the WWAN card, and it is very common for an X60 motherboard to be missing that socket.

EOMtp wrote:You have an X60 motherboard in that "X61"-labeled laptop.

This suspicion is also very easy to verify, since all X series motherboards have soldered CPUs and the CPU options are different and non-intersecting for X60 and X61. So if Jacoby tells us which CPU his computer has we'll know immediately which board it is.

I apologize for the long delay in replying. Yes, this was a budget model without the 2nd mini-PCIE slot.

Thanks to all for replying.

No, you were ripped off!
Supposedly buying an X61 and receiving one with an X60 motherboard is a huge difference!
X60 can take max. 4GB RAM of which only 3GB usable, regardless of OS.
The X61 can take 8GB RAM, of which 8GB is usable with a 64-bit OS.
It can also run at SATA II speed with a modified BIOS.